Catching People A Sermon

Catching People
Isaiah 6: 1-13/ I Corinthians 15:1-11/Luke 5:1-11
5th Sunday after Epiphany/ Year C/ February 7, 2010

The life to altering power of God’s word spoken, heard, and heeded, is dynamically evident in the story of the call of the disciples from the gospel of Luke from the very beginning the church is claimed that the word spoken in the beginning the word that became the incarnate in the fullness of time is the consistency and constancy of God at work in the world. From the moment that God spoke let there be light, there was light. When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, Moses led the people of Israel out of bondage. When the word of the Lord came to the prophets, they called the people to return to God. When the voice spoke from heaven proclaiming the beloved son, God’s favor rested upon Jesus to go forth and spread the good news.
From the moment that Jesus left the wilderness, until he came to the seashore that day, his words, actions, and deeds brought the people out to hear his message of love, repentance, and salvation. What set Jesus’ words apart? From town to town and in the synagogues of Judea the people were given hope because Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God. They had heard of his remarkable powers of healing and never compelled to come, to see, to hear, and to listen. In this person, God’s word came alive and lived among them. In this story from Luke, God once again moves, as God has moved previously among and with the people of Israel, toward new and boundless horizons. Here God beckons; here in this place God’s anointed reveals and lives and makes real God’s word for the people to hear and see and experienced people.
The word has come to dwell in the midst of everyday lives, everyday people and everyday fishermen. Throughout Biblical history of the word has moved vertically from God to the people, now the word begins to move horizontally outward and outbound from Jesus to the people around him. It falls on the ears of crowds hungry for that word; it falls on the ears of Simon, James, and John, afraid, amazed, attracted, and ready. Not knowing what lay ahead on that open and uncharted journey. From their everyday lives and their fishing boats, they left everything and followed him, unbound, outward-bound, horizon-bound, captured by a word that they would, in turn, carry “on the ground” among people waiting for it, listening for it, yearning for it.
God’s living word cuts to a victim of pressing crowds and the lives and laborers of common people. It shakes the sweep of human history. It alters the lives of those who hear and heed. God’s living word cuts through daily life with the gift of freedom: the radical, radicalizing freedom that enables a person to leave everything and to follow. God’s living word draws people in. It calls and pulls and then pushes people out. As Simon, James, and John clean their nets after a night of unsuccessful fishing, they listen to this word that Jesus offers. And then they are astounded, when they find their nets filled to overflowing with fish that had eluded them only hours before. When they put back into shore, Jesus invited them to join in the journey, to become fishers of people, in that moment they left everything and followed him. The word came t them and captured them. They left their boats and nets. They left the old way and followed
Heard and seen and heeded, God’s living word demands our decision: it lays upon us the choice of staying in the boat or leaving everything and following, of moving into that transformative moment into the fullness of life. When our ears and eyes and hearts are truly opened, we cannot turn back. For followers of the living word, life is and can never be the same. It is forever altered.
But hearing word is not enough. Acting upon it is inherent. The demand to respond is always present when Gods’ living word is spoken. Jesus was very clear about those who heard but did not act: the word of the lord is not to be taken lightly. Hearing and acting upon the living word is not simply about “catching others” as the old Sunday School song used to say. God’s call has consequences. Following has a price.
But sometimes, I think, we have forgotten what it means to be called. We live in a time when it is difficult to hear the word, or see it made manifest in movement or in miracle. The crowds did not always press eagerly in to hear the living word and enact. Lives, nations, seemed empty. The workers are not always ready to leave everything and follow Jesus to the ends of the earth, or even into the neighborhood. We who proclaimed the word do not always believe fully in its power. We ourselves are not free of clogged ears or closed hearts, and we may not be ready to heed fully the living word, to that radical call to freedom; a call that compels us to turn away from accommodation to the ways of this world, ways that lure and entrap us and hold us in bondage.
A friend of mine a pastor in a small church in Wisconsin, just outside Madison sent me a link to a story about how his church responded to the call of Christ to leave their nets and go into the world. Last Sunday, they called of church, not because of weather, even though they have over 40 inches of snow on the ground. Instead people took seriously the call to reach out and touch lives of people around them. Instead of singing and praying and listening to a sermon as is their tradition, every member of the church volunteered to work that day at a local mission. People volunteered at the local nursing home to be adopted children for the lonely and the neglected. Some volunteered at the local food pantry restocking shelves, cleaning, sorting through the various applications for help and putting them into the priority categories that had been established but never really followed. Some members met at the church and baked hundreds of cookies for the local Habitat For Humanity Bake sale that was to take place this weekend.
Wayne told me that one family who came for the first time that Sunday got a Surprise when there was no worship service. But they joined in the fun that day and decided on the spot to become members. They said, if this is how they did church at least once a year, it was for them. That day over 100 people volunteered their time and talents and their energy to bring the Good News to their community in a concrete way. They left the security of their traditions, their nets so to speak and followed Jesus into the world. The Banner above the door to their sanctuary read: “JESUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING! WE HAVE FOLLOWED!”

What does that mean for us? It means that when we see, hear and listen we too must make a response. When we follow, we take upon ourselves the work of Jesus. We become one with him. We’re no longer satisfied with sitting and waiting to die, we become involved. We’ve heard. We’ve seen. We’ve experienced the life giving presence of the living word. JESUS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING. LET’S FOLLOW HIM!