Reading Matthew Jesus begins to preach Jesus & John (parallel ministries-same sermon), reacts to John's, but not part of it John's arrest: grammar shows it's part of the divine plan Called to fish First miracle in Matthew: disciples follow on his invitation (represent all Christians) Brave enough to try something new Preparatory for Sermon on the Mount Healing ministry subordinate to preaching/teaching ministries Messiah of Word before Messiah of Deed

Fishing is something I can talk about. I'm from Minnesota, where fishing is so important that people even do it in the winter, when the lakes are covered in ice. If you saw Grumpy Old Men, you know about ice fishing. Fishing is a quiet activity. So quiet, in fact, that this book, Scandinavian Humor and Other Myths, uses it to define a new mythical god. "No sport has attracted the following among Scandinavian/Americans that fishing has, and for good practical and theological reasons. First, all other sports require a lot of talking, running, or throwing things. Second, that state which other cultures and religions call nirvana-the condition of being at complete oneness with one's environment-is achieved by the Scandinavian only while fishing. Only fishing offers the perfect transcendental state: absolute silence (for lack of anything to talk about), absolute motionlessness (rivaled only by rigor mortis) and a total lack of intellectual and sensory deprivation (broken only by mosquitoes)."

Contrast this Minnesota understanding of fishing with what people in the Pacific Northwest know about fishing. I recently read a Jane Kirkpatrick novel about pioneer life in Oregon, A Sweetness to the Soul. Kirkpatrick depicts the way native peoples in the Northwest fished. The natives built scaffolding and platforms over precipitous cliffs, hundreds of feet above roiling waterfalls and rapids. Then they tied themselves to the slippery platforms and dipped long handled nets to catch the leaping salmon as they made their way upriver to spawn. A different type of fishing from what I knew in Minnesota.

Which kind of fishing do you think Jesus had in mind when he invited those four guys to go fishing for people with him? Whatever they thought it was, Matthew tells us they dropped everything-including the family business-to follow this guy.

This is the kind of Bible story I have a hard time finding credible. I mean, how believable is this? Why would these guys leave everything to follow someone who copies word-for-word the sermons of a guy that Herod has thrown in jail? Was fishing on the Sea of Galilee so boring? Was this guy a hypnotist? Was this a cult? I used to hear this story and feel so guilty that I hadn't given everything up to follow Jesus. Was I really a Christian if I weren't making some flamboyant, self-sacrificing decision for discipleship? And if that was what was really required to be a disciple, didn't that let me off the hook until I could make some bigger splash?

Do you remember at our annual meeting two weeks ago, when our good friend Jim Tomlin responded to our Mission Elder's report? Lloyd Olson talked about outreach and mission work last year, and Jim shared with us that Lloyd had expressed regret before the meeting that his committee hadn't "done evangelism." Jim said that whatever we do in the name of Jesus is "evangelism," because what we do is expressing the good news that God loves the world, and especially the people in the world. Steve Duin, a columnist in The Oregonian, seconded the motion when he wrote in his column two days later that "everything we do is an act of self-definition." Maybe Duin understood the type of discipleship that Jesus had in mind in calling those fishermen, because Duin goes on to say, "We volunteer at the homeless shelter, teach Sunday school or pick litter off the beach . . . because the acts define who we are or who we want to be."

When Jesus calls those first four disciples to a subtle change in occupation-fishing for people instead of fish-he does not call them to their own salvation. He calls them to invite others to salvation. Now, what kind of self-definition is that? When Jesus preached his one-sentence sermon, all he did was call his listeners to "repent." This was religious talk for "change your unsatisfying life-as-it-is to living as if you have hope for life-as-it-might-be." Unsatisfying for hope. Stagnation for growing. Self-centered navel-gazing for concern toward others. Crippled-by-anxiety for freed-to-joy.

How? Wouldn't you want to know more? Aren't there more details involved in this? Back in the olden days, before people got information by surfing the net or going to the self-help book section in Borders, people used to find a guru. You know, a teacher. What you did was live with the teacher, watch what the teacher did, and eventually, through absorbing the minutia of the daily details of life, your own life would change. It was called discipleship. You became more like your teacher by acting like your teacher.

This is what one of my friends calls "seat time." When my daughter was learning to drive, the only person who felt more raw terror than me at the prospect of this inexperienced driver let loose on the unsuspecting streets of Madison-was my daughter. My friend was a race car driver, and he said the only cure for this terror was seat time. Plain old sitting in the driver's seat, steering the car, figuring out where you are going and how you are going to get there. Seat time. Not so much traffic laws and map-reading-although that's important! Just doing the driving. That's what discipleship is. It's not so much facts and information, although, as Presbyterians, we know there is great value in learning. But discipleship is not all head stuff. There is an enormous amount of heart and hands involved, too. Discipleship is the courage to consider something new and then just doing it.

That's what those four fishing guys did. Whether the "unsatisfying-life-as-it-is" for them was that they were sick-and-tired of Rome's rule and the humiliations that went with that. Whether it was never feeling quite convinced of their own forgiveness. Whether it was the despair that they had tried and tried to give up that bad habit that was destroying their marriage. They just knew that life-as-it-is was no good. They were dying for the hope of life-as-it-might-be. Life as God had created humans to experience it.

But it takes courage. It takes turning around. That's "repent." It takes doing things differently than they've always been done. Christian discipleship is deciding to do things as if we believed they could be different. Deciding that we have choices about how we act, and that we can choose to act more and more like our teacher, more like our savior. Decisions, choices. In the second Harry Potter book, Harry has realized that he is as capable of evil as those on the Dark Side. Harry tells the headmaster at his school that he possesses characteristics that would have made him as successful in Slytherin, the dark house, as he has been in Gryffindor, the brave house. "Exactly," the headmaster says. He tells Harry that "It is our choices . . . that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." Choices. Our choices show who we are-whose we are-even more than our abilities.

When my kids were young, one of them would automatically say "no" to any new experiences on offer. No matter how the possibilities were offered, this child would say "no." Even if it was something that would be fun, the answer was "no." I learned that the best thing to do would be to pose the new possibilities, wait for the dust to settle, and then offer it again. When it no longer seemed new, the answer would be "yes." But it takes courage to say "yes." We are so afraid of failing.

These first four disciples must have had some intuitive understanding that they weren't being called to be successful. Think of fishermen. Rick and I laugh about why he doesn't like fishing. He says that, unless he is actually hauling in fish, he doesn't feel he's accomplishing anything. If you have ever fished, you know that that's not the way it is in fishing. Part of the appeal of fishing, just as the book on Scandinavian Humor says, the appeal is that there is plenty of time when you are not accomplishing a thing. The four fishermen called to be disciples knew they weren't being called to haul in people. They were called to fish for people on behalf of the kingdom. Availability, not ability, not success.

How do we fish these days? The disciples were called, not to the salvation of their own souls, but to invite others into the kingdom. Is this how we understand discipleship today-inviting others? This is a major shift for Presbyterians. Not our own salvation, but inviting others. How do we read the call Jesus presented to his four new disciples by the Sea of Galilee? Jesus' sermon was "Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Based on the promises inherent in that, he called his first disciples to invite others to a different way of life. Are we willing to be embarrassed-and possibly turned down-by inviting others? What if we invited someone to church? I think of my child who always said "no." Is it fear of failure that keeps us from inviting others, or is it the potential embarrassment of letting someone know we attend church-and maybe even that we like to attend church? Is that possibility too damning to risk an invitation? Welcome (pads) Pat, Rick and I back from Chicago Worship leader training after church today Tuesday: prayer at 2:00, 7:00 Tuesday: personnel at 3:00, member care 4:00 Don MacKinnon teaching Isaiah in adult Sunday School next week Barbara Shibley teaching confessions starting 2/10 Eileen at pastor's retreat 2/4 through 2/6 Session retreat Feb 9, 8 - 11:30 Feb 10: Feast of Fools (silly skits), potluck (pre-Lent) During Lent: vespers at 7 on Tuesdays, Ash Wed service Leadership fair 2/16 (church pays tuition of $15) For the creation of this pleasant world and for the joy of living, let us give thanks to God. We give you thanks, O God. In concern for the peace of the world and for the well-being of all people, let us pray to the Lord. Hear our prayer, O Lord. Lillian Enron crisis