Read, Set Go

Sermon

There’s a term in cooking called mise en place, a French phrase that basically means “everything in its place.” When you’re cooking something, especially something like a complicated recipe that you’ve never made, before you turn on a burner or preheat the oven, you make sure all your ingredients are out and chopped or whatever, you have the knives and pots and cutting boards ready, and, if you’re me, you’re wearing an apron. Mise en place—having everything ready to go before you actually start. Ready, set, go.

We might think of today’s scripture as a sort of mise en place for Jesus’ ministry. He’s getting everything ready and in place. He’s been baptized, he’s resisted temptation, John is no longer active or on the scene. Jesus has left his home and his family. He has a place to live. And he has a call from God. Ready, set….

In getting myself ready to write this sermon, I did something I don’t do much anymore—I looked at the Greek. Because with a story like this that’s so familiar, we might tend not to hear things anymore. Sometimes we water down the emphaticalness of the Greek. Jesus didn’t just leave his hometown of Nazareth, he abandoned it. He was done with that way of life, with ties to his family.

When Jesus says, “Repent,” what he really says is, “Y’all—all y’all—turn around from the way you’re living, repent and keep on repenting.” And that Greek word basileia—that’s a tricky one. Sometimes it’s translated kingdom, or rule, or realm, or reign, or kindom, or empire. Using the word “empire” is most provocative—Jesus is saying that God’s empire is coming in direct opposition to the Roman empire. When he issues the call to Simon Peter and Andrew, it’s not a simple but eloquent “follow me” but something much more direct. He says, “Hey, you. Come. After me.”

What I take from a different look at the Greek words is the urgency in Jesus. He’s grown, he’s baptized, he’s passed the first test of temptation, and now he is ready and he is set and he wants to go get started.

His call to these fishermen is how he starts. Not an auspicious start, really. Scholar Ched Myers unpacks all this. He notes that King Herod had begun a program of improvement of the fishing villages along the Sea of Galilee, but his plan “functioned to marginalize and impoverish formerly self-sufficient native fishing families. Leases, taxes and tolls were exorbitant, while the fish upon which local people depended as a dietary staple was extracted for export. Thus fishermen were falling to the bottom of an increasingly elaborate economic hierarchy. Elites looked down on them, even as they depended upon their labor.”

So given the loss of esteem and the loss of income for these fishermen, maybe we can understand why they abandoned their nets. Maybe the empire of Heaven promised much more than the empire of Rome. As Myers writes, “… Capernaum up the coast, a village profoundly impacted by [Herod’s plans], was the logical place to commence building a movement of resistance. Restless peasant fishermen had little to lose and everything to gain, by overturning the status quo. Thus Jesus’ strategic decision was not unlike Gandhi’s attempts to mobilize the ‘untouchable’ classes in India in campaigns such as his famous Salt March, or M.L. King’s fateful choice to stand with the sanitation workers of Memphis in 1968. …[Jesus] was summoning these marginalized workers to join him in, to use modern parlance, ‘catching some Big Fish’ and restoring God’s justice for the poor.”

One last idea from Myers. “[The fishermen] had little to lose. In antiquity, leaving the workplace would have entailed both loss of economic security and a rupture in the social fabric of the extended family as well. In that sense, to join this movement demanded not just an assent of the heart, but an uncompromising break with ‘business as usual.’ But the verb ‘they left their nets’ … is used elsewhere … to connote release from debt, as well as forgiveness of sin and liberation from bondage. It is, in other words, a ‘Jubilee’ verb. … Jesus is calling these disaffected workers out of an exploitive system and back to a network of ‘fictive kinship’ that practices mutual aid and cooperation.” (https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2015/01/22/lets-catch-some-big-fish-jesus-call-to-discipleship-in-a-world-of-injustice/ )

If you are miserable, if circumstances beyond your control have affected your life in a bad way, if you’re mad as heck and you can’t take it anymore, then a different sort of mise en place is present. Poverty, social ostracism, and a new opportunity set the stage for someone to show up out of the blue and offer you something, if not better, then at least different. You are ready. You are set. And so you go with the man who barks, “Hey, you. Come. After me.”

But that can go two ways. It can go the wrong way. That’s how cults work—they offer a break from the awful world, an ideal community, utopia. Come join us, and life will be better. In some ways, we can understand that for Germans who were reeling from the effects of the Treaty of Versailles which ended World War I, Hitler offered a way to gain back not only economic prosperity but more importantly, national pride. Some bad-intentioned leaders play off people’s disaffectedness, or their change in status, or their misery, and offer something that looks better. But it’s not better. In the worst of these examples, the leader demands utter fidelity and death to those who aren’t a part of things.

That’s very different from what Jesus was offering these fishermen and from what Jesus still offers his followers. Jesus never demanded that his followers kill anyone or any group of people. That would not be the way to the new life he offered. Instead, he gave his own life for the cause.

Repent, and keep on repenting. I have a hunch all of us need to repent of something. I don’t know about you, but during the silent prayer of confession, I find myself saying the same thing week after week. Forgive my pride. Forgive my judginess. Every week, without fail. If I repent at all, it’s brief.

Repent, and keep on repenting. Sometimes I wonder if the richer the congregation, the more whitewashed Jesus becomes. When you’re comfortable, and you don’t have to choose between paying your utility bill or buying the medicine you need, you just need the occasional reminder that Jesus loves you and forgives you. We hear that message, and not the one about repentance.

Repent, and keep on repenting. While Westminster is not the wealthiest congregation in Portland or in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), we are not the poorest. We have people from all walks of life, but sometimes people whose incomes are lower than others feel that difference as people discuss vacations or college plans or remodeling. In this place, it’s hard to talk about wealth as something we need to repent of. Some people have more money than they know what to do with. Some people have a lot of resources and share them. Some people dream of going to Europe or Hawaii and settle for staycations. Some wonder how they’ll pay their gas bill this month. And you all vote on our salaries, and your generosity pays our salaries, so it’s all awkward.

Repent, and keep on repenting. All week I have thought about Owens Washington, the man who died in the church stairwell. The medical examiner’s office was kind enough to call me and let me know they had not only identified him but had also found family. But an unhoused man died in our stairwell. Is there something we need to repent of regarding all of that?

Could the staff have been more attentive, and check in on him more often? Yes. Maybe we repent of our hands-off attitude. Could the congregation be a stronger voice in advocating for change in housing policy, in treatment for those who live with addiction and mental illness? Sure, and I know some people already do that. Might any of us repent of our unwillingness to see the unhoused as human beings, as beloved children of God? Yes.

How is the good news of the empire of God good for everyone? The truth is, it isn’t good for everyone. It isn’t good for those who oppress other people, for those who deny a living wage, for those who abuse their power and hoard it and hurt others with it. If you have everything you need, you don’t need God, so the good news isn’t for you.

But here’s the thing: none of us has all we need. Sure, some people have four houses and designer clothes, but they have no real friends. And some people have incredible communities, but they need medical treatment they can’t afford. Some people are holding on to a burden they cannot let go of, and they need forgiveness and healing. Some people are terribly sick and there is no cure for them, but there can be wholeness.

All of us need God. I’ve spent the last thirty years living that out. I need God on those days when I’m really critical of myself, when I hear God say, “You are enough.” Maybe you need that too.

I need God on those days when I drive by one more camp of tents and shopping carts and garbage and I ignore the guy with the sign saying, “homeless.” I need to hear God say, “That is the Christ in disguise.” Maybe you need that too.

I need God when a migraine has laid me flat, and I’m nauseated and in pain. I need God to say, “Let me heal you.” Maybe you need that too.

The thing about God is that God doesn’t wait till we’re ready, till we’ve got everything in place, till we’ve achieved mise en place. The fishermen—in the middle of their work, trying to eke out an existence with the Roman empire ruining everything and with people considering them smelly and unclean—those fishermen hadn’t gotten ready for Jesus. They hadn’t told their parents or their wives and children that they’d be away for a while. They hadn’t set aside savings. They were still in the middle of mending their nets.

But their hearts were ready, through no work of their own. So when Jesus said, “Hey, you. Come on. After me,” they went.

For folks who’ve been doing this church thing for a while, and I know some of you have been doing this your whole life, Jesus’ call to us to follow him can become a faint memory. We come to worship and say our prayers and sing our hymns with a sense of roteness. But every once in a while, something happens, and we hear that call as freshly as Peter and Andrew and James and John did that day along the shores of the lake.

Something happens, and we realize our hearts are ready to follow him once more.

Maybe cancer shows up, and we understand how deeply we crave not only healing but also wholeness.

Maybe a relationship ends, and suddenly being part of a loving and gracious community is the balm we need.

Maybe an unhoused person dies in a sacred space, and the call to care for the widow and orphan, for the impoverished and the sick comes into focus again.

Hey, you. Come on. After him.

To the glory of God.