Jonah 3:1-5, 10 • Psalm 62:5-12 • 1 Corinthians 7:29-31 • Mark 1:14-20
Is it the case in your home, as it is the case in many, that the younger the family member of friend there, the more likely they are to know how to operate your technology? Take for example, Peter, whose family had a twelve year old VCR—remember those? This VCR was malfunctioning so bad, it refused to rewind, fast forward, or even eject out the videotapes. Peter’s seventh grade son announced to his wife and him: “Mom and Dad, this is a really low-tech household.” So to remedy this situation, Peter went and bought a new DVD player that he said probably ushered them into the threshold of being at least a “medium-tech” household.
But a new problem arose as the result of this purchase. The family room table now had one more remote control device, bringing the total to three. Nobody could figure out how to operate this new one! It had more buttons than the cockpit of a Boeing 757 airplane. Even when they could figure out how to operate it, it wasn’t always easy to find it!
Several years ago the company Magnavox released a study indicating that more than half of all Americans lose their remote every week between one and five times. In 63% of these searches, it took at least five minutes to find the lost remote. Most people indicated they found their remote hiding in furniture or a nearby room. Six percent said they would usually find it in their refrigerator!
So who came up with this device that is so prone to being lost? Zenith engineer Gene Polley came up with the idea for the remote in 1955, hoping that we would be forever freed from the oppression of having to get up off our couch to change the channel.
But this simple little device is really about one thing…one thing that we want so desperately in our lives, but that slips through our fingers as quickly as we can lose this little rectangle of plastic in our home. What we really want with this device, and with our lives is control. Almost every marriage, or coupled relationship in the western world finds this device to be a bone of contention in the household. Perfectly loving, caring people can in an instant become set off with rage over whose fingers can control the channel, volume and when to hit the pause or mute buttons. As handy as this device is, it fuels a hunger we have to be the one in control of our life. (Marty, The Anatomy of Grace, 92-93)
Jesus’ call of his first disciples in Mark’s Gospel finds an extraordinary example of people who lose control over something much more precious than a remote control. When Jesus calls Simon, Andrew, Peter and John, they immediately, without hesitation, drop their fishing nets…and follow Jesus. In an instant, they let the “remote” out of their hands, and out of their lives: they drop the very thing that gives them life, their livelihood, their income, their food and their community. They even drop their nets to leave behind their families.
How could these disciples have possibly done this? What happened to the people who depended on their fish for food? What happened to their nets and boats? Did they just float away into the sea?
The disciples display an astonishing willingness to leave everything behind not for the sake of a secure, prosperous and easy future. Rather than being in control, they leave everything for the sake of following Jesus. They lose their life in the love and service of “fishing for people”, in order to save it.
Jesus’ invitation to follow him challenges us to ponder—what are we willing to give up control over to follow where he will lead us. As we enter deeper into this season of the church year, after we celebrate God’s coming into the world through Jesus, we get to enter deeper into the embodying our call from God to follow this incarnate Jesus. We heard last week about Samuel’s call to be one of God’s prophets. Samuel’s call came from God's voice that led him to a specific action: demanding accountability for the Temple priest’s sons who were stealing and abusing their power. There are times when we respond to God’s call for such a specific action. But there are also times for each of us where we are called by God to account for who is our Lord…to account for who we say we give our whole lives to, whom will we follow, who receives our utmost allegiance. No matter how much we stumble, no matter how much we drag our feet, no matter how much we may want to not let go of our control, Jesus asks us to let go...and follow.
Somehow, some way, the invitation that Jesus offers to these first disciples compels them, as it compels us, to answer that call to follow Jesus as their Lord. Somehow, some way…they trusted that what they left behind—all that was unfinished, all that was still to be done, all the people they loved and cared for—that those things were in God's hands. Somehow they trusted God would mend the nets of the parts of their lives that were now their former lives, the lives they had torn themselves apart from.
Perhaps in the end what compelled the disciples to leave everything and risk living a life they had no control over was that they really were not changing professions. Jesus told them instead of fishing for fish, they would be fishing for people. Instead of casting nets for fish, these fishermen would cast their nets to catch people and get them out of the waters that were drowning them with sickness, pain and suffering. These fishermen would confront those who wanted too many fish at the expense of others going hungry. These fishermen were asked to put Jesus as the captain of their fishing boat, even when doing so meant taking the risk that the powerful would stop at nothing to try and drown them.
The promise of Jesus’ call to us, to follow him as his disciples, is not a guarantee of a life where we are in control. It does not guarantee that life will be easier. But it does promise that our lives’ legacy will be lives of love, because the way of following Jesus always flows through the cross. The way of Jesus flows through responding to the world’s hurts with his compassion. The call to follow Jesus is the call to risk everything for the sake of letting Jesus' mercy loose on the world. His call is to follow him to the cross where he let go of his life, in order to give us life...and where his gnarled fingers opened just enough to find a couple of spikes being hammered through them. Living with our hands open means facing the threat of losing everything.
Rather than grasping for control over what gives us power—whether it's authority, status, or a remote control--we can answer his call to love as he loves us: by opening our hands. We can open our hands to something that’s much more low-tech than a remote control: we can open our hands to the flesh and blood hands of someone else. Living with open hands gets us in touch with Jesus' love that touches people's lives...and that has the power to cast out fears.
What do we need to let go of today, in order to follow Jesus’ call of open-handed compassion more closely? What do we need to get un-stuck from and hand over to our Lord, so we can partake of the rich life that finds power in letting go for the sake of love? That’s a question for us all to answer…but thankfully as people Jesus calls together to be the church…we don’t have to answer it alone. With Simon, Andrew, James, John and all who let go to follow Jesus, we get to answer his call together.
Today during the Lord’s Prayer I’d like to invite us to let go of whatever we are holding, and hold onto each other’s hands….and to together embody what living with our hands open looks like. Although it may be awkward…it’s no more awkward than it would be to give up bickering about who in our house gets to hold the remote control. Instead, it will be like anytime we let go of our desire for control: we'll find ourselves instead getting in touch the undeniably low-tech life of caring for the human family that following Jesus as our Lord is all about.
Amen.
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