Sermon for 2-7-10
In a few minutes, we will sing a song together titled, “You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore”
So, for a moment let us meditate on the lakeshore
The lakeshore is the place where land meets water, where the horizon is where the water meets the sky. Jesus, himself, was also like a lakeshore, where heaven meets earth, where God meets man.
Lakeshores are full of transitions where the disciples followed Jesus walking into the water, hopefully not sinking with their overloaded fish boats.
Jesus was first standing on the lakeshore when he invited these four new disciples in today’s gospel, when he soaked them God’s abundant grace of food.
And the lakeshore was the transition it says, “When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him…”
Lakeshores require choices that will affect our destiny with God. Sometimes the choices, may not be all that clear, as in how do we become fishers of men…
The disciples are invited to choose to follow—with a promise that life is going to be full again, full of adventure, full of promise, and full with the abundance of food, as with the Loaves and fishes…
However, They are offered no explanations, given no guarantees; they understand little (as the rest of their stories often point out)—and yet they follow.
And then for us, who seem to have much more information than they did, with perhaps the whole story in front of us, what has it been like for us to plunge into God’s story, and follow Jesus each of our days…
We have enough information to tell us it will be ok…, difficult, life changing, but …worth it in Christ.
We know even what the disciple did not, but some days, I worry that even I haven’t caught a fish, or a person recently…
It is a prayer for help in this, a prayer for trust and faith, that then recites this poem
“In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syrian sea,
The gracious calling of the Lord, Let us, like them, without a word,
Rise up and follow Thee.”
(John Greenleaf Whittier, “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”)
Like Moses and the Israelites, like moving between land and sea, between heaven and earth, we are invited at the lakeshores of life, to follow the Path of Jesus. Lakeshores are like the pages between the Old and New Testaments, inviting us to dive in because the water is good, like warm baptismal water.
It’s been said, that “the lakeshore is wherever there is a transition in your life, a choice to be made, a boundary to be crossed, a barrier to be overcome, a change from one form to another, a birth, a death, a change in employment, an illness, a milestone birthday, a move, a shift in a relationship.
For Peter, Andrew, James and John the lakeshore was the place where they cleaned up after work, a place of weariness, a place of business, a place of beauty, a place for the hard work of transitions
And the Lord comes to our lakeshores, your lakeshores, my lakeshores.
Lakeshores, though do not always provide easy transitions, sometimes they are dangerous places. I remember, one year going to Lake Castaic with neighbors, and hoping out of the boat as it was being lined up at the boat ramp, and just as I began walking towards shore, I felt an sudden agony in my right foot, followed then by a piercing pain in my left foot as I fell sideways into the water.
After being dragged out my Mr. Haskell, I then saw what happened, three small cupped shells that had sliced into the soles of my feet.
But then again, when following Jesus, we are cautioned by the nails that pierced through his hands and feet, during his path between heaven and earth, his transition and ours, came through many struggles and pains.
When I was first struggling with the thought of having to learn Greek if I really wanted to go through seminary, I was one day offered a wall full of religion books to choose from, and they were all free.
But, let me tell you a little more of the story, because these books were from an old beloved family pastor, by the name of Erling Wold, but it was his wife who had offered them to me.
You see, It had been just a couple years before that Erling was at a different kind of lakeshore, where he was actually bodysurfing along the California coast, when suddenly he was tumbled by a wave, and in a devastating moment, was crushed into the sand by the wave, breaking his neck, and totally incapacitating him for a few years until he died.
And It was from him, that I had inherited my first library to understand Jesus’ suffering, with a steady reminder, that from one persons struggle, many others can find hope passed on.
Jesus chose to minister, teaching about hope in life and death along those lakeshores; especially when things that were so right seemed to be going so wrong. You know it says here that in following Jesus’s word, the disciples ended up catching a boat load of fish, but we sometimes forget, that it also says
“they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.”
And it says that, both boats were so overfull, that, “They began to sink.”
You know sometimes, when we get what we’ve prayed for, and then some, it is faithful, to remember the lives and the costs that others before us have paid. The cost of Jesus’ life for our forgiveness. The cost of his disciples lives as they were also taken away while they did their best to pass the books of faith on to us…. The cost of Erling’s life for my spiritual education…
At the lakeshores of our faith, where we think about heavenly and worldly things, as we think back, to the many people who had faithfully fished for us, who had given up many things at many lakeshores simply for the heavenly benefit to others; they have been folks, like ourselves,
who learned from mistakes, and who have benefitted others,
simply because of the faithful feeling of being loved by Jesus Christ.
The poem Footsteps says, “During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you.”
In many mysterious and sacred ways, God has carried us already across many lakeshores, both dangerous and pleasing, by the help of God’s many servants,
May we also strive to be those servants, those fishers of men…
giving thanks for the abundance of help
as it has come.
Amen…
