Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Mark 1:14-20

I’d like you to think about a time when you learned something for the first time. For me, I can think of a few: the first time I tried to put contact lenses in, the first time I tried downhill skiing, the first time I could play piano without looking at my hands. I still have the little scrap of a scarf from when my grandma taught me how to knit. It was not straight – I dropped stitches and added stitches and pulled the yarn too tight so it was kind of wavy. In today’s gospel, Jesus comes along to invite Simon, Andrew, James, and John to learn a new kind of fishing – fishing for people. Jesus asks them to follow him so they will learn how to do fish for people, or even what he’s talking about. And what’s amazing is, they go! They leave the life they know, the fishing they are good at doing (their livelihoods), and follow Jesus to learn this new kind of fishing, which we could call “discipleship.”
Learning how to follow Jesus, to do what he does, and to fish for people probably sounded easier to the disciples at first than it really was. If we knew how hard new things would be before we tried them we’d probably not even give it a shot, right? Think back to that time you were learning something new. How did you feel? Nervous? Frustrated? Excited? Did you ever want to give up? Maybe you DID give up on some of those things. With knitting, for example, even though I don’t knit very often I can pick up needles and as long as it’s nothing too complicated, I can knit while participating in a conference or while watching a movie. I don’t even have to look at my hands much – I’ve done it so much I know the feel, what the spacing should be, how tight to pull the yarn. But while I was learning, I had to remind myself of how I had done other things and it was hard at first and then became easier the more I did it. I had to stick with it, and it wasn’t always easy.
Last week I had the opportunity to learn another new thing. I was asked to accompany someone to court for pastoral support. This may not surprise you – I haven’t been in a court room too many times. You’d probably expect that your pastor doesn’t’ have a lot of experience being in court, right? It was intimidating for me. I didn’t know where I was going – I went in the wrong door and was told to walk around the building in subzero temps to find the right entrance. Everyone stood up in court at one time and my colleague whispered loudly for me to stand – “whenever the judge stands, you stand,” she said. I didn’t know to do that. The judge rattled off a bunch of letters and numbers which I found out later were about specific cases and petitions that I had no idea about. It struck me that this small court room looked a lot like a church – there was a guy in a robe up front, we all stood up and sat down when he did, he said the same thing over and over, like a litany. We weren’t supposed to talk, and knowing where to go inside and outside the building was near impossible because of the lack of signage. I was learning what it means to go to court – and I found out that it was a lot like learning how to go to church.
This experience was eye opening for me because it made me think about what it is like for someone to try going to church for the first time. For many of us, the opposite of learning something new is to go to church because we’ve gone to church our whole lives, or most of our lives. A new church might be slightly different, but we have some ideas of what to expect. But Jesus asks us to follow him and fish for people this morning, not to maintain a building, an institution, to keep getting together with the same people from week to week without anything ever changing. Jesus asks us to not only learn how to follow him and do what he does as a disciple, Jesus asks us to teach others how to follow Jesus, too. And my experience in court last week was a reminder that we haven’t done a very good job of fishing for people as a church. We expect people to show up, on their own, sit by themselves unaccompanied by anyone familiar with our worship service or building, and then somehow summon the courage to keep coming back, week after week after week. You will see in our new bulletin format and PowerPoint today, you’ll hear at our annual meeting, how we’re trying to change to make our worship experience less intimidating for newcomers. As your pastors, we’re trying to equip you all to be more confident in fishing for people. We’re trying to help you think about a newcomer’s first experience of church and what that might be like, and dare to help people learn what church – following Jesus – is all about.
Jesus offers us a great model of how to be a disciplemaker in Mark. He clearly articulates his message: “The kingdom of God has come near. Repent, and believe in the good news,” he tells the people of Galilee. He does this outside, not in a synagogue. He goes where ordinary people are gathered. He meets Simon and Andrew and approaches them with a more specific invitation to follow him using language they would understand being professional fishermen – come and fish for people. He knows he’s asking these men to try something new, but he relates evangelism to something they already know so they have some frame of reference. They can do it – it’s not beyond what they are able to do. He calls a group of disciples together – in this gospel, four, but altogether of course twelve, so they won’t be learning this new way of living and sharing the faith alone. And of course, he doesn’t leave them alone because he’s with them for three years. He gives them three years for them to follow him, learn from him, do what he does, before sending them out on their own. This is how the early church gets started – only with the help of Jesus, of course, with ordinary people who dared to learn something new, using the skills and knowledge they already had, and working together to follow Jesus and help others follow Jesus, too.
I would like us to reflect on this passage this morning as a vision for what our purpose is as a church today – making disciples by being clear about our message, going where the people are (not waiting for them to come here), speaking in language that people can understand, and doing this work together. We are not alone! Above all, we must continue to follow Jesus and learn from him, from scripture and prayer that we do intentionally. Jesus is calling us not only to follow him, but to be fishers of people, too. Jesus has given us good news about him to share with others, too. May Jesus continue to shape us into the disciples he wants us to be. Amen.