Just when everything seems as normal as can be ... in fact, just when we almost break into wide yawns from the dull normalcy of it all, that's when something outside our control can break in with a word or experience that changes everything — perhaps forever.
Do you remember when the earthquake hit the San Francisco Bay area in 1989, causing the famous collapse of the double-decker Bay Bridge? Its rumbling effect was felt far beyond the Bay area, insisting itself into the consciousness of everyone attending the World Series game that day in Oakland or watching it on television. The game went immediately off the air, but inside the stadium, priorities were rearranged in a hurry. In particular, I remember the words of one player about his experience. This was a professional athlete, probably in possession of athletic skills not given to more than one in 10,000 people, a person who had spent the majority of his life to that point, the effort of countless hours during that very year, focused on one goal: to help bring his team to the World Series, and to give his utmost energy to help them win it. Few of us would know the sheer concentration and focus that had been required of him over a lifetime to reach this zenith of athletic preparation.
There he stood, at this pinnacle. All his priorities were lined up in clear order. Lined up, that is, until there was a tremendous shaking of the earth.
Hours later, he was asked about it. The exchange, as I recall, went something like this: The reporter asked him what his first thought was when he realized that it was an earthquake. He answered that he ran toward the stands, looking for his family. At a time like that, baseball doesn't seem very important. In the days that followed, games were delayed — a decision costing millions of dollars, I'm sure — in deference to the tragedy and loss which had been visited on so many in the communities where the games were to be played.
"Baseball doesn't seem very important"? Strange words from a man who moments before probably thought it was about the most important thing there is, playing in the World Series, every American boy's dream, the achievement of a goal of a lifetime, an achievement not granted to one in a hundred thousand who dream of it.
Events can intrude upon us to rearrange our priorities, to make us see with sudden and crystal clarity that we have had it wrong, that what we thought was priority number 1 was really only number two, or maybe even number five or number fifty.
Have you ever had your life re-prioritized like that, suddenly, irreversibly, quite apart from any control you might have previously thought you had over events?
I have a vision about that sort of urgency in scripture, especially in the readings for today. Sometimes we may tend to think of Jesus as one who sauntered around offering teachings, aphorisms, parables to those who would listen, and the disciples as those who were more willing to listen than most, and so hung around him more. Mark paints a very different picture.
Simon and Andrew were standing, pitching those same nets into the same old fishing hole from which they and their family had drawn their living for years. It was what they did. They were fishermen. Baseball players play baseball. Engineers engineer things, physicians prescribe medicine, teachers teach, housekeepers keep house, preachers preach, taxi drivers drive, secretaries run the spell checker on their boss' bad spelling, lawyers litigate, cooks serve up food, and fishermen fish. These are things we do. We are trained to do them, more or less. In most cases, it is what we have given our lives to doing. A few days in our chosen professions are exciting days. Some days are absolutely dreary, lifeless, and mundane. But most days run along a generally acceptable track of activities. Day in, day out, cast the net, gather the fish, clean the fish, eat the fish, sell the fish, cast the net, gather the fish, clean the fish, eat the fish. That's how life is, apart from a few occasional festivals and other distractions, there is a lot a repetition — a lot of repetition.
But into that sort of humdrum, there came Jesus. His coming had a sudden cast to it, and here Mark uncorks one of the first of his favorite phrases from the gospel that's always in a hurry to tell the story: "And immediately...." Mark uses the word "immediately" 27 times in the shortest of the four gospels. It gives his message a sense of urgency. Consider those fishermen responding to the call of Jesus. "Immediately they left their nets and followed" (v. 18). Jesus called out to them, and suddenly doctors stopped doctoring, traders stopped trading, taxi drivers pulled over and turned on their "not in service" lights, teachers stopped teaching, fishermen quit fishing, baseball players dropped their mitts and bats and ran to the stands to collect their families, the king quit his throne, the Congress adjourned, the doors to the Supreme Court were locked, and everyone knew what they hadn't known before — that if they didn't respond to an initiative from God, if they didn't do something and do it quickly, there soon would be a cataclysm to render life "as usual" irrelevant. "Usual" wasn't an option. Baseball players don't argue with earthquakes, Ninevah didn't argue with the five blunt prophetic words of Jonah, and when Jesus called them, Simon, Andrew, James, and John realized in a flash that those famous and overworked words, "it's now or never" applied to them and applied to them now.
Mark knew that when he reported it. "And immediately ..." he says. Tomorrow would be too late. In fact, this afternoon would be too late. Jesus called them. They followed him — immediately — in an instant, life would never be the same.
If you are like I am, there are days when you long for a faith that breaks into day-to-day reality for you like that, when spiritual adrenaline pushes you ahead into a future that fully energizes the present. But we fear it as well. Most days our faith plods along. My granddad used to say, "Decide in haste, repent at leisure." But every now and then, lightning strikes, earthquakes hit, and suddenly we are required to think again, to commit ourselves in a whole new way — today — now — ASAP.
Years ago, a couple in a Bible study shared a story from their own lives that demonstrates what can happen when the new reality of Christ's love intrudes on our lives. These folks are in the habit of leaving notes for each other all over the house. Now that's not too unusual; lots of us leave notes that read something like, "Don't forget the milk and bread," or "Remember, the meeting tonight starts at 7:30." But these folks leave another kind of note for each other, notes that are simply there to say, "I love you," or "I'm thinking of you." One day, they had a plumber working in their home and he happened to see some of their notes. He asked about them and they just said that that was their own way of letting each other know how they felt. He thought it was such a good idea that he decided to try it in his home. One day, he left a few notes around his house expressing his love for his family members. You and I might think that these would have been received with unanimously great joy and thanksgiving. I'm sure that's what he thought. But they were such a new thing, such a change that his family thought that they must have been words of farewell, that perhaps he had decided to do away with himself and had left these notes as his final words to them.
The new reality of love breaking into our lives can cause those around us to think we may have gone off the deep end! When Jesus calls us, we can't expect the world around us to understand fully.
Paul once wrote some words that many have found troublesome through the years:
... from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. — 1 Corinthians 7:29b-31
This is the worldview of the gospel of Jesus, with its all-encompassing implications for lives of those who respond to the summons of his calling. All normal expectations no longer apply for those who are in Christ. The world expects itself to be constantly preoccupied with buying and selling, with hellos and good-byes, with baseball and career success and bringing home the bacon. But what we used to rely on as a given is no longer so. A new reality has intruded itself into the world for those who are in Christ. We do not cease buying and selling, grieving and rejoicing, working and playing. We do not cease doing all those things that every other mortal around us must also do, but we do them more as though we were involved in a mystery, the outcome of which we happen to know is already settled. We realize that these everyday expectations of the world are not the last word. The world as we know it is passing, and we have been given authoritative word from the lips of God's own Son that if we think we have seen a lot to grieve and rejoice over, we've only just seen the beginning.
Whether one should be married or not, should buy or sell, should play baseball or hug his family, should laugh or cry, none of these are the main concern of the call of Christ. None of these is the last word, and none of them is a believer's ultimate concern. None of the things we are accustomed to using to calibrate our view of the world have the final say. From the fleeting to the profound, from marriage to singleness, from baseball to fishing, none of these states by which we are accustomed to measuring reality is ultimate any longer. A new reality has expressed itself, the reality of the unpurchased love of God in Christ, offered to us as a gift.
Jesus calls us. It isn't one more feature of life as usual. It is the feature of life to which we must respond. If you are feeling a tug, a need to make a response, don't put it off. Drop the nets; go to the bleachers; set aside whatever else distracts you and go straight to the Lord in prayer and commit yourself to that for which you know in your heart he is calling you. Amen.