“Transforming the Routine”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Text: Matthew 4:12-23
t was the middle of a weekend this past summer when I was invited to be a Chaplain for the Indy race here in Toronto. For four days, I led morning prayers with the drivers and the pit crews. I was there in case of an emergency and was trackside most of the time in case I was needed. I was on call.
I had a wonderful time. It was a splendid four days. On the day before the big race there was a race with many of the lower level cars and racers, waiting for the big day when the Indy takes place on the Sunday afternoon. I was actually in pit lane, talking to the drivers and the mechanics and the fire experts. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! Heaven, I am convinced is going to look like a pit lane! My colleague in ministry, David McMaster, disagrees fervently with me. He says that in the Bible you will be taken out of the pit and brought into the heavenly kingdom. But David, you are wrong! Heaven will look like pit lane.
As I was watching this particular race of the understudies there was a group of people in the stands, 12 young men to be precise, slightly inebriated. They were standing over my shoulder, and they kept crying out: “B-O-R-I-N-G!” Boring! I said to myself, “I am sure the drivers going 150 mph down the straight have heard every word that they have said”, but I didn't want to abuse them about what they thought was their editorial comment.
It was a boring race, actually. The cars were just going around and around in order, and the leader and the one chasing him were clearly way out front, until a pit stop. When they came in for the pit stop, one of the wheels fell off the lead car. It meant they had to try and get another wheel on, and there was a problem with that, and he was delayed. When he returned to the track he collided with the Number Two car. Side-by-side, they were taken out of the race completely.
This meant that every other driver had an opportunity to win the race, and we saw some spectacular racing over the next 15 or 20 minutes. I looked back at those smug 12, and I thought, “There, you see, not as boring as you think!” You never know what is going to happen in a race. You never know what emergency or what cataclysm is going to transpire. Everything can change in the blink of an eye.
Also, it is not boring for the drivers, even when they are just going around the track, as it may appear. A great deal is going on in the minds of the drivers who have trained hard to be able to get to that place: every turn, every braking point and every apex is something new and potentially dangerous. To the onlooker it might look boring, but for the participant it is anything but!
I thought, “What an incredible metaphor that is for life itself!” It often seems like we are going around a race track in order: the mundane, the routine, the standard fare of life. Whether we are at work, just simply going to work and coming home and going to work and coming home, or whether we have other routines in our lives, often it appears that someone could look at our lives and say: “B-O-R-I-N-G!”
Sometimes that is the case with faith. I think there are people who look at worshippers and think that it is the mundane and the ordinary and the average, and that there is nothing particularly powerful or special or engaging about being a Christian or about being a believer, and that in fact it is routine, week-by-week, Sunday-by-Sunday, day-by-day, prayer-by-prayer: B-O-R-I-N-G!
Indeed, many of my friends who are not religious, who have little or no faith, look upon what I do and what we do as something that is mundane and dull and lifeless. Well, that is for those who look from the outside in. For those who look from the inside out, it can be very different. Sure, religion can be boring and it can be dull. It is what we make it. I agree with Elton Trueblood who once said, “The biggest danger that we face is not irreligion, but mild religion.” This is a faith that has no excitement, no passion that just goes through the rituals for the sake of those rituals, but has no real life or power to it. He is right! That is the danger; not irreligion.
Having said that, it seems to me there is something more. That something more is captured in the passage from the Gospel of Matthew. It is probably one of the most famous of all New Testament stories. Andrew and Simon Peter are fishers doing their ordinary, daily, mundane tasks, casting their nets into the sea. They are probably standing on the shore or just in the water and they throw their nets to catch the fish and then would spear them and bring them in.
At times, they would go out in boats if they needed to go to the deeper places, particularly late at night or early in the morning. Otherwise they would stand at the shore and just cast their nets. Here they are on an ordinary business day, doing the routine, mundane thing for fishers - casting their nets - when all of a sudden, Jesus of Nazareth appears on the scene.
Now, it is hard to know whether they had heard a great deal about Jesus. Canon Walker, in his excellent sermon last week postulated that they probably heard John talking about the coming of the kingdom and had pointed to Jesus and said, “There he is.” So probably, the disciples, James and John and Andrew and Simon Peter, had heard something about Jesus, and they knew that he was different. He was not just another itinerant Rabbi, walking around the countryside calling people to follow him: no he was far more than that.
Later on, by their writings and what they said, you could tell that they had a deep faith in God already. They had probably been to the synagogue. They were probably practising Jews, faithful to the laws as much as they could be within the constraints of their work and their life. They were good people doing routine things - worshipping God - when all of a sudden Jesus bursts onto the scene. He speaks to them simple words, profound words: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
John Calvin has argued that the call of the disciples is unique. It was the beginning of the Apostolic Ministry of the Church, and that the call to Andrew and Simon Peter was different from any other that might come along. He is right. There is something about that moment beside the Sea of Galilee with those fishermen that was unique.
Yet, here we are in 2011 talking about Andrew and Simon Peter, talking about James and John. Why? It is because we know that in that call to them there is an echo that is heard by us, just as he broke into the mundane and the ordinary and the routine that they experienced, so too he breaks into the ordinary and the mundane and the routine of our lives.
What I find fascinating in all this is that while there are some strains of Christianity that put nearly all the emphasis on the initial call to a Christian and the need to respond, which is perfectly legitimate, often what is forgotten is the life that is lived after the call. I would like to suggest to you this morning that life is an adventurous life, a life of passion, a life of love, and a life lived with Christ.
Let me explain. The summer before last as some of you know, I was in Prague. I was sitting at a restaurant in the old town square, not very far from the famous clock that spins around, having, as one does in Prague, a high calorie, high fat lunch. That is all you can get! I was imbibing some of the special liquid for which the Czechs are well known, and I was having a wonderful day, sitting out in the sun, enjoying watching the passers-by in an open-air cafe, when all of a sudden, my shoulder was hit very hard, and then my head was hit even harder, and I had no idea where the blow had come from. I looked up. I was stunned.
I was in the middle of this meal, sitting on the corner of this restaurant, only to realize that I had actually been hit in the head by a television camera. The man who was carrying it was running very hard, lost his balance and had careened into me, and because I am so big, he just bounced right off again! He continued on, and this entourage followed him! There were people with cameras and microphones on poles and two young people running with backpacks on. They ran right through the square. They ran right across the Charles Bridge. They were on their way somewhere else. I wondered where it was.
A few minutes later, after a few inquiries about what all this fuss was about, why the whole square was in an uproar because of these two young people with backpacks, I learned they were filming the television show The Amazing Race. It was Episode 15. They were on their way to St. Vitas Cathedral followed and filmed as they went. There was such excitement in the air! There was such a sense of expectation.
I noticed that nobody cared about me and if my head had been hit or anything like that. On and on they went, running through this square in this amazing race. I wondered why people are so thrilled by shows like that. I think it is because we live vicariously through the people in the race. I don't want to take it too far but we are entertained by it. There is something exciting about it. I know people who make sure that they are always at home watching it, because they can't wait for the next episode. There is a sense that they want an adventurous life, some excitement, something different from going round and round with the ordinary way of life.
I am not going to suggest to you this day that by becoming a Christian or by renewing one's faith that one is going to have an adventurous life like those young people. What I am going to suggest is that you can experience something even greater. What you can have is what Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John had. Namely, they had lives lived with the living Son of God. Every day, every step of the way, every moment of their lives would now be spent in communion with the one who says, “Follow me.”
In his love and in his grace, following the precepts of the kingdom, you walk each and every day and you never know, like Andrew and Simon Peter, where it is going to lead. You don't know what lies before you or what the next big thing is. This you do know: the moment you say, “I am going to follow you” you embark upon a life that is lived with the presence of Christ. Can you honestly think of anything more exciting, anything more dynamic than to be able to say that in my life, every day, every moment, every experience, I live with the Son of God himself. I do not know where he will lead me or to what great heights I will ascend or what great depths I will go, but this I know, I go with Him and He goes with me.
A few years ago I was at a conference in Cape Town. Bishop Desmond Tutu was there. He was on a stage and the participants at the conference were allowed to ask him any question they wanted. One young woman who was a theological student asked: “Bishop Tutu, when you die and go to heaven who do you want to see when you get there?”
He thought long and hard, smiled and said, “Well, I would like to see Mahatma Gandhi. I am sure he'll be there. That would be nice. I would like to see Albert Luthuli.” (He was one of the great leaders of the African National Congress and one of the great religious leaders in the early part of the twentieth century.) He continued, “I would like to see Albert.” Then, he said, with a big smile on his face, “I would like to see Cindy Crawford. It would be nice to see Cindy Crawford in heaven. ”And then, he said, “But, there is one I really, really want to see. The one I really, really want to see is Jesus, because I know that it is because of him that heaven is possible. I know it is because of his love and his grace that I am there. I also know that if I see him, I am in the right place!”
For Desmond Tutu, he understood, did he not, that really life here on earth and eternally is a tremendous gift from Christ? When he says “Follow me” he breaks us out of the mundane, out of the ordinary, out of the passionless. So often, our religion has become just those things, like those fast cars going around and around and around as if nothing is happening, when in fact in our hearts and in our lives and in our minds, Christ is happening and calling us to follow.
There is something else. If we embark upon that adventurous life then we have to transform our routine. It is a very hackneyed metaphor that Jesus used when he said to the disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” It is sort of awkward, really. It is not particularly inspiring on the surface. In fact, it seems rather bland in some ways, doesn't it? “I will make you fishers of men.” Oh, how smart he was! And yet, for those who are fishing on the shore the metaphor was clear. What they had been doing was drawing in the fish from the sea. Now they would be drawing people into the kingdom.
There was this excitement that God was doing something marvellous with his kingdom here on earth. What they had hoped and prayed for Israel, what they had hoped and prayed for their nation was going to take place. God was doing something special and powerful. Through this Jesus of Nazareth, the mundane was being transformed. In that moment, that routine was turned on its head by the first thing: The call.
Growing up, my grandmother, who was Scottish, didn't really know what to do with me, as an only child and a boy and I was left with her for many, many hours at a time. What my grandmother did was to get me to bake things. I hated it, frankly. She would make me go into the kitchen and would teach me her recipes as if somehow they were going to be handed down to future generations. Not likely! But, she also said to me something very interesting one day when we were making oatcakes. She said, “You know, Andrew, when you are making oatcakes you have got to be sure that you put the salt in first. You don't add it later. You have got to make sure you put the salt in first. ”
On this Robbie Burns weekend, I couldn't help but think that there was something profoundly true in that. You have to put something in first in order that something good might arise. The first thing you do is what Andrew and Simon Peter and James and John did. They responded to the invitation of Christ. It was an invitation not just to have a relationship with Christ one-on-one; it wasn't just to follow to the end of their lives and to touch many, many more lives. It was to encounter others. It was to embrace others. It was to break out of the routine and share Christ with others. It was to live the kingdom with others and to manifest the justice and the righteousness of the kingdom amongst others. It was a call from within the bounds of one's own relationships or career to embark upon an encounter with humanity.
I think the exciting thing about faith and the exciting thing about following Christ is precisely that encounter. You never know where it will take you or who you will be talking to or what good you can do if you will but let Christ lead you.
In the magazine called Charisma, Bill Wilson tells a story about his church, which is a large church located in the poorest suburb of one of America's biggest cities. It is so big in fact that they reach out to people of every ethnic stripe, every language, every socio-economic grouping, and they do so by sending out buses and bringing people to the church, by reaching out and drawing people in.
One day he was encountered by a Puerto Rican woman. She was new to the United States and spoke very little English but, she was a Christian. She said to Pastor Bill, through an interpreter, “Is there anything that I can do for God and the church?”
Bill said, “I am going to have to think long and hard about this. I will think of something. ”A few days later, he went back to the lady with an interpreter and said, “Look, we have all these buses that go out into the poorest parts of the city and bring people to the church. I just want you to ride in those buses and just love people, just love them.”
The lady said, “I can do that.”
So, she got on the buses, and many of the buses brought children in to the Sunday school and into the day-time school the church ran. She would be on the buses, and she would seek out the poorest children. She would seek out those who were lonely and sitting at the back on their own. She didn't know much English, so all she said to them was, “I love you and Jesus loves you.” She did this for months - just sitting on the buses talking to the children.
One day, she saw a boy. He looked particularly shy and particularly poor. Sometimes his sister came with him, but often he was on his own. Because this Puerto Rican woman was a large lady with big legs, she would sit the little lad on her lap and bounce him up and down on her knees and she would say to him, “I love you and Jesus loves you.” He never said a word.
Then, after a few weeks of riding on the same bus, taking care of this young boy, he finally looked at her one day and said, “And I love you, too.” The next day, they went and picked him up and she saw precisely where he lived and the conditions under which he lived and her heart was broken. But she still said to him, “I love you and Jesus loves you.”
The next day, a Sunday morning, they went to pick the young boy up again. This time he wasn't there. He wasn't there, because at 6:30 a m. that day his body had been found in a garbage tip under a stairway outside the tenement building where he lived. His mother had killed him. He had evidently been abused and beaten from his very earliest days but this day the mother had gone too far.
The lady was devastated. She went to Bill, the pastor. She couldn't understand why this had happened. Bill gave no answer, except to say the following to her: “Just remember, probably the last words he ever heard was on the bus with you: 'I love you and Jesus loves you'” and he knew that.
We never know where Christ will lead us. We never know the depths to which we will be taken. We will never know the adventure that we might be on, but be assured of this: In the routine of faith, there is the profound transformation of life if we will just follow him and be fishers of people. Amen.