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Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore [1] |
Matthew 4: 12-23
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© John Ewing Roberts |
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INTRODUCTION "Lord, you have come to the lakeshore..." And what is the lakeshore? The lakeshore is the place where land meets water, where we stand and look out to the horizon where the sea meets the sky. The lakeshore is the boundary between land and sea, between sea and sky. The lakeshore is the place where boundaries blur, the border between one thing and another, the place of transition. People as different as existentialist philosophers like Karl Jaspers and church growth gurus like C. Peter Wagner have written of the boundary situations of life as the place where we make choices that will affect our destiny. Where is the lakeshore? The lake shore is wherever there is a transition in your life, a choice to be made, a boundary to be crossed, a barrier to be overcome, a change from one form to another, a birth, a death, a change in employment, an illness, a milestone birthday, a move, a shift in a relationship. For Peter, Andrew, James and John the lakeshore was the place where they cleaned up after work, a place of weariness, a place of business, a place of beauty, a place for hard work, a setting for the greatest transition life affords - from mere existence to Christian discipleship. And the Lord comes to our lakeshore, your lakeshore, my lakeshore. And when he comes, "O Lord, with your eyes you have searched me," How do the eyes of Jesus search us? - with a look that penetrates through all our pretenses, - with a twinkle that says with a gentle laugh, "I understand you and love you anyway." In the powerful Robert Duvall film, The Apostle, there is a picture of Jesus that hangs in the front of the church. It has specially designed eyes that follow you no matter where you sit -- the all seeing eye of God. Scary stuff, and God knows, we've all done or thought things for which we have good reason to be scared in the presence of a righteous God. But with the eyes that search us, there is also forgiveness. "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me....Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."[2] and while smiling have spoken my name We wonder what went on between Jesus and these men before Matthew 4, before his "Follow me" and their ready response. We will never know; we only guess. People speak of his personal magnetism, his intensity, his urgency. I like the take of the hymn writer -- it was his smile as he spoke their name. A smiling Jesus I can follow. A Jesus who knows my name I can follow. And with such a confession we have moved into the area of a "personal Lord and Savior," one who is not a remote God in the heaven above the heavens, beyond the clouds, beyond the wall of the universe, but a God who is as close as breathing, as near as our heartbeat, a God who smiles and calls us by name. In Trafalgar Square in London there is a statue of Lord Nelson on the top of a tall pillar, too high for any pedestrian even to see his features. Because of that a new statue -- an exact replica of the original -- was erected at eye level to allow everyone to see. That is what Jesus does for our perception of God. Jesus shows us the features of God. To know God, look at Jesus.[3] FOLLOW ME Dale Bruner explains that "Follow me" meant in rabbinic speech, "become my students, be apprenticed to me, join my school, live with me." Students lived with their rabbis; they did not merely hear their lectures. Discipleship was study-in-residence; it was a live-in arrangement in a home and with a teacher. "The unusual feature in Jesus' enrollment, however, is that Jesus asks the students to join him. Ordinarily, students came asking for the privilege of studying (and living) with the rabbi. But Jesus is no ordinary rabbi."[4] Maybe this remarkable reversal -- rabbi invites students, not student seeks out rabbi -- accounts for the eager response to Jesus' "follow me." THE INVITATION Jesus announces and he also invites. He announces that the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and he invites us to follow him and to invite others (the part about being fishers of men and women). Notice the invitation comes before the sermon; the sermon on the Mount comes in the next three chapters. There has been a one-line sermon, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."[5] Have you announced the kingdom of God lately? Probably not - "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" is not the stuff of good coffee-break conversation at work, although religion comes up more often these days than it used to. But the inviting part -- that shouldn't be so hard. It doesn't have to be hard to talk about the kingdom of God. Explain that God is like Jesus, and tell the story about Lord Nelson's statue. Stories work better than heavy-handed religious stuff. TWELVE ORDINARY MEN It was meant to be a tribute to the twelve-person jury system, but G. K. Chesterton's words will "work" for the twelve disciples: "Whenever our civilization wants a library to be catalogued or a solar system to be discovered or any other trifle of this kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious it collects twelve of the ordinary (people) standing around."[6] They were ordinary people, but maybe they had the capacity to dream, the kind of people George Bernard Shaw had in mind when he wrote: "You see things as they are; and you ask `Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I ask, `Why not?'"[7] FISHING I've only been fishing a few times in my life, but from limited experience I think that what follows about fishing and discipleship makes sense. Fisherman must have (1) patience - they have to know how to wait; (2) perseverance - they can never allow themselves to get discouraged; (3) courage - remember the old Greek fisherman's prayer, "My boat is so small and the sea is so large;" (4) a sense of timing - a fisherman must know when to fish, and when to cut bait; (5) proportionality - the fisherman must fit the bait to the fish; (6) an ability to keep himself out of sight.[8] In a church where a painting of Jesus hung behind the pulpit, a child was asked if she knew the minister. "Who is the minister?" she was asked. "I know, I know," she said. "He's that man that keeps us from seeing Jesus!" BAIT THAT FITS THE FISH Our Future of the Church Committee and our Evangelism Committee will be working this year on matching our gifts to community needs in a way that will minister to and draw people - fishing for men and women. Here are two stories of two churches, offered not because they necessarily are what we should do, but because they illustrate how fishing for people works. (1) Surrogate Grandparents at the Beginning of Life A church member noticed that there were more and more women having babies without the benefit of grandparents. In the modern world grandparents usually live at the other end of the country when their grandchildren are born. The church decided to visit every baby born within a mile radius of the church and offer the family a pair of surrogate grandparents. The church had a vote to pick the couple in the church who most looked like everybody's ideal grandparents. Then they sent that couple to visit every baby born in the neighborhood. They took a little packet of materials from the church, information about caring for newborn babies, even a few coupons from local businesses. These visiting surrogate grandparents were always welcomed. They appropriately admired the baby, and checked the impulse to gush on and on about their own grandchildren - this was serious Christian self-denial! The surrogate grandparents said something like, "A new baby! You will really be in for some changes. If you need any help, call us. We have been in the baby business for a long time. We have a great many people who know how to help parents raise children well."[9] This church discovered the lakeshore of transition and ministry at the beginning of life. (2) Surrogate Grandparents at the End of Life A member of the women's Wednesday morning Bible study for 20 years discovered a young man in her apartment building who was dying of AIDS. He had been forsaken by his family. He had no one, neither parents nor grandparents. She began visiting him, doing some light cleaning, running errands when he was too ill to go out, and being his friend. Someone noticed that not many AIDS patients had grandparents close by. Each member of the older women's Wednesday morning Bible class adopted someone with AIDS - some light cleaning, some errands, some friendship.[10] This church discovered the lakeshore of transition and ministry at the end of life. THE VOICE How can we hear the voice of Jesus calling? In Shaw's play St. Joan the annoyed Dauphin says, "Oh, your voices, your voices. Why don't the voices come to me? I am king, not you." And Joan answers, "They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening to them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the trilling of the bells in the air after they stopped ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do."[11] "Follow me" does not contain all the answers to all of our questions about the future or give us all the details of what's ahead, but it does contain a sense of quickening, what John Wesley described as having his heart strangely warmed. Let me tell you about one such moment in my experience. In the spring of 1958 a classmate told me that he had a chance to go back for a summer job at a church in Baltimore, but he had another opportunity - to be a tour guide in Europe for a bus load of college women. Bye, bye Baltimore! He asked me, "Would you be interested in the Baltimore church? It's an okay summer job, but you wouldn't want to spend the rest of your life there," he said. When I came for the interview, Clyde Atkins took me into the Eutaw Place sanctuary. It made a terrible first impression - dark, cracked plaster, peeling paint hanging from the ceiling, threadbare carpets, holes in windows. Then my eye caught the art painted above the pulpit - symbolism of the historic church, a signal that I was in an exceptional Baptist sanctuary. At that moment Dr. Atkins put his hand on my shoulder and said, "At one time this was a leading church in Baptist life. We supplied leaders for national positions. I believe we will again. We will relocate one day to a new place to serve and have a new sanctuary." That night in the guest room at 213 East Lake Avenue, I could not sleep because my heart was strangely warmed. There was a sense of quickening and excitement. I had no idea about the content or the broad outline much less the details of my future, but I knew I was where I was supposed to be. No inner voices, though that may work for some; just a powerful sense of being at home and of being drawn into my future. THE GENERAL CONTENT OF THE CALL And what does Jesus say when he calls us? The best overall answer comes from a great doctor, missionary, theologian and musician named Albert Schweitzer. He wrote: "He comes to us as One unknown, as of old he came by the lakeside to those men who knew not who He was. His words are the same: 'Follow thou Me!' and He puts us to the tasks which He has to carry out in our age. He commands. And to those who obey, be they wise or simple, He will reveal Himself through all that they are privileged to experience in His fellowship of peace and activity, of struggle and suffering, till they come to know, as an inexpressible secret, Who He is..."[12] THE RESPONSE And how are we to respond when we hear this call at our lakeshore? The old Quaker poet put it this way for us, "In simple trust like theirs who heard, Beside the Syrian sea, The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word, Rise up and follow Thee."[13] CONCLUSION We conclude by meditating on the text of the hymn Deidra Palmour Conklin will sing: "To those who knotted nets of twine to comb a fish-filled sea, Christ called aloud: `Put down that line and come and follow me!' Accustomed to the tug of rope ensnared in rocks and weeds, they felt from Christ a pull of hope, amidst their tangled needs. They left their boats, their sails and oars, but even more than these, they left the lake's encircling shores, and its familiar breeze. They braved the tyrant's brutal blast and hate's unbounded rage, while rescue lines of faith they cast to save their sinking age. O Christ, who called beside the sea, still call to us today, Like those who fished in Galilee, we'll risk your storm-swept way."[14] Notes: [1] Cesareo Gadaran, "Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore," No. 520, A New Hymnal for Colleges and Schools edited by Jeffrey Rowthorn and Russell Schulz-Widmar [New Haven: Yale University Press] 1992 [2] Psalm 139: 1-5, 23-24 [3] Brian's Lines, Vol. 14, No. 1, January-February 1998, p. 25, [4] Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook - A Historical/Theological Commentary, Matthew 1-12 [Waco, Texas: WORD Books] 1987, pp. 126-127 [5] Matthew 4: 17 [6] The Seventh Trumpet by Mark Link [Niles, Illinois: Argus Communications] 1978, p. 112 [7] Link, p. 108 [8] William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Volume 1 [Philadelphia: Westminster Press] 1958, pp. 72-74 [9] Willimon, p. 17 [10] Willimon, p. 18 [11] Link, p. 108 [12] Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, 1906 [13] John Greenleaf Whittier, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind," No. 267 [14] Thomas H. Troeger, "To Those Who Knotted Nets of Twine," No. 517, A New Hymnal for Colleges and Schools, Jeffery Rowthorn and Russell Schultz-Widmar, editor [New Haven: 1992] |