How appropriately ironic are today’s lessons as we prepare to have our annual congregational meeting.
Far from being those sweet comfortable words that we like to hear, such as “God so loved the world”, St. Paul makes us squirm a bit in our pews by saying:
“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Foolishness: is that what we are about here on the corner of Moorpark and Leigh?
In another place St. Paul even hammers us more when he says in his letter to the church at Corinth: “We are fools for Christ’s sake.”
So, what does all of that mean.
Webster’s dictionary certainly doesn’t give us much comfort.
The definition of fool is “a person lacking in judgment or prudence.”
The word “foolish” is defined as “marked by or proceeding from folly.”
Folly, then is defined as “lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight.”
Now, honestly, my brothers and sisters: is that how we are to be defined, is that how we are to operate in this world.
Consider today’s gospel lesson:
Here are Peter, Andrew, James, and John, doing what any sensible person would do: they are hard at work making a respectable living on the Sea of Galilee.
Each day they go out, cast their nets, bring in a catch, sell it at the market, and go home with some cash in their pockets.
Make good sense? Of course it does.
Then, along comes this stranger from Galilee, this Jesus of Nazareth, who walks by and says: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”
That makes no sense whatsoever: fish for people.
Anybody with any sense knows that you fish for fish.
I wonder how you and I would have responded to that statement.
A little definition might help, a little explanation would be nice.
It would have been helpful to know where they were going.
So, Peter, Andrew, James, and John respond to Jesus by “immediately leaving their nets and follow him.”
As long as that story remains safely in the pages of scripture, we are safe.
But, dear hearts, the call of Jesus to drop nets and to follow by faith is the call that we have all received in our baptism
For, in baptism we are called to be disciples of Jesus no less than the fishermen of Galilee.
For, Jesus of Nazareth needs disciples no less right here right now than he did 2000 years ago, and the call is absolutely the same: “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
So, on this day of our annual congregation meeting, just what does that mean?
One of the disciples who heeded the call to discipleship was Pr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German pastor in the dreadful times of the second world war.
Bonhoeffer, like all of us, struggled with exactly what discipleship was all about.
He wrote: “What is said about the content of discipleship?
Follow me, walk behind me! That is all.
Going after Jesus is something without specific content.
It is truly not a program for one’s life which would be sensible to implement.
It is neither a goal nor an ideal to be sought.
It is not even a matter for which, according to human inclination, it would be worth investing anything at all, much less oneself.
And what happens?
Those called leave everything they have, not in order to do something valuable.
Instead they do it simply for the sake of the call itself, because otherwise they could not walk behind Jesus.
The call to discipleship is a commitment solely to the person of Jesus Christ.
It is a gracious call, a gracious commandment.
Christ calls, the disciple follows.
Discipleship is commitment to Christ.
Because Christ exists, he must be followed.” (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich: Discipleship. Pg 59-60)
The call to discipleship eventually cost Pr. Bonhoeffer his life.
But, that shouldn’t be surprising since Jesus did say: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel will save it.
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
Indeed, what can they give in return for their life.
Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of this Father with the holy angels.”
Foolish to follow Christ without knowing where we are going?
Make sense to take up the cross knowing the risks involved?
Dear hearts, today we are challenged by Jesus of Nazareth to take up the cross and to follow him.
We are challenged by Jesus Christ to drop our nets and follow him.
As a congregation and as individuals we must have a hard look at our hands and see what things we are clinging to that keep us from dropping our nets and following Christ.
Quite honestly, our hands can clutch our sacred cows, our ways of doing things, our desire to keep things status quo.
The seven deadly words of the church are: We’ve never done it that way before.”
Another net we cling to is the net of fear of the unknown.
How much more comfortable is to stay in the net of safety, the net of familiarity, the net of experience.
We need to drop those nets if we are going to be faithful disciples of Christ in this place, right here, right now.
It means that we need to face the days ahead with faith not fear.
It means that we need to be ready to change our ways and to follow Christ’s ways into new and challenging places.
It means that we must be willing to live in the present moment of God’s kairos time, not looking back wistfully to the good old days, not looking ahead in order to second guess the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but keeping our eyes of faith steadily on the Christ who leads us step by step, moment by moment.
It means that, yes, we might appear to be foolish in the ways of the world.
But, then again, for the Son of God to die on a cross on a Friday afternoon doesn’t make good sense.
How foolish it was for Peter, Andrew, James, and John to walk out on the job and traipse after an itinerant rabbi.
How foolish it was for Pr. Dietrich Bonhoeffer to reject the offer of a safe haven at my alma mater Union Theological Seminary in New York and take the last ship in September of 1939 back to Germany where he knew he would more than likely be a martyr for the cause of Christ.
Foolish?
Yes, perhaps to a modern, materialistic, self-centered, technological sophisticated world.
But, when you think about it, the fools of Christ are pretty good company to keep.
That is precisely our challenge today.
So, dear hearts, lets drop our needs, head out behind the risen Christ, and becomes the foolish folks of Jesus at the corner of Moorpark and Leigh in the heart of the city.
“Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.”
Shall we?
Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church | 1710 Moorpark Avenue | San Jose, CA 95128 | (408)297-0993 | immanuellutheransj@yahoo.com
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