Preached on February 7, 2010, the fifth Sunday of Epiphany, at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Isaiah 6:1-8
Luke 5:1-11
The Winter Olympics begin next week in Vancouver, and I am excited. I love the Olympic games. But I’ve been thinking recently about the winter games of 1980, held at Lake Placid, New York. This was now thirty years ago, and it is getting harder to remember the tension of that cold war era, the angst we felt about the Soviet Union. Now we have cooperative space programs, and our leaders meet with each other on global issues. Russian athletes play in our country’s professional basketball and hockey teams, so it’s hard to remember that old animosity and fear.
In 1980, the Russian team had won the gold medal in every Olympic games since 1964. They were the best in the world. A year earlier, they had played the NHL all-stars and won 6-0. Then the United States asked Herb Brooks to coach the national team. The story is told in the movie Miracle, where the coach explains that “All-star teams fail because they rely solely on the individual's talent.” He recruits college players who will play as a team. When try-outs are over and he’s chosen his roster, someone looks at the list and says to him “You're missing some of the best players.”
Brooks says “I'm not looking for the best players. I'm looking for the right ones.” That was the team that finally beat the Soviet Union and won the gold medal in 1980.
So much of our society is focused on the question of who is the best? We live in a competitive culture, from little league sports, to reality shows, to the workplace and schools, and even friendships. There is pressure to think in terms of being the best. But the best person is often not the person we need. We need the right person. God needs the right people, and that means us. If we think that God needs the best people, we count ourselves out. “We’re not up to the task,” we say. “Someone else should do that.” But when we realize that God needs the right people, we realize that God wants us.
Simon was not the best person to become a disciple of Jesus. The first clue of this that we have is that he is a fisherman, along with James and John, just like their father. If Simon had been the best person to become a disciple, he would already be one. All Jewish boys wanted to be disciples of a rabbi back then. The Rabbi was the center of the community, interpreting their religion and arbitrating community affairs. The rabbi was the one you went to with a dispute, because the rabbi’s word would settle it. All Jewish kids spent their young years learning the scriptures and practicing interpretation of the Torah. After a certain age, those who showed promise continued to be schooled. They would memorize whole books of the Hebrew Scriptures, and would practice rabbinical debate with the rabbi. As teenagers, the best students were chosen to become disciples of the rabbi, and, eventually, they could become rabbis themselves. If you weren’t chosen, you just went back to learn the trade of your father. Simon was fishing. He hadn’t been chosen.
When we learn more about him, it becomes easy to see why. Simon’s real problem is that he acts first and thinks second. He speaks first and thinks second. Or maybe he just acts and never gets to the thinking part. It’s true that Simon was the first disciple to name Jesus as the Messiah, when Jesus asked them “who do you say I am?” but a minute later, Simon pulled Jesus aside to rebuke him for his bad ministry program, prompting Jesus to tell him “get behind me, Satan.” Simon was the one who jumped recklessly out of the boat and began to sink before Jesus pulled him up and said “you of little faith.” Simon promised never to deny Jesus, and then did it three times – that very night. And yet, Simon is the one whom Jesus chooses that day when he’s preaching to a crowd on the lakeshore. Simon is the one who gets a new name: Jesus calls him Peter, which means rock, and says “on this rock I will build my church.”
This past summer, the movie Julie and Julia told the stories of Julia Child and the young woman named Julie who recently found inspiration by cooking through Julia Child’s premiere cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In one scene, before she begins the project, Julie is talking to her husband about her admiration for Julia Child, and her worries that her own life will always be a failure in comparison. Her husband reminds her that “Julia Child was not always Julia Child.” You could say the same thing about Peter. Peter wasn’t always Peter. At some point, every we admire has faced uncertainty and self-doubt about a calling, just as I imagine that all of us have felt. They weren’t always the best people; they were the right people.
In 1954, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a young minister, just starting out at a little church in Montgomery Alabama. He turned down a leadership role in the local NAACP because he wanted to focus on getting to know his church. But then a woman named Rosa Parks decided one day that she’d had enough of changing her seat on the bus. King supported a hastily organized bus boycott, and a day later, he found himself nominated to lead it. All he had wanted to do was to get some experience in a little church before deciding on the rest of his career. He wasn’t nearly the most experienced or qualified minister in Montgomery. Not the best person, just the right one.
Moses didn’t think he could speak well enough to lead his people out of slavery. Jeremiah didn’t think he was up to being a prophet, and when God called Jonah to go and speak to Nineveh, he got on a boat heading in the opposite direction. Isaiah had a vision of God while he was in the Temple, and his first thought was that he wasn’t good enough for the job. I think what happened next was God saying something like “I know you’re not the best person, but you’re the right person. Don’t worry. I’ll be with you.” That’s when Isaiah can say “here I am, Lord. Send me.”
What about you? What do you feel moved to do in the depth of your spirit? The answer to that question might be God’s call to you: a calling to heal wounds, to give comfort, to reconcile with someone, to teach, to change the way people are treated, to right an injustice, to create opportunities for recovery and growth for those who don’t have them, to lead a mission or ministry of the church. What would you do if you could get past the thoughts of “I don’t know enough,” “I don’t have the experience,” “I don’t have enough time,” “I don’t know what to say,” “I’m not the best person for that work.” Of course you’re not the best person. But maybe no one is. Maybe all that any of us needs is to be called by God, because it is God who will hold us up when we feel like we are sinking. God will set us straight when our thinking gets off track. And even when we make mistakes and do hurtful things, God will forgive us, and help us to grow stronger from those setbacks.
Remember that catch of fish from the story? After Jesus has spoken to the crowd, he tells Simon to put the boat out into deep waters and let down the nets. Simon points out that they haven’t caught anything all night. In other words – “you stick to the teaching, rabbi. I’m the fisherman here.” But he tries it anyway, and when he does, the net comes up so full of fish that the other boat has to come over to help hold them all. That’s when Simon first knows that he’s in over his head with this rabbi, but Jesus just tells him that those fish are a symbol. “Next you’ll be fishing for people, catching them up in the spirit of God that I am here to show you, and changing the world. I know you don’t believe it anymore than you believed that you would catch these fish, so you’ll just have to trust me. You’re done with the shallow waters of life, it’s time to get deeper.”
And so the call stands always before us. Move on from the shallows to the deep water. Answer God’s call to live differently, even though you’re not sure that you are up to the challenge. Make mistakes along the way, but know that you will grow from them. Answer the call, because you are the right people.
