Get Up and Go, a sermon based on Jonah 3: 1-5 and Mark 1: 14-20, preached on January 21, 2024

Last Sunday, I read a great article in the Atlanta paper all about Monica Pearson, who you might know as Monica Kaufman. For years, she reported on channel 2’s evening news. She was a fixture of Atlanta television reporting for more than thirty years, and, since retiring, you might imagine that she’s been resting and taking it easy. Instead, since retiring, she has earned a master’s degree, hosted multiple TV and radio shows, and at least once a week, she’ll emcee a charity event or speak to a civic group or school. Her husband says that the only thing she’s ever failed at is retirement. That’s true for a lot of people I know and love. A friend of mine who lives in Columbia, Tennessee once nearly pulled his hair out watching his retired father spend an hour polishing his shoes. He couldn’t understand why his father, once so busy, would polish his shoes so slowly. He was meticulously handling each one, painstakingly rubbing polish over every surface of the leather, and taking an unnecessarily long time to buff the shoes after that. My friend James was tempted to take over, saying, “Let me do it, Dad. This is taking you forever.” Only his retired father responded, “Twenty-four hours in a day, Son. Got to fill it with something.” Now that James has retired, he understands that way of thinking. Maybe you do as well. As for me, in the stage of life that I’m in, I don’t have any trouble filling up my 24 hours. With two active daughters, a wife who works full time, and so much happening here at the church, some days it seems like 24 hours isn’t enough, and I bring this point up simply to say that not having enough to do may be worse than having too much to do. Perhaps that’s why Monica Pearson is not the only one who failed at retirement, for people who know what it feels like to do work that makes a difference in the world can’t give up that feeling. I once heard comedian Chris Rock describe the difference between a job and a career. When you have a rewarding career, you get lost in your work. You sit down and the time passes so quickly. After dedicating yourself to an important task, you might glimpse at your watch and say, “Five o’clock already? Where did the time go?” On the other hand, you know you don’t have a career, but a job because you reward yourself by looking up at the clock to see how much time has passed. Maybe you’re scraping food off dishes in a busy restaurant kitchen, and you put your head down to scrape a whole pile in the hopes that when you look back at the clock ten minutes has passed. I’ve had jobs like that. In high school, I was that dishwasher at the Winnwood Retirement Community, and there were some days when my three-hour shift felt more like three days. I also cut grass for a living, and on my crew was a man who drank gin during those hot Atlanta summers the way I was drinking Gatorade. Why? Because some people get stuck in jobs. Not everyone gets to do something she loves for a living. Picture with me these two sets of brothers who answer the call to follow Jesus. The first two were casting their nets into the sea. The second pair was sitting in the boat mending their nets. The Gospel of Mark uses the word “immediately” twice as they left their jobs at the call of Jesus: The first two immediately left their nets and followed him. The second pair of brothers are invited to follow: Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired hands and followed him. Can you imagine why they responded to Jesus this way? Think with me about their motivation. Think with me about their immediate response. Do you know why they would drop their nets and even leave their father in the boat to follow Jesus? My friends, we are all hungry for the opportunity to do something meaningful. We all have an ache in our hearts to do something life giving, and there is no life more meaningful, there is no pursuit more life giving than following Jesus. All His disciples know that. Yesterday morning, I woke up before the rest of the family, and drinking my first cup of coffee, I watched an interview of the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. These two giants of spirituality captured the interest of this one journalist who was interviewing them because they always seem so happy, and he wanted to know why. We know already. We know what it feels like to follow Him and to feel the joy of making a difference. I feel it when I show up at a funeral, and the grieving family thanks me for showing up, which reminds them that they are not alone. I feel it when I write a thank you note and then see it on the refrigerator of the person I sent it to. I know the joy of living a life, not in the pursuit of things, but of being a part of something. I feel different when I know I am a part of something that matters, and I hope you know that feeling, too. If you do, then you know that we’re wrong to imagine that there was something especially faithful about these first four disciples. On first reading, we might say: Isn’t it miraculous how they dropped everything to follow Jesus? We might think that they’re saints, so they’re different, or that they’re holy and different from normal people. No, they’re not. They were sitting there mending nets, wishing the time to go by faster, and wondering to themselves, “Isn’t there something more to this life?” when suddenly, the invitation to that “something more” came walking by. Do you know what it feels like to get that kind of invitation? I do. Last weekend, we went to visit some friends in Columbia, Tennessee. We lived there for nearly seven years while the girls were little. Our daughter Cece was born there, and the friends we made are special to us. The friends our daughters made are special to them, so special in fact that when our daughter Lily’s friend Mary Dudley Hill of Columbia, TN was turning 15 last Saturday, Lily asked if we could go visit to celebrate her friend’s birthday, and so we went. Every time we go visit that place, I think about how many friends we made there, and how special it was. When we visit, I always think back to the decision to sell our house there to move here. What was it about the opportunity to move here to Marietta that made us want to pull up the roots we’d put down to come some place new? My wife, Sara, will say that the moment I learned that in this church there is a private bathroom attached to the senior pastor’s office, she knew we were moving, but that wasn’t it. The thing that did it, the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about, was the idea that I might come here and be useful. The idea that my time here would have meaning was so captivating that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The idea that I might make a difference here was so compelling that I can understand exactly why those first four disciples dropped their nets and left their father immediately. Immediately because there is no better feeling than the feeling of making a difference. Do you know that feeling? You might get it from your job. You might get it from your children or your grandchildren. You might get it when you take the time to write a note or show up at a funeral. You might feel it when you give a thoughtful gift or see a student you taught years ago, and he stops to say, “Thank you.” Consider those moments and know that many people in this world are just working for a living. Many people in this world are just killing time, wondering to themselves, “Isn’t there something more to this life?” which is where, I believe, the church must come in. The church must come into people’s lives just as Jesus walked into the lives of those four disciples, to invite them and show them how to live lives of meaning, which will bring them not just happiness, but joy. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” Jesus said. “Come on Tuesday, and we will help you feed hungry people.” “Come on Wednesday and join the choir.” “Come on Sunday and teach Sunday School.” There are so many invitations that people accept, that we have accepted, and this morning, I ask you to think for a moment about why. Why would we say yes, and why would anyone add one more thing to his plate? Why would people get up off the couch if they didn’t have to? What does the church have to offer these people in return for their time and their labor? We can’t pay them. We work them hard, and so much of what they do is thankless. Why would they say yes? We are tempted to believe that it’s better not to ask them or bother them with the invitation. That was Jonah’s problem, in a sense. We read in our first Scripture lesson that the Lord said to Jonah a second time, “Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” Jonah didn’t want to go. Jonah didn’t think they’d listen. Jonah didn’t think they’d respond. I can be just like that. Last Monday morning, I was honored to take part in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration. They asked me if I’d give the benediction at the end of the celebration, and I said “Yes”. I was honored to take part, but when the organizer asked if we’d also be willing to serve lunch, I got nervous because I couldn’t imagine that anyone would want to serve strangers lunch on her day off. Can you relate to that way of thinking? Many Presbyterians can. In fact, the old joke goes, “What do you get when you mix a Mormon and a Presbyterian?” Someone who knocks on your door but doesn’t know what to say. I get scared about asking people to do stuff. I know how good it feels to be invited. I know how good it feels to do something that makes a difference. Yet when I have an opportunity to invite someone else, sometimes I’m scared to ask. Sometimes, I think I know what they’ll say before I open my mouth, and so I stay as silent as I was at my first school dance, too scared to invite anyone to dance so I just stood at the refreshment table eating brownies. However, the MLK committee asked Rose Wing if we’d serve lunch, and she said we’d do it. She called Jeff Knapp, who showed the youth group how to cook soup and make sandwiches. She called Andy Tatnall. Then, she called Denise Lobodinski, who brought along her boyfriend, Eric. She called Bill Pardue. She called Clyde Grant, and Clyde told me that before the invitation was even out of Rose’s mouth, he’d said yes. Immediately, he dropped his nets and followed. Why? Because people are hungry for the opportunity to be of service. The right invitation to the right person is so compelling that it may illicit an immediate response, for people are hungry for opportunities to make a difference. Remember that and get up and go invite some people to follow Jesus with you. It may change their whole lives, and certainly, in making a difference to them, it will change yours. Amen.