Called to Wed

The summer of 1985 was a dry one in Israel. The government pumped millions of gallons of water from the Sea of Galilee (which is really a huge inland lake) to irrigate the banana trees, the almond groves, and the other crops that grow in what our Gospel lesson calls "Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali." The huge draw-down brought the water level of Lake Galilee down dramatically, creating vast mudflats on the lakebed.

Late in January of 1986 a pair of brothers named Moshe and Yuval were walking along the shore between the ancient harbors of Ginnosar and Magdala, and discovered a faint oval outlined in the mud. Being fishermen themselves, the two brothers immediately realized what they had found. It was the outline of a boat.

If you go to Galilee today you can see that boat. With great care it was lifted from the mud, encased in foam, floated across the lake, and soaked for years in a pool of preservative. Now it’s housed in a museum right on the lakeshore. It’s called the "Jesus boat," and for good reason. Carbon dating has determined that it dates precisely to the time of Jesus. It’s exactly the kind of boat mentioned in today’s Gospel reading.

"They were, in today's language, small businessmen, working as families not for huge profits but to make enough to live on and have a little leftover. Fish were plentiful and there were good markets. In a cosmopolitan area, with soldiers, wayfarers, pilgrims, and peddlers coming and going, as well as the local population, people would always want what they were selling. But it was hard work, and sometimes dangerous."

The lives of Peter and his brother Andrew, and that other pair of brothers, James and John, were modestly secure, but hardly luxurious. And they gave it all up to follow a wondering preacher named Jesus. Why?

According to Matthew, the answer is frustratingly uncomplicated: Because they were called.

Did you notice that Matthew’s account reflects no psychological preparation, no introduction, no previous knowledge of who Jesus is or what they might be getting themselves into?

I’ve heard preachers on this text speculate, "Now off course these fisherman must have met Jesus earlier, and probably had long conversations with him before this day." In other words, they’d been mulling over the possibility of taking a leave of absence from the fishing trade to try their hand at discipling for a while, rather like the high school graduate who takes a "gap year" and bums around Europe with a knapsack before entering Harvard.

That’s what happens to Biblical texts when preachers get hold of them. We do our best to make them reasonable, plausible, and above all non-threatening. God forbid that the call to follow Jesus should come over as something radical, something that causes a shift in priorities. Christians today don’t need to drop everything in order to follow Jesus. Imagine what that would do to an already-shaky economy and a stock market more nervous than a long-tailed cat in rocking-chair factory.

Despite the best efforts of preachers, however, this story resists domestication. The disciples do leave everything – boats, nets, and even family – to follow Jesus. Why? Because they’re called.

The disciples’ decision – if you can call it that – is not carefully weighed out ahead of time. They don’t make lists on legal pads of the pros and cons. They do not sing "I have decided to follow Jesus." They do not wait until the choir has sung the umpteenth verse of "Just as I am." If it’s a "decision for Christ" it’s a very strange one – hardly a decision at all.

If we must talk about "decision" in reference to this story, we should really talk about the decision Jesus makes to call these fellows in the first place. This isn’t really a "decision story" at all. It’s a "call story." It’s about Christ’s call to follow him.

The Bible is full of call stories.

Moses is on the lam, hiding out in Midian, having killed a man back in Egypt. He gets a job shepherding for his father-in-law, a "priest of Midian," who does a little sheep farming on the side to augment his ministerial income. All of a sudden a bush bursts into flame. A voice says, "I am the Lord your God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I have heard the cry of my people and I have come down to deliver them." And it’s your job to go back to Egypt and tell this to the Pharaoh.

Wait a minute! God can’t possibly have chosen a tongue-tied murderer to go against the mighty Pharaoh.

Think again. It’s a call story.

The little boy Samuel is asleep on his mat in the temple. Three times God calls, and three times Samuel goes back to sleep. God can’t possibly be calling a child to do a grown-up’s work.

O no? It’s a call story.

Young adult Isaiah is in church one day. He didn’t want to go, but his mother made him. Doesn’t get anything out of the sermon. Doesn’t like the music. Then, all of a sudden, the heavens open and a voice says, "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?"

"Not me," Isaiah says. "I’ve got a lot of baggage. Failed relationships. Bad choices. Lots of regrets. Done things I shouldn’t have done. Said things I shouldn’t have said. I’m a person of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. You don’t want me."

"Perfect," the voice says. "You’re just the kind of person my people need." A call story.

You see, call stories aren’t about the worthiness or preparedness of the "callee." They’re about the peculiar requirements and the even more peculiar grace of the Caller. Call stories are about what God wants, about what God is doing in the world, and about how God delights in the peculiar choices God makes.

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, the risen Jesus charges his followers to make disciples, to teach, and to baptize – to carry his message into all the world. We label this the "great commission," which is another way of saying "the great calling," and it’s not so different from this first call story here in the opening verses of the Gospel. I say this because with the command comes a promise: "Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Mat. 28:20).

Right up the last word in it, the Gospel of Matthew is a call to follow Jesus.

Now, having a wedding take place, right here in the middle of the morning service, prompts us – prompts me, anyway – to ask the obvious question: What does getting married have to do the Christian’s call to follow Jesus?

The answer is "nothing" if you regard marriage as a merely human institution contrived as a convenience to conventional society. Indeed, more and more couples these days are deciding to dispense with marriage altogether. "What’s the point? they reason." Why go to all that trouble just for a piece of paper that says you’re married? We don’t need a piece of paper to show that we love each other."

No, of course not. But if you’re a Christian – if you’re a follower of Jesus – then marriage has everything to do with your calling. "In marriage," the liturgy says, "husband and wife are called to a new way of life, created, ordered, and blessed by God."

Marriage is a call, a summons to follow Christ, a way of living in relationship that honors him. You can be married without being Christian, but you can’t be Christian without seeing marriage as a sacred vocation.

Christians are called in marriage as surely as they are called in baptism. We Presbyterians don’t term marriage a sacrament, but it certainly works like one. It is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. In the words of the Apostle Paul, it’s a way of being "subject to one another out of reverence for Christ" (Eph. 5:21).

If couples don’t find Christ in marriage, they aren’t looking very hard. For he’s right where he promised he would be – with them always – showing them what sacrificial love is all about, pointing them toward God’s passion for justice in the world, showing them how to forgive one another as God has forgiven them.

Sometimes, as in today’s reading, Jesus calls disciples to get out of the boat. On other occasions he calls his disciples to get into the boat and start rowing. You might recall, the water can get choppy and the ride pretty rough, but Jesus is there, right there, with them.