Sunday, July 31, 2016 | 4:00 p.m.

Somewhere More Familiar

Layton Williams
Pastoral Resident

Psalm 27
Isaiah 58:6–12
Mark 1:14–20

I am not great at good-byes. In fact, I’m terrible at them. I hate endings and leavings—and I especially hate them when I’m not entirely sure what’s coming next. It’s not that I don’t appreciate adventure—I do—but it’s fair to say that I am a calculated risk-taker. I am a fan of known quantities and routine and the familiar. It provides me with comfort and a sense of being anchored amidst all the chaos of life. I’ve been that way for as long as I can remember.

I guess because of that fact, this passage from Mark and its Matthean equivalent kind of terrified me as a child. It’s hard to believe that out of all the scriptures that might upset a kid, this is the one that particularly scared me, but it was. I still remember learning this story at my Southern Baptist summer camp and being told that being Christian meant following Christ wherever he called us to go, even if it meant leaving your home or your family behind. I remember tearfully thinking that I didn’t understand. At that point in my life, my family and my sense of home and community were so intertwined with my faith that I couldn’t imagine why following Jesus would ever take me away from them. I couldn’t believe that God would ever ask that of me.

Years later I was in my first semester of seminary, where I was pursuing a call to ministry. I was also in the process of coming out as bisexual. It was clear to me then that my faith was calling me to both of these things—ministry and coming out—but I also knew that my family and some others in the community I had come from wouldn’t agree. I was leaving behind what I had known for a future that seemed very uncertain. All of the sudden, the passage that had so worried me as a child had become very real.

I’ve thought about this passage from Mark many times in the years since then. The truth is, my coming out is hardly the only time I have felt called into unknown and uncomfortable directions. That is part of what faith is about for all of us. Whether we’re led to a new city or new work or to engage in hard work for justice or to voice an unpopular perspective—Christ calls us to come and follow him and join his work of healing and reconciliation, justice and mercy.

I understand this now in ways that I didn’t as a child, but it’s still hard. In fact, I struggle with this particular story in part because of how easy these disciples make it seem. Here are these men. They are fishermen, the scripture tells us. That is the work they do. That is the life they live. That is the truth they’ve known. It is hard work but comfortable. Familiar.

And then, one day, along comes Jesus. Perhaps they’ve heard of this radical new rabbi—after all John has already been going around preaching and proclaiming the coming of Christ. Now this Jesus is here in their midst—on their shore. And he says, “Come and follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”

It’s a clever rhetorical device—the fishing metaphor. Maybe there is something in there that suggests that Jesus makes use of the gifts we already have. But make no mistake: this is a monumental shift for these men. The work of fishing for people will prove hard in ways they can’t yet imagine. And first they have to leave—let go—of everything they’ve known, everything they’ve come to count on and expect from their lives. It’s striking that the text tells us “immediately they left their nets and followed him.” James and John leave their father, Zebedee, sitting in the boat. Simon and Andrew leave unfinished the work of mending their nets, and they follow Christ into the unknown future that awaits them. And they do it “immediately.” Without hesitation or question.

Really?

Listen, on my best days I like to believe that I am committed to going where God calls me. I try my best to center my life around engaging in the work I believe Jesus asks of us. But I wouldn’t say I do it without question. I ask a lot of questions. Maybe you do too.

Questions like “Why? Why do I have to do that or go there or leave here?” “How am I even supposed to make any kind of difference?” “Are you sure that’s what you want me to do? Are you sure it’s me you want?”

We are human. And that means even when we are committed to being faithful, we struggle. We hesitate. We doubt. So these disciples’ unquestioning obedience in this scripture falls a little flat.

Of course we know the rest of the story. If they followed Jesus perfectly that first day, they never quite did it again—not perfectly. These disciples do question, do struggle, do mess up, again and again throughout the Gospels, as they seek to follow Christ. They are not so different from us after all.

As it turns out, the choice to leave behind our expectations and our comfort and follow Jesus is not a one-time thing. It’s a choice we make over and over and over. Every day. It’s OK that sometimes we mess it up or sometimes we’re not so sure. We gather our faith about us. We pray. And we try again.

Here’s the thing: following Jesus and going where we’re called doesn’t always mean literally leaving our families and our homes and our jobs. It might mean that sometimes. It certainly has meant that occasionally for me and perhaps for you too. But not always.

What our faith does ask of us, though, is that we be willing to enter into uncomfortable spaces. Spaces of brokenness and struggle and suffering. We are called to enter into those spaces and seek justice.

The Isaiah text describes this kind of a faithfulness. It describes a life that is committed to going where others are hurting and to offering help, to going into spaces of discord and embodying understanding and mercy. Isaiah calls for a faith that is committed to liberation and a sense of home and belonging for all of God’s children. This is hard, daunting work. It is certainly beyond our comfort zone.

Especially these days. We live in uncertain times, in a world grown unfamiliar all on its own. These recent months and years have seen so much violence, so much loss and tragedy and injustice. And the future—well who really knows what’s coming?

It is human instinct in the face of so much uncertainty to hold on tightly to what feels understood and familiar and known and to shut out everything else. That is an understandable reaction. But our scriptures for today—both Isaiah and Mark—suggest that our faith calls us to do the exact opposite: to cling to Christ instead and step into the very heart of all that is chaotic and broken.

How do we even begin to find the courage for such a journey?

A few weeks ago, my pastor colleague Hardy and I traveled to Northern Ireland with a small group of young adults from this church. We explored the stunning natural beauty of that country, its rugged shoreline and green hills. But mostly we were there to learn. Northern Ireland is a country that has been torn apart by conflict for a long, long time. In recent history, this conflict led to a time of violence and upheaval called the Troubles that began in the late sixties and lasted for years. The opposing groups are Catholic and Protestant, but the issues that divide them are far less about faith than they are about history and heritage, civil rights and oppression, and deeply entrenched narratives of hatred and distrust.

In the midst of this conflict, many in Northern Ireland have committed themselves to the long, difficult work of peace and reconciliation. During our time there, we met with Catholics and Protestants engaged in this work, with former IRA combatants and intentional faith communities. Though a peace agreement in 1998 quelled much of the serious unrest and violence, the work toward true justice-infused peace and lasting healing is ongoing.

The Sunday we were in Northern Ireland, we worshiped at a Presbyterian church in Belfast called White House Presbyterian. Belfast, like most of the cities in Northern Ireland, is starkly divided into Catholic and Protestant areas, with actual walls separating them in many cases. The culture and history say that you stick to your own area, your own people. To do otherwise is controversial at best and even dangerous at worst.

Many years ago, shifting neighborhoods transformed the area around White House Presbyterian Church so that rather than being firmly situated in the middle of a Protestant community, by the time the Troubles began the church was located on an interface—the border between a Protestant area and a Catholic one. This put White House Presbyterian Church in a perilous position. They faced arson attempts and other violence, and they were forced to consider whether they should relocate—resituate themselves comfortably in the midst of the Protestant community as they once had been. Instead, they chose to stay at the interface, at that tense space of unease.

They have invested themselves in relationships with both their Protestant and Catholic neighbors, and they have committed as a community to work for peace. The Sunday we worshiped with them, the pastor began her sermon by lamenting the recent racial violence in the U.S. and prayed that we in America might learn from their own history. In her children’s sermon, Pastor Liz taught these little young people about the dangers of building walls and refusing to know and love one another.

The people of White House Presbyterian Church and many others we met in Northern Ireland followed the call of their faith to leave behind the familiar narratives and spaces they had known and entered boldly into the unknown and uncomfortable and unfamiliar.

They do this work trusting in Christ. This deeper truth is that we go into these uncomfortable spaces of struggle and tension and injustice knowing that Jesus is already there leading the way, that right in the places where people are hurting and captive the kingdom of God is breaking in. That right in the heart of chaos and brokenness, hope is being born, and we are called to go and be a part of it.

On the other side of the hard work of healing and reconciliation, peace and justice—in that new hope and new kindom of God’s promise—is a place more familiar to us, more deeply home to us than anything and anywhere else we know. It is the world we truly belong to—the world for which we were created.

It is hard work to choose again and again to leave our certainty behind us and follow Jesus into the unknown and the chaos of this world. But whatever partings, good-byes, and journeys into the unfamiliar our faith asks of us, we go with the same promise that once compelled the first disciples to leave their nets, their lives, their families: we go with the promise that as long as we are following Christ, we are always on the way home. Amen.