1/26/20 “Quit My Job, Really?” by Nancy E. Petty

Matthew 4:12-23

Imagine this: imagine someone walks up to you—possibly someone you know, maybe even someone you trust and admire—and says, “Drop what you are doing right now, leave it all behind, and follow me.” Maybe you are a teacher and you are in the middle of giving lesson and this call comes, “Put down that lesson plan, forget the creative activity you have planned for your students and come follow me, now.” Maybe you are a lawyer and you are in the courtroom arguing the biggest case of your career and this someone walks in, hands you a note that reads, “Drop what you are doing right now, abandon your client and come follow me.” Maybe you are a preacher in the middle of the best sermon you’ve ever preached—a sermon that is getting lots of amens—and a long-haired, sandal wearing wanderer walks down the aisle in a flowing purple robe and quietly says, in front of everyone, “Leave all of this behind and come follow me.” What would you do? Would you call security? Would step out of the room with them and try and explain that you have responsibilities to fulfill, that your students, your clients, your parishoners, your business partners are counting on you? Not to mention your family. Would you tell them you need just a little more time to think about it, that you will get back to them? And as you walk away, you look back at this person and say, “Quit my job, really?”

Sounds crazy doesn’t it. But this is the picture that Matthew paints for us as Jesus goes about recruiting, or in theological language “calling his disciples.” It sounds so strange and ridiculous to our ears that we dismiss it as rhetorical speech. How could anyone, including Jesus expect any of us to just drop what we are doing—our jobs, our responsibilities, our commitments to others—and set out on a mission that at best is on shaky ground. After all, one of the followers who had heeded “the call” has just been put in prison. Other than not being practical, this call—this invitation—to drop everything and follow this man who gets in trouble everywhere he goes it just doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do.

It is passages like this from our sacred text that sends us modern day people of faith searching for an alternative meaning to what Jesus was really asking when he asked Peter and Andrew to quit their jobs as fishermen and follow him. We tie ourselves in knots doing theological gymnastics interpreting these passages trying to make them fit our lives and our needs. Surely, we say, Jesus would never expect us to quit our jobs to follow him. That can’t be what he meant. 

Well, this is not going to be a popular word today; and contrary to how this will sound I need to reassure you that I have not turned into a biblical literalist, but there is a part of me that thinks maybe Jesus really meant it when he said Peter and Andrew by the Sea of Galilee, “Lay down your nets, your livelihood, and follow me.” There is a part of me that seriously wonders if that is exactly what he meant when little further down the shore he met James and John mending their fishing nets and he said the same thing to them, “Leave those nets where they are and your boat, too, and come follow me.” When I think about how serious the call to follow Jesus is, I wonder at what point we simply have to stop minimizing the call to follow Jesus and what that call requires of us. At some point, does it become necessary to consider that Jesus said what he meant.

With that said, I’ll be the first to confess to you that I am not willing to quit my job to follow Jesus. And even as I say that, there is a sadness that lands on me. I love my job. And I love my family who counts on me to have my job. Now maybe you are thinking, well you are different. You are a minister so you are already following Jesus. That would not be true. Just because someone is a minister doesn’t mean they are following Jesus. While I feel a deep sense of calling to the work I do; and while I have been given certain gifts by God that allow me to do this work effectively, it is a job. You pay me a salary, a good salary and I am dependent on it. As I see it, in paying me to be a leader in this ministry that we share, you have freed me from having to work at another vocation to support myself. And as hard as it is to say to you, this work that you free me to do provides me with a feeling of importance that I have to keep in check daily. So never put your ministers on that pedestal. The pedestal that says our call to our vocation is in some way more virtuous than anyone else’s calling to do the work they do in the world. Ministers are not superior in being followers of Jesus. Sometimes they are the worst at following Jesus.

No, the truth is, I am as convicted by this text as you may be feeling. I am so deeply invested in the status quo, in my status quo – in the car, the house, the things, the privilege, the need to have it all this way – that I hear this call from Jesus just like you do – as plain crazy. Of course I can’t quit my job. I have a mortgage. I have commitments. I have bills. I have responsibilities. I have a role to play in upholding this society. Right? Right!

So let’s go back to the text. Don’t you think Peter and Andrew had responsibilities? Wouldn’t you imagine that someone in the world depended on them – an aging widowed mother, a nephew, a sick cousin, a child with different needs? Don’t you imagine they realized that they had to bring in fish in order to eat? Do you honestly think that the decision they faced that day, when Jesus called them, was any easier or simpler than it would be for us today? I think to disregard the significance of their choice to walk away from their nets is to miss the whole point here. This wasn’t a flower child, trust fund, it’s not my place to make the money decision. This was life or death. This was day-to-day eating, lodging, and more importantly, belonging in the family, the clan, the social structure. This was exactly everything it is today when we hear this call. 

So what made these men do it; and all those unnamed women who did it? It’s easy for us to say, well, Jesus called them. I mean, it was Jesus! Of course they followed him. If Jesus himself walked up to me then I’d follow too! Maybe. I like to pretend I would.

But what we forget is that these men didn’t know that Jesus was going to be Jesus! At this point in the narrative, Jesus hasn’t done most of his actual teaching, and none of his social justice work. He hasn’t been crucified, and most importantly, he hasn’t been resurrected. All the things that give Jesus his street credibility haven’t even happened yet. So what on earth made these men actually walk away from their lives to follow him?

Here is the meat of this sermon – these men and the unnamed women who followed Jesus trusted themselves to know when they heard the divine voice. There was something about this man, Jesus, that they knew, that they recognized, that they intuitively respected as an authority. What was it? Is wasn’t what he said – we’ve got that right here in the text. There is nothing so special about his vocabulary or his phrasing. It isn’t who he was. Jesus would have been known by now. But he wasn’t nearly famous enough for people to walk away from a day’s wages. 

No, there was something in this man’s being, something deep within who he was, and how he presented himself, how he held himself, how he spoke, how he looked you in the eye, how he was. There was something that communicated to people between the words, beyond the status, beneath the social standing. There was something elemental that Jesus had that made him recognizable.

And here is the point of this sermon – yes, Jesus was special, but the people who could see and hear him for what he truly was, they were special too! They were available to experience this radical new energy that had entered the planet. They were open to receiving these messages of love, of hope, of change, of possibility that Jesus spoke of. They were willing to hear, to see, to believe, and to follow. 

And so my people, the question is, are we available? Are we open? Are we willing? Regardless of what we do to make a living, are we available, are we open, are we willing to receive the message of love, of hope, of change, of possibility. I don’t think the real meat of this story is that folks left their jobs. I think that is to get our attention. I think the point is, they recognized God in the flesh, the Christ. They recognized God when God stood before them in human form And they were willing to do whatever it took to be a part of the powerful love that was radiating out from his very being. 

I wish I could tell you what this means for you. I’m still working out what it means for me. But one thing feels clear, I have to be honest about my willingness. Am I really willing to do whatever it takes to be closer to the love and the power of God? Am I willing to be honest about what keeps me in my current job? Am I willing to open my heart to the stranger who shows up sending out unprecedented love over a whole new channel in this world? Am I willing to kneel down and wash my neighbor’s feet, especially the neighbor who irritates me?

The honest answer is I don’t know. I know that I want to be that person. I want to believe that if God walked in here, clothed in some non-God personhood that I would see it, I would hear it, I would follow. But do I believe that is who I am today? Do I believe that I would risk it all for a taste of the kind of love that doesn’t keep score, that doesn’t care about the label, that invited the homeless to the banquet, that knelt down and washed people’s feet? In truth, I don’t think we get to know these answers in advance. It’s like cancer. We hope we would be one of the brave ones who keep smiling and making everyone else feel comfortable. But that’s a fantasy until we are one with a chemo line in our arm and no hair. The truth is, we don’t get to know if we would answer the call. 

And yet, what exactly is it we are waiting for? Do we need Jesus to call us by name? He already has! Softly and tenderly, he has been calling our names since before we were born. But calling us to what? Who do we follow? Where do we go? What do we do? Well, that is only for you to know, isn’t it. That still small voice of God. What is it asking of you? Maybe it is for you to leave your job to open a non-profit. Maybe it is for you to take a promotion so you can change something about your current job. Maybe it has nothing to do with your job at all but is about taking more time to do the thing that makes your heart leap up when you see it or feel it or experience it.

I don’t mean to trivialize. Jesus’ call to the disciples was intense. And I believe Jesus is calling us to that same intensity today. But maybe we have to learn to hear. And maybe we learn to hear by listening to the inner voice first. I know that indulging in the thing that makes your heart leap isn’t the same as following Jesus on a radical ministry, but maybe spending more time in the thing that brings you joy is where you’ll find Jesus’ radical ministry! What I know for sure is that that voice inside, that inner voice, is what we have to learn to trust. For by trusting that, we grow our ability to hear the voice of God. 

For a lot of us, this takes work! And for many more, listening is possible, but then following takes courage! I’m not pretending this is easy. But if we want to become the followers of Jesus, true Christians (individually and as a community), then we have to consider that maybe there are some nets that we need to lay down.

So I leave you today with this familiar word from the poet Mary Oliver who I think get what Jesus is asking of us:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

The Journey

Could it be that in laying down those nets Peter and Andrew and James and John did the only thing they could do—determined to save the only life they could save they answered their call to follow. Might we have such courage? These are the questions that I am wrestling with personally and for our church. Will you join me in the arena?