“How About Now?”
Scripture Lesson: Mark
Dr. Matthew S. Brown
In the climactic scene of the
classic Nora Ephron movie, When Harry Met Sally,
Harry, in jeans and a flight jacket, has just literally run across
As
Sally tries to dismiss Harry
saying:
“I'm sorry, Harry, I know
it's New Years Eve, I know you're feeling lonely, but you just can't show up
here, tell me you love me and expect that to make everything alright. It
doesn't work this way.”
To which Harry asks: “Well, how does it work?”
Sally: “I
don't know, but not this way.”
Harry: “Well, how about this
way? I love that you get cold when it's seventy-one degrees out. I love that it
takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle
above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I
spend a day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love
that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night.
And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Years Eve. I
came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your
life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as
possible.”
When you realize you want to
spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to
start as soon as possible. Maybe it
wasn’t about the guy, maybe it wasn’t about the girl, but at various points in
your life you’ve wanted the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.
As April becomes May,
teachers and students desperately want the rest of their lives (i.e. the first
day of Summer) to begin as soon as possible. They can’t wait to trade turning the pages of
a grade book for turning the pages of a good beach book; trade waiting in line
for lunch for waiting in line for their turn on the diving board.
After enduring hours of
catalogue flipping and furniture store hopping, you sit in one more chair and
your lethargic, exhausted brain springs to life with the thought, “This is
it!!” This is THE chair that will
envelop your body like a cozy cocoon after a gruelingly long day at work. This is the chair that will spoil you as your
captive eyes follow the story of that entrancing novel. This is the chair in which you will relish
those rare napping moments. This is the
chair that will be your security blanket during the anxious overtimes of March
Madness and Super Bowl Sunday. This is
the chair that would never snicker at your threadbare, mismatched Saturday
attire or ever complain about the flatulent, foul odored
consequences of that unfortunate burrito.
The salesperson says it will take 90 days for delivery but you so yearn
for your life with that chair to begin as soon as possible.
An acceptance letter from the
college that was your first choice, an affirming call from the potential
employer about the job you covet.
Tomorrow doesn’t seem soon enough.
It can be something as
monumental as the choice of a life-partner, it can be something as minor as a
pair of shoes, but once you have found it, you cannot wait to be with it.
And so it was that Peter,
Andrew, James and John “immediately” set aside all that was familiar,
predictable, and secure to join a journey with Jesus Christ.
It would be tempting to
imagine they were desperate individuals, mired in self-pitiful daydreams of
alternate lives, yearning for any opportunity to abandon the constraints of
dead end jobs and unfulfilled hopes.
But, there is nothing in the text to indicate this.
Fishermen were not wealthy
but they were certainly not poor. They
owned boats, had houses, and hired employees; solid hard working middle class
citizens who had to know how to work with their hands and their minds.
In reality these were the
people who would find it hardest to leave.
As a small business owner once told me, “If I don’t show up there is a
whole group of people who don’t get paid, including me.”
The poor yearn for
opportunity, the wealthy have the luxury of time to pursue new adventures, but
it would be next to impossible to get these fisher-folk to take any trip. For them, there was no such thing as a paid
vacation. Their lives revolved around
the rhythms and temperment of the sea. When the fish weren’t biting, when the sea
was too angry, they had to use the time to mend the nets, repair the
boats.
If it is true that you can
tell a lot about someone just by the way he shakes your hand, the fisherman’s
calloused palms and powerful forearms speak unmistakeably
of a way of life passed on from generation to generation. The work was hard and long. When they ate, they ate heartily, and when
they slept, they slept deeply. O,
certainly they daydreamed, but leave? No, out of the
question.
And yet, something happened
that day, or rather, Jesus happened upon them that day, and with the simple
invitation, “Follow me,” they were gone.
Our scripture today begins by
telling us that Jesus has come to
Now, I know that word carries
a lot of baggage in our culture, lugging with it images of pompadoured
preachers, shaking Bibles, and threatening words about the fires of Hell. But that’s really not what repentance is
about.
Literally, metanoia (the Greek word for repentance), refers to a
change of direction, mind, orientation.
Today a good synonym for repentance would be the term “paradigm shift.”
A change of
mindset, a change of orientation, a change of direction meaning also a change
in that which directs you.
First and foremost, those
four Galileans were men of the sea.
Subsequent to the appearance of Jesus, however, first and foremost they
were disciples of Jesus. Jesus would
henceforth become the primary influence for how they approached their vocations,
their relationships, their responsibilities, their hopes, their fears, their
dreams.
That doesn’t necessarily mean
they would cease to be fisherman. The
call of Jesus doesn’t mean that everyone is called to leave the boat. In fact, most are not called to leave the
boat, but there is a new guiding focus, a new definition, a new dream that
influences and informs everything else.
All of a sudden that which
seemed inconsequential, peripheral, nice but not all that important becomes
central, pivotal, essential. It is a love so powerful that it will not be
ignored. For it is true, when you
realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the
rest of the life to start as soon as possible.
Such is the power of the love and call of Jesus Christ. What is that love calling you to do?
I have this friend. She did not grow up in a home where the life
of the church played a central role. She
does not remember Norman Rockwell ever inquiring about using her family as a
subject for one of his paintings. Her
childhood was spent in a
They decided they ought to
look for a church, because, well, young parents find their way to churches, if
for no other reason than to get their children baptized, hoping the water would
somehow function as a vaccination against the dark side of adolescence.
Three boys, volunteer work,
making a house into a home, she had a full, busy life, that suburban life that
offers many excuses to say no when someone calls. However, she didn’t count on that call coming
from Jesus, and you know, when you realize you want to
spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to
start as soon as possible.
Wife, mother, friend, she
would soon also be called church elder and now is known in NW Charlotte as
pastor. It wasn’t a convenient time in
her life. Maybe she could have waited
for the boys to graduate, for her husband to take early retirement, for a time
when life slows down - you know, that phantom time that never arrives.
You never know what will
happen when you enter the doors of
At a lakeshore called
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