the one where we said "People Matter More"

"Immediately they left their boats, their nets, their father and followed him."  Now in writing the gospel story, the writers are also memorializing the first disciples, the pillars of the church, their heroes of faith if you will.   And so it may seem like the writers are embellishing their initial response or leaving out some preparations that lead up to these snap decisions to drop everything one day and follow Rabbi Jesus.  Surely this is not their first encounter.  Surely these men were waiting to be moved into action.  Surely these guys were more ready than the story tells. Surely they cleared it with their wives or their moms first. If not,these guys were heroic in their obedient faith.   BUT, the rest of the gospel story highlights the disciples' failure to understand, their failure to comprehend and demonstrate their faith, their failure to endure and persevere in the face of real threat.  They are not the best of the best.   Clearly it was not the writers’ intent to clean up the disciples and make them more palatable to a new audience.  They aren’t edited very well. I mean, one of them betrays Jesus.  Another one denies him.  They all fight for places of honor beside King Jesus. So what was it about them and about Jesus that compelled these ordinary, flawed, working mento abandon ship so abruptly?  Why did they change their lives? What compels these fishermen to abandon their boats, their nets, their livelihoods, their families to follow this itinerant preacher from Nazareth?  

Why follow Jesus?  

This is a critical question for the church because this is actually where we live as a people of faith. Christians are believers in Christ, followers of Jesus.  That is our essential work.  What does our church do? We follow Jesus. At least, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.  I think we get distracted sometimes. There’s a lot of people to follow.  Join Twitter.  You’ll see.  I follow Jimmy Fallon and Pope Francis.  Some people follow Glenn Beck or Fox News, Chris Mathews or MSNBC.  Some people follow a fitness guru or a life coach or an athlete or a Khardashian. These distractions consume much of our air space. These distractions cover up our deeper needs and hopes.  They fill our lives with sound bites and snippets and quotes. Don't mishear me, I think Jimmy Fallon is hilarious.  But I can't live my life by him.    

Church has become distracted, too. We do comfortable, safe, predictable, respectable, religiously and doctrinally careful things. We've replaced Jesus' agenda with our own.  But I am here to cut through the crap and get at the things that matter the most.  Stripping away dogma, cultural assumptions, and Christianeze (what we heard said in Sunday school) we have one question. Why follow Jesus?  If church is those who claim to be followers of Jesus of Nazareth, why do we do it?  And what have we or must we abandon in order to follow?

Big questions.  But in the answer lies the open secret to the church’s place in the world, our identity as a community of faith, and our future as a movement.  I think authentic church growth is directly tied to these questions.    

So, why follow Jesus?  

Jesus gave them a reason. He said, “I will make you fish for people.”  Fishing is done with strong nets.  Unmended nets catch fewer fish; fewer fish means less food, less food means more hunger, more hunger means more illness, more illness means more death.  Unmended nets is a deadly problem.  See the "net", the fabric of society had been torn to threads by corrupt politics, severe economic oppression in the form of taxation against the poor, Roman imperialism that was secured through violence, and religious elitism that excluded people on the bottom of the human pyramid from communal supports.  These fishermen understood the implications of a weak net. Death.  Second, and this is the key to everything.  People matter.  Say it.  People matter.  Louder.  People matter.  People matter more than fish, more than money. People matter more.  Because we are made for human community, for social life.  Families become interwoven into a society of individuals connected by blood and love and mutual agreement and needs visible and invisible.  There is only a me if there is a we.  My health is connected to our health, and vice versa.  I think America is losing this sense of interdependence.  Neighborhoods are fractured between renters and homeowners, fractured by race and economic status.  We live inside and in backyards and not on front porches.  We choose privacy over a public life.  This cannot be sustained.  The net grows weaker and many people are falling through it. The world needs to be rescued from its bondage to injustice, human degradation, moral corruption, and decay.    

At this point, you may ask, how do we follow?  Following Jesus begins with a reorientation from self to other, from private to public.  Why follow?  The people need a strong net, a support system, a community that touches, heals, shares, welcomes, blesses.  If these things have happened to you, then you know what it’s like. The people suffer and wait for life to get better. Compassionate response to the suffering of others is called Love.  

So, who do we love?  Do we love our neighbors?  Enough to intervene, to help, to care, to listen, to offer support, to offer a place of refuge and relief?Enough to tell someone, "You matter to me."   Do we love God enough to worship and pray and derive our strength from God’s invisible power made available to us in water, word, and meal?

I don’t know what you must abandon to follow.  Maybe Twitter.  Maybe a hobby or habit. Maybe a career.  Maybe the idea that I’m here to take care of myself and my family. Maybe your sense of autonomy and control of your own life’s direction.  The technical skill of fishing for people, the “how to”, is something teachable, something we can learn to practice. It starts with an invitation to a  conversation.  Are you willing to get up and follow?  Amen.