Sermon for July 26

Hey all, here is the sermon I preached yesterday at Trinity UMC, Elkhart, Indiana. The Scripture passage it's based on is Luke 5:1-11, the story of the calling of Simon and James and John.

• “I love you and God loves you” and Prayer
• Opening Joke and Hook
• All throughout time, every child in every culture has played a certain game. Maybe you know the game, it’s called “hot lava.” Everyone everywhere has known how to play this game! You climb on the furniture and you can’t step on the ground or else you melt!
• When we are a little older, everyone knows how to cool off hot pizza. It’s called the “reverse blow” [demonstrate] and it’s just instinct! We all do this when we eat Volcano’s pizza… [ASK CONGREGATION] is that the best? Or whatever the best pizza is, let Tim and me know please.
• Well this sermon series is all about the instinctual phrases, the universal phrases that every parent has said to their children. Every parent knows to say them.
• Last week, Pastor Tim talked about the phrase “Always Wear Clean Underwear.” And we learned in that we must be as good and pure and clean on the inside as we are on the outside, because this is the teaching and the nature of Jesus Christ--clean on the inside, not play-actors on the outside--we don’t just play holy, we are holy.
• JOKE: The Gospel does not concern itself with our underwear per se, but the Gospel is very concerned with the holiness that we have on the inside and how we show that on the outside.
• PIVOT: Today we are going to talk about another phrase that every parent has spoken to their children, and that phrase is: BECAUSE I SAID SO. Moms and Dads in the congregation, I know you have said this before. And your little people, maybe they are obstinate, maybe they just don’t understand, but you don’t have time to explain: you just say Because I Said So.
• Why do we say this phrase? What does it mean? Well I want to look at this phrase, Because I Said So, and I want to look at what the Bible has to say about this question and then I want to talk about what we could learn from this phrase for our lives today. We’re going to talk about the nature of Christ as a miracle worker, Christ as an authority or a King, and finally as Christ the relationship between God and ourselves.
• Jesus the Miracle Worker
• In our Scripture passage today, Jesus is teaching a group of people at the side of Lake Gennesaret. And when he finishes his lesson, he looks at Simon, who has been fishing all night and now he is cleaning his nets. And Simon is exhausted and disappointed. And Jesus SAYS--he doesn’t ask, he TELLS Simon to push out into the deepest part of the lake and put down all his nets to fish.
• Now, it’s broad daylight and if we have any anglers in the congregation you know that nighttime is the best time to fish. And Simon is a professional fisherman, and Jesus is clearly a fishing novice to tell Simon to fish during the day. And Simon is like, “I respect you, Rabbi, but I mean I have been fishing all night, and I’m a pro, and I didn’t find anything.”
• But then Simon stops, and he thinks, “You know, this guy Jesus has been teaching all morning, and he had a crowd of people around him, and maybe he knows something I don’t know. He is an accomplished rabbi after all.”
• So Simon listens to Jesus’ amateur command. He calls him MASTER and he says, “Yes, Master, because you said so, I will give it a shot.”
• And then a miracle happens: Simon goes out with his bewildered, exhausted crew, and they let down the nets, and sure enough, they catch not the normal amount of fish, but so much fish that their nets begin to break. Probably three or four TIMES as much fish as even a great day would yield. All at once. This is like the month’s mortgage that they caught all in one go. Simon cannot believe it.
• And Simon is a pretty impulsive guy and he falls to his knees and says to Jesus: “I am not worthy to be in your presence. I am a sinful man--get away from me!” You are an authoritative rabbi and you’re close enough to God that I don’t want to make you impure by even being near you.
• And Jesus says that phrase that EVERY angel, EVERY messenger of God, says to every unsuspecting person in God’s story: Jesus says DON’T BE AFRAID. I will make you a fisher for PEOPLE. In the King James Version of the Bible Jesus says to the anglers, you are fishermen, I will make you fishers of men.
• Is Jesus a miracle worker because he makes the fish show up? Really, that’s a magic trick in the grand scheme of Scripture. We have seen plagues of locusts and rivers of blood and manna in the desert and the ghost of Samuel back from the dead and all sorts of things, so for Jesus to make lots of fish show up is great for Simon and James and John but not enough to tell everyone he is the Son of God or even all THAT special.
• The real miracle that is going on here is that Jesus, the rabbi, shows up to a bunch of fishermen and tells them to follow him. The real miracle is the end of the passage: that Simon and the rest left everything behind--maybe months of wages and food--they leave it on the shore and follow Jesus not knowing where he’s going.
• See this is a miracle because rabbis NEVER choose ordinary people to follow them. In Jesus’ time in Palestine the Jews respect rabbis big time. And children have to go through Torah training and only the very best are allowed to go on to become followers of a rabbi. And Jesus, who has been a Torah prodigy since he was a child, is doing the rabbi thing and teaching the people and then he goes to these simple, unlearned fishermen who probably didn’t know their Torah all that well and he says: Follow Me. I believe in you. AND THEY DO.
• Yes, it is a miracle that Jesus can make the fish show up, but it’s REALLY a miracle that Jesus can open up the relationship between the common folk and the rabbis. REALLY it’s a miracle that Simon and the others can set aside the small miracle of the fish for the big miracle: the miracle of a relationship of unworthy disciples to a generous master.
• Jesus says “BECAUSE I SAID SO” and they follow, forgetting everything they knew and leaving it behind so that they can follow their master. They are unworthy yet they are chosen.
• REFRAIN: More than a miracle worker, Jesus is a relationship between the unworthy and the love of God. More than a rabbi, Jesus is the one who believes in US before we believe in HIM.
• Jesus the Authority
• So now we understand that Jesus is not just a miracle worker, but the one who shows us the bigger miracle. Jesus is not just the rabbi, he is the one who chooses us as disciples before we choose him as our teacher.
• From our perspective as Christians now, we know that Jesus is beyond both of those things: Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Master.
• That means that Jesus is authority. Not to say that rabbis are not. Rabbis were then and are today important elements of God’s plan for the Jewish people. But our faith tells us that Jesus, in addition to being a master rabbi, is also the Master of the world. “He is the mighty King, Master of everything,” as the old hymn goes.
• Well what does this mean? [JOVIAL TURN] It’s actually a much older phrase, but one of my favorite Revolutionary War slogans--like “don’t tread on me” and “no taxation without representation”--I think my favorite one is “No King but King Jesus.” My Canadian wife might not like that slogan very much. Though Canada has a queen! So I guess you guys are in the clear.
• But here’s the thing: Jesus does not come into the world like a king that we know. Jesus is “King Jesus”, Jesus is “Lord Jesus Christ” in a way that radically transforms what it means to be a lord, to be a king.
• For Simon who would become Peter, Jesus is first a miracle-working rabbi and then the promised Messiah. Simon’s expectation, like that of so many others, is that Jesus will liberate the Jewish people from Roman rule, or that he will reign over Israel as a mighty king. That’s what it meant to be Messiah in their minds.
• But this is not the cause of Jesus Christ. Certainly it is not the purpose of the Christ who will die on a cross in the most un-king-like manner.
• Jesus is King in the sense that he points to the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus is Messiah -- “anointed one” -- because he is anointed to a new purpose in God’s plan, something we have never seen before. Jesus’ reign as King is totally self-giving, a reign of love and forgiveness.
• Jesus inverts what it means to be an authority. He said “I have not come to be served, but to serve, and to give my life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28) So let kings and queens be kings and queens and presidents be presidents and so on and so on. Jesus the authority teaches us that obedience to God is love and not fear-- and that the one who wants to lead must serve.
• Jesus inverts miracles and Jesus inverts what it means to be a rabbi, to be a religious teacher, and now Jesus inverts what it means to be a King or a Queen or an authority. The first are now last.
• What it means to do as God says because God said so
• [TAKE A BEAT] What does it mean for we who confess Jesus Christ as our Lord that we follow his will Because He Said So?
• Certainly Simon did not understand what Jesus was up to when Jesus told him to cast the nets. And Simon certainly didn’t get it when Jesus told him he could become a fisher of persons. He followed Christ because Christ said so. That’s part of what it means to have a master.
• But surely Jesus isn’t our Lord and our Master because we arbitrarily follow what he says? That is the behavior of a bad parent, that is the behavior of a tyrannical queen or king, and definitely the behavior of a bad rabbi or religious leader. [JOKE TIME] If I ever tell you to do something Because I Say So, with no other reason forthcoming, PLEASE ignore me! But definitely do not ignore Pastor Tim because he really does know what he is doing.
• Good parents, good leaders, and our good God tell us to do things because they care about us, and their reasons are not arbitrary. In his book that we are using for the sermon series, the good Rabbi Gellman keeps talking about the little message and the big message. The little message today is, when your mom or dad says Because I Said So, it will go well for you if you do it!
• The big message is: When your parents say Because I Said So, you should do what they say because you trust them--they are worthy of trust, and that is a part of the relationship you have to your parents and everyone who takes care of you.
• As we saw last week, there is a Gospel message to be learned here too. [GO FAST HERE] We should do what God says when God just says so because it will go well for us. When Jesus tells us to fish, we will catch a lot of fish! We should do what God says because God is trustworthy and that is the relationship we have to God--thus, we leave our boats behind and follow Christ.
• [SLOW DOWN] But the Gospel message is that Jesus is not in the business of giving us commands--either as a rabbi or as a king.
• And we as disciples are not really in the business of following what Jesus says, although we should do that of course.
• RATHER, WE ARE IN THE BUSINESS OF BEING WHO JESUS CHRIST IS. We can never be nor claim to be God, but we as disciples are on a mission to resemble Jesus as much as we can.
• Therefore Jesus’ message to us is not “Because I said so.” Rather, it is “Because I am so.” Because I have become what you are and suffered what you suffer and celebrated what you celebrate.
• Because Jesus has come to live WITH us, we are empowered to live LIKE him. This is what we call perfection or sanctification: this is our task as Christians. We are here to be who Christ is.
• How do we do this? Certainly we should do what Jesus has said to do. He never had a problem with the Ten Commandments [JOKE] although I have had my trouble with a few of the commandments from time to time. I covet pretty much everything.
• So yes we should do as God has told us to do. But really, what it means to be a disciple of Christ is to love as he loved. He loved everyone without condition, and he loved them the way they needed to be loved.
• We should be people who celebrate our God who is not a King or Queen over us but rather a Holy Spirit who is with us.
• We should be people who welcome and invite everyone into our homes, our organizations, and our church.
• We should be people who stand up for the least and find a way for the lost. We should be people who would sooner be harmed than do harm. That’s who Jesus was. And we shouldn’t do these things because Jesus SAID SO. We should do these things because Jesus IS SO.