Grab On!

Mark 1:14-20

January 22, 2012

I’ve read this passage from Mark many times.  I’ve read many, many commentaries on it.  But no matter what, I could never get over the question, “how is it possible that all it took for the fisher-folk to leave everything and follow Jesus was for Jesus to say, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  That’s it.  The text is very clear – the author seems to go out of his way to make the point – Jesus speaks this one sentence, and these four men leave everything behind – IMMEDIATELY – and follow him.

Most authors think this is a commentary on the power of Jesus as a religious leader, the faith of the earliest disciples, or both.  And the message is, if we really believed in Jesus, we would leave everything behind and answer the call when it comes –  because, of course, Jesus is powerful and we are supposed to be faithful. 

But I can’t get over how odd it is.  It just doesn’t strike me as real that it was SO easy for those earliest disciples.  At the very least, it isn’t helpful to me, because my experience is that it’s hard to follow the call of God – even when you think you know what it is.  And I actually think that’s okay.  It is hard.  We’re human and there are always complications when it comes to following God’s call.  There are difficult decisions, and things to weigh and trade-offs and competing values and goods – not to mention the whole issue of figuring out if you really know what God’s call is in the first place.  And I can only believe that those things that make it hard for us to follow God’s call were hard for people in the first century as well. 

Which leaves me with this nagging question: What was different? Why did the author of Mark present it this way?  Why make such a point of how immediately they followed Jesus with no questions, hesitation or even a word on where they were going and what they would be doing? 

Well, I guess we all have our ways of dealing with nagging questions.  Mine is to try to read my way into an answer.  So, I read this week about what was going on around the Sea of Galilee when Jesus began his ministry.  And I started to hear this story in a different way.

In the generation before Jesus, Herod the Great ruled the Jewish homelands under Roman sponsorship.  He was responsible for extraordinary and magnificent building projects in Jerusalem, including greatly expanding the temple.  And in Caesarea, another major city in Judea, he developed a world-class port.  You might think that was good for those in Jerusalem and Caesarea, but in fact whenever Rome gets involved in your local affairs – your economy and politics – you lose unless you are one of the elite.  Herod the Great was not trying to create jobs by starting government funded infrastructure projects.  He used slave labor and in order to fund his projects he increased taxes and his control over the local economy.  They only people he impressed were those in the Roman Empire.  The Jews living there were an occupied people losing their lives.

So Herod the Great took over the economies of major cities, but he largely stayed away from the fishing communities around the Sea of Galilee.  When Jesus became an adult, that all shifted.  Fishing was never easy.  In fact it was back breaking work for little gain.  Fishing villages were not gated communities with swimming pools.  They were hard working families who struggled with daily issues of having enough to make it.  But, it was just that:  communities of families working to make their subsistence living. 

Enter Herod Antipas – the son of Herod the Great – and a man who had serious daddy issues.

Around the time Jesus became an adult, Herod Antipas was dying to be as successful as his father in the eyes of Rome, and this obsession with living up to his father’s legacy seemed to make him particularly ruthless in his pursuit of wealth and fame.  He saw the Sea of Galilee as his opportunity.  He moved in and built the great city of Tiberius on the shores of the sea.  And, of course, to do this he needed revenue – so he commercialized the fishing industry, claiming ownership of everything from people’s boats and nets, to the labor.  Now, the fishers could not own their own equipment, and they were forced to sell their catch to Herod Antipas’ factories…and it wasn’t a fair price.  Fishing went from hard to impossible…from subsistence living to a life of abject poverty and effectively slave labor. 

It was no accident, historians say, that Jesus started his ministry at the Sea of Galilee with fisherman.  It was at the center of the clash between Roman oppression and Jewish peasants. 

So, when Jesus calls these first disciples, he wasn’t just a guy walking up to generally happy, content folks, saying “come on,” be my disciple, follow me and do what I say.  This is more like a person in a boat coming upon a bunch of people drowning in the ocean and saying, “here, quick, take my hand and I’ll pull you out.”  Jesus was “yanking” people out of the economic system that was destroying lives, families, religions, and the environment.  The Roman system was a soul-sucking, life draining, dehumanizing system that was drowning the fisherman.  Jesus walks into the midst of this, holds out his hand and says, “Grab on!”  Their response?  “Thank God!”  And immediately, they followed him.

Of course, this still leaves the question:  What did Jesus have to offer?  How do we know they weren’t being pulled out of the frying pan and into the pot?  As I read the gospels, I think Jesus offered people an alternative that included three major things:  a new economic and political system, community, and meaning.

This new economic and political system wouldn’t make people rich, it didn’t offer positions of power, and it certainly didn’t impress Rome, but it did place at the center the most vulnerable:  the poor, ill, ostracized, hated, and desperate.  This economic system fed you, gave you health care, housed you and loved you.  And politically, violence was rejected as a governing tool, or even as a means of protest against a violent regime.  Instead, politics would be based on trust, serving one another, and fighting over who should be least and last. 

Jesus also offered people a community, and it was not based on who you were except as a child of God.  Male, female, rich, poor, widowed, married, Greek, Jew.  People who didn’t fare well in a culture where your position in the family determined your status and well being found a community structured not around hierarchy, and prescribed roles, but around love.  People who were always on the outside because they were different, or ill, or despised, found a community where they were as valued as everyone else, seen only as a beloved child of God.  For those being drowned in the cultural norms of the day, this community was, in some cases literally, a life-saver.

Finally, Jesus offered a life of meaning.  Following Jesus was not a promise of an easy life.  These people were leaving the back-breaking work of fishing to join a ministry where you had no income, you traveled by foot and boat across dangerous lands and seas, you upset the powerful, and you cared for each person you met.  It was just as back-breaking.  But it did not break the soul.  It’s one thing to work hard for Herod, and another to work hard for God.  You were helping to make people whole, to heal them, to speak to them of love and grace, to take the yoke from their back, and to invite them to be a part of something transformative.  It was a life of purpose and meaning, even though it held no promises of riches or fame.

So, Jesus is offering a hand to people who are drowning, and he’s pulling them into a world that is life-giving.  Of course they followed – immediately.  That’s who Jesus was – he sought out the drowning.  He had a heart for people who were hurting.  Which makes me wonder:  In what ways are we drowning, and how can we be pulled into a world that is life-giving?  From what do we need rescuing? 

Some are drowning in the economic and political systems of our day.  Some of us, like the fishermen are at the losing end, suffering poverty, oppression, and facing a bleak future.  Others of us drown because we’re trapped in this system as the ones who oppress, or benefit off the misfortune of others.  We participate in things we know are hurtful to others and the creation, but we’re unable to extract ourselves because it is complicated, overwhelming, and scary. 

For others it’s not the economic or political system that threatens to drown us, but illness, or grief, or despair.  We’re awash in a darkness that has overtaken us, and not only can’t we see the light at the end of the tunnel, we’ve lost hope that the light is even there.  If someone came along and we thought there was even a chance they knew the way out, we wouldn’t have to be asked twice.  We would follow: immediately. 

However it is that you are drowning, the hope is you will see a hand reaching out to you, and you will hear a kind voice saying, “grab on!  I know a better way…a better way of life.” Now, it’s a nice, Christian thing to say that metaphorically Jesus extends the hand we can grab on to, practically that can be pretty tough to grasp, so to speak.  Luckily, thanks to the early disciples and all disciples that have come since – including all those sitting in this room right now – we don’t have only Jesus’ hand.  Jesus called the disciples to be fisher of people right alongside him.  We have many people who have already been extracted from the storms we have experienced and can show us the way.  We have people in solid boats around us who are ready to have us grab on and come into their boat. 

And those who have been through hard times and came out on the other side can help others in the midst of despair.  Those who have found ways to extract themselves from destructive systems we are still embedded in can help pull us out.  There are prophets, and friends, and churches.  All extending hands.  

For those of us who are drowning, we need to grab on and let these people pull us out.  For those of us who live, at least some of the time, in God’s realm, who have been pulled out, we need to extend our hands and call out to people, “quick, grab on, follow me.”  Together we can find new systems, life-giving community, and purpose for our lives, all because we are disciples of the one who came to show us the way.  Amen.