Mending the Nets

Scripture Lessons: Jonah 3: 1-5 and Mark 1: 14-20 Sermon Title: Mending the Nets Preached on January 21, 2018 This has been a big weekend at the church. Yesterday was the church officer's retreat. Your elected Elders and Deacons were here. We were talking about the future of our church with excitement, moving forward into this new year, and in addition to all that, in Holland Hall yesterday was the Cub Scout's pinewood derby. I remember being a Cub Scout in Holland Hall for the pinewood derby. The scene was just about the same as it was then. There was a long track. It used to be wood, but now its metal. The cars line up in heats, and the cub scouts still all huddle around the starting line cheering for these cars that they either made by themselves or with a parent. Two of Judy and Bob Harper's grandsons are in our Cub Scout Troop and we were standing together with their son-in-law Rob. I asked Rob about the construction of his son's cars. How much of the pinewood derby car he was responsible for as opposed to what his sons did? He was telling me about how they did some of the sanding, but as for sawing the wood, he did most of that, and at that point in the conversation the father in front of us turned back and said, "Really, it all depends on whether or not you want to make a trip to the ER." This is still the same. When it comes to the pinewood derby there's often that balance between letting your son figure it out for himself and a father doing it all for him. That's how it was when I was a kid too. My dad insisted that I lead the project. He helped me do whatever I wanted done, but he wanted me to be in charge, which was fine while we were making the car but sad in the race because I always got beat by some kid whose engineer dad had done the whole thing for him. Looking back, I can see that maybe that boy won the pinewood derby, but where does it stop? And at some point, it has to, because to become an adult, we all have to step out on our own. The disciples knew about that. "Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God…" And as he passed along the Sea of Galilee, there were two brothers who were mending nets with their father. "Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him." What about that? You've heard a story like that before. Dad's an optometrist. He builds up his own office, and it's not easy making it on his own, what with Lenscrafters and Walmart basically giving glasses away. But he keeps going because he has a daughter who's a student at the School of Optometry and Vision Science, and he dreams of handing that practice over to her. Only guess what? She falls in love with some guy and they start a family What about that? Or consider this father. Last summer I bought this pasta maker at a yard sale. I bought it for 20 bucks, which is a lot to spend at a yard sale, but I handed it over because I thought: "what a great bonding experience this will be for me and our girls. Who cares that you can just buy a box of spaghetti for 99 cents - they'll love it." And I guess they did, or Lily did for about 5 minutes, so mostly it was me making pasta, then cleaning it up, for probably two hours. It also all got stuck together, so it wasn't all that pretty, but it tasted good - and the receipt was still in there. New that thing cost $175, which I would have paid because I love spending time with our girls, but they don't always want to do what I want them to do. You know what I'm talking about. Father Zebedee would understand. You think ol father Zebedee didn't love having his sons out there with him. You think he didn't have dreams like that optometrist. And now who is he going to pass those nets down to? One of the hired hands who are only after a day's pay? He can't do that. What is he going to do? A hard thing about being a parent is that you can't help but build expectations that you have no control over - and a hard thing about being a child is that you can't help but disappoint your parents even though half the time you don't even know why. But eventually every mother realizes that her sons have to decide on their own, every father realizes that he can't stand in the way of his daughter's dreams, and every child who successfully grows into adulthood has realized that he has to make his own pinewood derby car and even if it loses every race at least he tried and did it on his own. Faith is like that too. Last Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and in a sermon he once told the story of such an experience. For him it wasn't a pinewood derby car that he had to build on his own, but a long night in Birmingham, AL where he needed God, and he had to turn to God on his own. Early in the day, his life and the lives of his wife and children were threatened because the words that he had said and the changes that he supported, inspired someone to throw a brick through his window with a note attached. The note told him that if he didn't stop talking and get out of town, his life and the lives of his wife and children would be in jeopardy. Dr. King wanted nothing more than to have his father by his side, so that he could comfort him, that together they might turn to God in prayer, but his father was about 150 miles away. That night, Dr. King got up and made a pot of coffee because he couldn't sleep and he pondered the brick that had been thrown through the window of the house his wife and children were sleeping in and he began to pray, praying for what he said may have been the first time he had ever really prayed in his life. "My father wasn't there to do it for me," he said, "so I prayed to God myself." All believers must do that. There's an old saying that goes: The Lord doesn't have any grandchildren - and what that means is that developing a relationship with God isn't something that parents can do for their children - because to God, being related to a Christian isn't the same as being one yourself. We all must learn what it means to be the children of God on our own. At some point we must all learn to follow Christ ourselves, even if we've been drug into a church like this one for our entire childhood, at some point we have to get up and go ourselves. We have to make the choice, and for some of us - that means, not just doing it on our own without our parents but following Christ in spite of them. Somebody asked me the other day if my parents were excited when I told them I felt called to the ministry. But my parents knew far too much about the lifestyle that serving God as a pastor requires. So, they weren't excited. They were worried. And still, they talk to us about going up to their house for Christmas, refusing to accept the reality that I'll be preaching every Christmas Eve from now until I retire. But that's nothing really. Consider this daughter. She's the first one in her family to go to college. Some parents would be proud, but hers can't understand and don't see the point. "Come back and mend the nets," she can hear them say. Every church officer who was just ordained and installed probably faced some version of that. A call came from the Officer Nominating Committee asking them to serve this church in a leadership role, and if not in their ear then surely in their head were the voices of spouses telling them, "But we have kids to raise and house to run. Don't say yes, come back and mend the nets." Friends who said, "Someone else will say yes. It doesn't have to be you. Come back and mend the nets." This is life. I was in Confirmation Class years ago, but my friends got the bright idea to skip class and hang out behind the Cotton Building. That was really fun for a while, but at some point, I started feeling real guilty and was easing my way back to where I was supposed to be. "come back here and mend the nets," my friends called - and I told them I'd be right back, I just needed to use the bathroom, because I wasn't strong enough to tell them I wanted to go back to class. If I said that I was leaving them to go to class would they still be my friends, I worried. It costs something, doesn't it? And parents, we raise these children best we can - then we have to let them go and that may mean they move far away, destroying all our plans and expectations, even breaking our hearts. But who can blame them? For when the chance for new life comes walking down the beach calling us to follow, we all have to listen. Amen.