“Say So”                                                                                                     Vance L. Toivonen

READING                   Luke 5:1-11

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,  he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon.  Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

READING                   James Thornton, A Field Guide to the Soul

In what do we place our trust? Do we trust in something?...Do we feel the Universe is a friendly place or an unfriendly one? A place hospitable to our needs? Do we believe in a beneficent power? A reality, however described, that we can rely on and perhaps know intimately? Do we trust the Universe to provide the opportunities we need to live life fully? Perhaps we place no final trust in external forces or institutions. Do we nevertheless trust other human beings? Do we place our trust in a lover, a guru, a parent or child, or in some other person we are in a relationship with? Do we trust in our own abilities? In our own pluckiness, our power to make our way in a seemingly hostile world, carving out a niche to meet our needs while our strength holds out? Where do we place our trust?

SERMON

As a child did you ever complain about having to do something your parents asked you to do? Did you ever ask "why?" (whiny tone). And did you ever hear them respond with those dreaded words, “Just because I say so.” This is, of course, no reason in particular; but parents could get away with it because they had the power and the authority. Parents don’t need to give their children reasons for doing the things they ask them to do.  It is their prerogative to ask their children to clean their rooms, or to help with dishes, or to do yard work or to participate in whatever family work needs to be done. Thus parents continue in one way, shape or form, to use this phrase, or something similar.

Soldiers in war are expected not to question their leaders. There is that old maxim, probably as old as the Revolutionary War, that says, “Yours is not to reason why. Yours is but to do and die.” There is a chain of command. In fact, I recently heard a senator suggest that the reason for complying with the President’s plan for a troop surge was simply because he is the Commander in Chief. Why should we send more troops into Iraq? He would reason, “Because the President says so.”

Among devout, fundamentalist Christians in this country you will sometimes hear that there is a similar attitude about biblical mandates. When asked about an issue, like homosexuality, or abortion, or school prayer, or stem cell research, and so on, these Christians will quote the Bible, following the quoting with the dictum, “God said it! I believe it! That settles it!”

We live in an age of questioned authority. Religious and political scandals have caused us to rethink our allegiance to church and state. We have crossed over into territory that is, in a sense, governed by autonomous authority; yours and mine. There are laws that govern society, but we spend a great deal of time and money seeking loopholes to crawl through in order to avoid the consequences of our choice-making. O.J. Simpson is still a free man.

Our capacity to trust is at an all-time low. We have seen priests abuse children. We have seen atrocities in war, like the massacre at Mi Lai during the war in Viet Nam. We have seen Presidents, both Democrat and Republican lie to the American people. And somehow I could not help but hear the echoes of those words from Malcolm X’s famous speech, "You've been had. You've been took. You've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok." Even though he was speaking to the Black community in America, there is a certain extent to which these words ring true for all of us.

James Thornton asks the question about whether or not we trust something or someone in that second lesson today. And I echo this questions now, “Do you, do I, trust anything or anyone anymore?” Or are we so cynical, so cautious, so gun-shy, so inundated with skepticism that our ability to trust and confide in others is in its final stages of life? Should we be digging the grave and ordering the headstone that reads, “R.I.P. Faith and Trust”?

The story in the first reading comes from a different time and place than our own, to be sure. It is a story of hard-working men cleaning their nets after a long and unsuccessful night of fishing, which was their livelihood; picking out all of the weeds and assorted other slimy materials that were nothing like the fish they had so hoped would inhabit their nets. As they were working and prepping for their next excursion out onto the water, tired, and dirty, and hungry, along comes this guy.

Sure, they had heard about him. Word was spreading about his miraculous activities, and his preaching about the kingdom of God. But to approach them now and to suggest that they turn around and head back out onto the lake?! I think that if a more modern writer were writing this story, it would not be too far-fetched to place some sort of expletives in the mouths of these fishermen. I mean really; what right did Jesus have to come along and tell these fishermen their business? I guess what I’m saying is, this record of an exchange between Jesus, Simon and the sons of Zebedee is far too polite in its execution. I ask that we all use our imaginations and fill in the blanks.

Then, after the temporary outrage, however it played out, and only then, did Simon utter something like, “Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” There came that moment of realization that there may, possibly, be a greater wisdom at work. Besides, even though they were tired and hungry, they had not caught a single fish. If what people said about Jesus was true, perhaps, at the very least, this would bring about a boost in their shaky fishing business.

So, they set out again onto the lake, and, as the story goes, caught so many fish that they needed to call out another boat to haul them all in. But this was not about merely a boost in business. This was not just about catching fish. This story does not end with Simon and the two brothers saying, “Hey, thanks Jesus. What a mensch! You can come by anytime and give us your fishing forecast.” No, the story ends with a total vocational overhaul. Jesus tells them, “Hey guys. This is just a metaphor, a way of showing you that there’s something else I’d like you to be doing. Besides, until I came along the fishing thing wasn’t really working out that great for you. You see, I want you to shift your focus from fish to people. I’d really like you to come and work with me. I’m in the people business. It’s a kind of catch and release program. I touch lives and then set them loose on the world. So, whatdya say?” Luke tells us they left their boats and their nets right there and went off with Jesus.

They didn’t know where they were going, or where they would sleep that night, or where their next meal was coming from…they just went. Talk about trust! And all just because Jesus said so. He said, “Follow me,” and they did. We might reason, “Yes, but that was Jesus, who had just performed a miracle.” Who could we possibly trust like that? Or, is Jesus still trustable? Can we still follow his lead? Would we be willing to do something just because he says so?

The distant Jesus of the Bible stories may seem inaccessible to us. But let me suggest that Jesus can be no less real to us today than he was to Simon, James and John that morning by the lake. One could say that these men entered into a relationship with Jesus that day, choosing to follow his lead, to value his teachings, and to walk with him. More and more I am finding people right here in the Hope community who quietly admit to me that they find themselves asking, “What would Jesus do?” They apologize for these remarks because such language is identified with fundamentalist Christianity. But the baby might be worth keeping even if the bathwater needs to be thrown out, exchanged for some fresher water.

In his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Marcus Borg writes,

…the post-Easter Jesus is not just the product of early Christian belief and thought, but an element of experience…the early movement continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death, but in a radically new way…Jesus as the risen living Christ could be experienced anywhere and everywhere.

Borg cites  John’s gospel and wonders why the Christian community out of which that gospel was formed would have designated Jesus as the light of the world, the bread of life, and the way, the truth, and the life, when, as we know now from biblical criticism, Jesus likely did not actually refer to himself in this way. Borg concludes, “I now see the answer: this is how they experienced the post-Easter Jesus.”

Speaking of his personal journey from childhood through adulthood and into a new relationship with Jesus, he writes,

John’s gospel is “true,” even though its account of Jesus’ life story and sayings is not, by and large, historically factual. My journey from the childhood state of pre-critical naiveté through the critical thinking of adolescence and adulthood now led to hearing John (and the Bible as a whole) in a state of post-critical naiveté – a state in which one can hear these stories as “true stories,” even while knowing that they are not literally true.

I wonder if a lot of babies aren’t thrown out with a lot of bathwater. Because our trust and confidence in human systems of religion and politics has somehow ebbed to an all-time low we find ourselves so adrift and uncertain that we no longer have any place to anchor ourselves. We might claim to trust ourselves, and engage in all manner of confidence boosting, self-help, self-affirmation, and intellectual stimulation only to find that we are still left wanting.

This morning it is, perhaps, enough for us to simply hear a story about fish and nets and boats and lakeshores and yes, Jesus too, and imagine for a moment that it is not Simon, James or John who stands there on the beach – but we ourselves. Even if we do not take the story literally; even if we question its validity or authority or biblical sourcing, that we just for a moment allow ourselves to be confronted by a living, post-Easter Jesus who says to us, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." Then imagine ourselves walking with him, talking with him, and listening to his teachings; a Jesus of the imagination, to be sure, but no less real, and no less tangible than any Jesus that has gone before; a Jesus to whom we too can say, “if you say so.”