Nothing Better to Do

When my sister Andrea and I were 6 and 8, respectively, we decided that we were ready to move on from our family.  Curtis and Alyssa, who were 4 and 1 at the time, were just more than we could take.  We had had enough.  So, one day, we told our dad that we wanted to move out.  He asked if we were sure, and we said, “Yes.”  About a week later, my dad came home from work, brought us into the living room, and closed the French doors.  We sat on the couch and listened, aghast, as my father explained he had found a place for us to go live: with one of his friends from work who lived out in the country and had horses and dogs and all manner of adventure.  Later that night, as we were crying in our room, Andrea asked, “What are we going to do?”  I said, “We have to go; we said we wanted to.  At least they have horses.”  We had nothing better to do than accept our fate.  We didn’t know what we were getting into, we didn’t know where this path would lead.  We thought our whole lives would change because we said we wanted to move out of our family.  Alas, fortunately for us, my father was bluffing.

But Jesus wasn’t.  Sometimes, when we talk about the call of the disciples, and how readily they left their occupations and even their families behind, we construct a narrative in which they had nothing better to do or a narrative in which they had no choice.  Fishermen, granted, were considered pretty rough-and-tumble people.  Portrayed as poor and uneducated, we see Jesus giving these disciples, on the margins of society, a way out of their current predicaments.  We picture Zebedee’s eyes welling up with tears of joy that his sons are going to be part of something big, of the next great revolution in Israel.  And perhaps they were.  But perhaps not.  Based on the fact that James and John’s father had hired men in the boat, it is suggested they owned their own business, perhaps even their own fleet of ships, and would thereby have enough education to accomplish the work of owning a business.  In Capernaum, the place where archaeologists believe they have found Simon Peter’s home, found a building that reflects not a peasant’s life, but of someone decently wealthy.   Of course, none of this stops them from bumbling around, almost serving as a sort of comedic relief in Mark’s just-the-facts Gospel?  Regardless of their financial status or whether or not they were educated, somehow, a question I have never heard asked of these men was: what if they did have something better to do?

If we tell ourselves the disciples had nothing better to do than drop everything and follow Jesus, then we can distance ourselves from them.  We can tell ourselves that we have more important things to do than go to church, than support our community, than spend time with our families, than pray, than read the Bible… there is always something to do, always something vying for our attention.  Sometimes, when Jesus says, “Drop your nets - all the stuff you have going on, all the stuff you busy yourself with - and follow me,” we say, “Naw, Jesus; I’m busy today.  Can you come back tomorrow?”  We shake our heads at the inconvenience of having been asked to do something when, obviously, we are already doing so much in the church, in our neighborhood, and for our world.  I’m already run ragged, Jesus, and now you want me to do something new?  I’ve got better things to do.

What would have happened if Simon Peter yelled from the boat, “Sorry, Jesus; you know how it is… I’d follow you, but I don’t really want my life to be inconvenienced.  I don’t really want things to change.”  What would have happened if Zebedee yelled over, “Forget it, Jesus; I need them to work for me.  Are you going to pay the wages for the two men I’ll need to hire to take their place?”  Fish for people, Jesus?  What does that look like?  How do we fish for people?  I imagine the disciples having a cartoonish image in their heads of dragging around huge nets of people.  Jesus, is that really the best you can do?  No bells, no whistles: just a come and follow me and a statement that makes no sense?  The come-and-see God now comes to us and says, “Follow me.”

We have been invited to watch, and now we are invited to get up off the bleachers (or out of the fishing boats, as it were) and into the fray.  “Follow me in to the messy business of people’s lives,” says Jesus.  Follow me into caring for those on the margins, those who are lonely, sick, those who everyone else has forgotten about,” says Jesus.  Follow me into the mess.  With scarcely an indication of what they would be doing, without an indication of glory or honor or payment or reward, and a statement that makes no sense, these men followed Jesus.

They had jobs.  They had families.  They had other stuff they could be doing.  They probably had as many excuses as we do.  Yet they followed.  The reign of God drew near, and it reigned them in, like a great fishing net collecting all of the fish along its path.  The net widened as they went through the crowds of people, curious about this man that healed the sick and whom the unclean spirits obeyed.  The nets widened further as they progressed from Galilee toward Jerusalem.  The nets widened even further, when the reign of God seemed like it was at its end on the cross.  Ever since, the nets have continued widening, full of people who have responded to the invitation to get off the bleachers and enter into the fray.

Sometimes, I think we treat being Christians like going on a date.  We might go out once or twice and see if it’s really working.  We wonder what he’s what we’re looking for, or if we should see if there’s a more attractive option, if there’s someone out there who won’t turn the course of our lives on its head, someone who won’t lead us on quite so much of an adventure, someone who is a bit more of a known quantity.  We want the benefits of the relationship, but we want to avoid the messy parts of what it is to be in a relationship.  Sometimes, it’s a lot easier to let our lives stay the same than to let them be turned upside down by this Jesus character.  Of course, there is always something else to do.

Deep down, I think there is a fear that if we let go of our nets, of all the things that keep us from following - really following - Jesus, we will have nothing to show for it.  In the words of Henri Nouwen: “Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?

Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own,

but what you want to give me. And what you want to give me is love, unconditional, everlasting love. Amen.”  It is when we realize as soon as we let go of our nets that there is nothing better to do, no place we would rather be.  We hear the voice that won’t let us go, beckoning us to let go of the nets.  We could spend all day asking, “Why should we?” But I think the wiser question might be, “Why shouldn’t we?”  Why should we follow Jesus?  Well, why shouldn’t we? 

If everything is at stake in this, then there is nothing better we can do than stake our lives on the promises of Christ.  We are not offered guarantees that life will get easier, we are not offered guarantees of life becoming a fairy tale, we are not guaranteed possessions or wealth or worldly power or moralistic high ground.  We are offered the promise that life with Christ is a life fuller, a life that points to life eternal, and the promise that God is always with us. 

Come and see.  Seeing, come follow.  Following, come change the way you see the world.  God - in Christ - changed the very course of the way the world works.  Sure, there are still wars, there is still hunger, there is still pain, but there is still the light as well.  There is the longing of our souls, as deep cries out to deep.  I wonder if, when the disciples heard his voice, it wasn’t so much the draw of fishing for people - whatever that means - but the voice within them that said, “This is for real.  Perhaps you were born for such a time as this.”  Perhaps they recognized Jesus’ voice as the voice of their own spirits, crying out to God.  Even though the disciples rarely get the answer right, even though they find their faith being thin and frail, still they follow.  It changed their lives forever.  It changes our lives forever.

Come and see, and then come and follow me.  Trust the voice of the Spirit, who beckons you out of the boat; you are no longer a spectator, but a participant.  Come and see is only part of the invitation.  Follow me is the second half.  The first half goes down easier, somehow; the second part makes most good Lutherans’ skin crawl.  Does this mean actually talking about my faith?  Well, perhaps.  Perhaps it means talking about your faith, sharing this immeasurable gift.  Perhaps it means believing, really believing, that this Word of God does something to us.  What is more than that, though, is I think that it means really living our lives through faith.  Here, Our mission ground becomes anyplace we walk, our home wherever we happen to rest our heads, and our family the people with whom we find ourselves at any given moment.  Places we would never go become our homes.  People with whom we have nothing in common are our brothers and sisters.  Each day becomes a gift, an opportunity, an invitation to leave our nets - all of the stuff that we think is so important - for the God who thought we were so important he bothered to come to earth so we could hear his voice.