Mending the nets

Mark 1: 14-20, NT page 35 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea – for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. Sermon I realized this week that it was nearly four years ago today that a commission from the Middle Tennessee Presbytery installed me to serve this church as pastor. Four years ago. It seems like I just got here, but I looked it up – this month starts our fifth year in Columbia and it was in early February of 2011 that James Fleming, who chaired the committee that interviewed me, delivered the part of the installation service called the charge to the pastor. This part of the service is about giving a strong directive, it was a chance for James to tell me to remember something or do something, and he charged me to always listen for God’s quiet whisper. If I could keep my focus on hearing that whisper, everything else, all the other voices and directions I might be pulled in would seem to be nothing more than the noise of street clutter blown by the wind. This week I’ve realized once again how right James was. We all must listen, and if we can the voice of God will grant us clarity and direction, but it’s harder than I thought it would be to discern between the voices that I hear – to hear the voice of God over the street clutter – because it’s not always clear which voice is the whisper of God and which voice is trash blowing in the wind. The TV is on and the game is almost over, but your daughter is trying to tell you something. The phone is ringing, but you’re in the middle of a conversation that you can’t get away from. Or it’s quiet in the house, but your tendency is to fill that quiet up with music to drown your worries out. It takes an ear tuned to grace to hear his voice – because there is Christ’s voice and there are distractions – and telling the difference between the two things is one of the greatest challenges a person faces. There is a silent whisper on the one hand, and noisy street clutter on the other. Which one do you hear? Which one do you respond to? Which one makes you nervous? These voices create a crossroads in a way, because one holds the Keys to the Kingdom, and the other only seems to, but which is which? Scripture leads us to believe that the disciples could tell the difference. You can see James the son of Zebedee and his brother John in their boats mending the nets. He called them and when he did they followed – but there were other voices. Their father Zebedee was in the boat with them, and their father, much like my father, surely knew a distraction when he saw it. In middle school I’d be in my room, staring at my homework. “How’s it coming?” he’d always ask. “It’s pretty though Dad,” I’d respond. Then he’d turn off the radio and say, “Now you’ll focus, without the distraction.” But the thing is, to me, the music was the thing worth listening to – the homework was the distraction. To my father it was the other way around, and that’s how it is with most fathers. The distraction is the thing that takes you away from your work. Sports are a distraction if your grades start to slip. A girlfriend is a distraction – spend too much time with your friends and they are a distraction too, but that’s the thing about fathers. Parents, teachers, school administrators – ask any of them and they’ll tell you that the point of school is education, all the other stuff is noisy street clutter. But ask a student and you’ll get another answer and another set of priorities. Zebedee wanted good strong nets. Don’t watch the gulls in the air or the young ladies walking on the beach – you’ll lose your focus and the net will suffer. It’s like the pancakes in the frying pan – turn your head to get yourself another cup a copy and they burn. Don’t lose focus on the thing that matters – but is it always so easy to tell what matters? To Zebedee that hole in the net was like a hole in his pocket – if it wasn’t mended than the coins would just tumble out. Since they were young he taught his boys to mind those nets. The fish they captured not only put food on the table, the sales from those fish paid for the boats they would inherit, paid the taxes they had to pay. The fish that slipped through the holes in those nets – that was money taken from Zebedee’s own pocket, and if he was anything like the father that I’m becoming, he sometimes had a better grasp of the fish that slipped through the net than the sons who were slipping away. Each day ended with the same litany of regrets: if only the nets had been stronger. If only I had worked harder. If only my boys were not so distracted. It’s been said that the rearview mirror on your car is a good tool for putting the past in perspective. You need to know it, be familiar with it, glance at it from time to time, but you can’t drive if it outgrows its place and there are too many people who let regrets about the past blind them to the future. The rearview mirror is a small thing; it’s the windshield that you need to pay attention to. Watch where you are going. Don’t spend so much time ringing your hands about where you’ve been or haven’t been – what you’ve done or haven’t done. And while there’s a voice telling you that you’ll never escape the past, that past glories should be relived again and again, past failures need to be regretted again and again, there is another voice telling you to look ahead at what’s coming. On the one hand is the father who wants a net that fish won’t slip through, but there are sons who are not so worried about the one that got away as the opportunity that stares them in the face. “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” “Good luck making a living doing that,” Zebedee must have said, because in his ears the louder voice was the voice calling him to take care of his family, to build a life of stability and respectability – but could it be that this voice is the street clutter? The voice that calls you to put your head down and work. The voice that tells you just to get through today. The voice that helps you put up with it, keep quiet, don’t make a fuss – it’s this voice that shouts down the one telling us to speak and finally be heard – to dream and demand – one of these voices is street clutter while the other is not, but which voice will you listen to? TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5 Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, 10 And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. 15 I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. You’ve heard Robert Frost before, and I hope you heard him well enough to pass 9th Grade English Literature, but did you hear him well enough that you can tell the difference between the voice of God and the sound of street clutter? An editorial that the Wall Street Journal has published every Christmas Eve since 1949 warns us of the time when “darkness would settle again over the lands and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter’s star in the East, and once more, there would be no more light at all in the darkness.” Listen, and look up. Look up from a desk piled high, a smart phone busy with pictures and drama, look up from the bills and the worries, the sickness and the death. Look up from your nets and whatever else takes up your day – and see the one who calls you to a life far greater. Amen.