Excuse Me

It’s been a difficult, difficult week. I preached at a funeral Tuesday, and then attended a two more funerals; I made hospital visits and had office visits, and had a dozen meetings during the week. Frankly, I’m worn and weary. And the result of all this is that I didn’t have the energy to write a sermon this week, so I thought maybe we could all just sit and reflect on the gospel text today and then conclude our worship service.

(Pastor sits down in the front row for about three minutes, then rises and returns to pulpit.)

Excuses, they don’t cut it, do they? When we are expected to do a task, whatever it may be, and we don’t follow through, then no excuse is acceptable. If your mechanic had a bad day and only fixed two of your four brakes, that would be inexcusable. If your child scores in the 99th percentile on the 4th grade standardized tests, but gets all “D’s” on her report card, she wouldn’t get away with “Sorry Dad, I had a bad year.” That’s not good enough.And if your preacher complains that life was hard this week, but he would try to get around to writing a sermon for next Sunday, you would be sympathetic but unmoved! Excuses don’t cut it when people have expectations. And since we know this is true – that we hold people accountable to say what they’ll do and do what they say – why would we expect God to treat us any differently? I did write a sermon for today; this sermon – a sermon about the expectations God has of us, and the excuses we offer when we don’t deliver the goods. Each of us, all of us, every one of us have offered our lame excuses to God. That’s what this sermon is about today.

In our gospel reading, the throngs of people are following Jesus, looking for words of comfort and works of might. In fact, on this particular day, the crowd on the shore of the Sea of Galilee is so great that Jesus is pressed right into the water. So he climbs into the boat of Simon Peter, a man that he had never met before, and asks Simon to push him out from shore to he can teach from the boat. When the class is over; when Jesus has finished his teaching, he turns to Simon Peter and says “Why don’t you row out into the deep water and let’s catch us some fish?” And now the excuses fly.

“Aw, Master, we’ve been out all night and they aren’t biting. We tried crawlers, we tried leeches, we tried minnows and worms and crank baits; nothing worked. And besides, I’m tired and I’m sweaty and I’m hungry and I’m bored.” In short, Simon Peter is telling Jesus, no. He had his reasons – his excuses – but the bottom line was unwillingness to fish.

Then suddenly, Simon has a change of heart. Maybe it was something he saw in Jesus’ face. Maybe he listened to his own words and they sounded hollow. He was a fisherman, after all, and fishermen fish. If they don’t bite in one spot, you try another, and if they don’t bite in that spot, you try yet another. But you gotta keep fishing because you’re a fisherman, right Simon? So Simon says to Jesus “But if you say so, we’ll let down the nets. It’s a good thing, too, because not only did they get a net so full they had to call another boat to help them, but this experience changed Simon’s life.

You see, immediately, Simon recognized that Jesus was God, and he felt embarrassed, and ashamed, and unworthy to be in the same boat with him. “Depart from me, Lord, for I’m a sinful man.” He could have just said “I’m a fisherman.” I mean, liars and fishermen are synonymous, are they not? But Jesus did not depart from Simon Peter. Rather, he said to Simon, and his fishing partners James and John “If you follow me, I will teach you how to fish for people.” And the bible says “They pulled their boats up on the beach, left everything behind, and followed Jesus.”
There are two things to note about this fish story that Luke tells us in his gospel today. The first is that, up until now in his public ministry, everything Jesus did took place in the synagogue. He taught in the synagogue, he cast demons out in the synagogue, he preached in the synagogue; he healed diseases in the synagogue. Now, in this 5th chapter of Luke, Jesus is beginning to call people into ministry with him, and he doesn’t do that in the synagogue; he does it in a fishing boat. You would think the most qualified ministry partners would be found in the synagogue, but apparently, the most authentic ministry partners were to be found in the mainstream of life; among the fishermen, and the businessmen, and the seamstresses, and the tax collectors.

My favorite movie of all time is “Miracle” starring Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks, coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. When Brooks chose the team, he was questioned by an assistant coach, who said “Herb, you don’t have some of the best players on that team.” And Brooks answered “I’m not looking for the best players, Craig; I’m looking for the right players.” And so is God looking for the right players. You need not be the smartest in the class, or the wealthiest in the neighborhood, or the most outgoing at a party, or the most religious of the church in order to serve Christ. But authentic…you must be authentic and honest about your sin, your shame, and your need for a Savior. That’s the first thing.

But the second thing about this text is Simon Peter understanding of the fishing conditions. Simon thinks there weren’t any fish in the bay that morning, and Jesus proved him wrong when two boatloads of fish were landed. Pastor Will Willimon concludes that Simon’s problem was not a scarcity of fish, but rather, a scarcity of faith. And that is the very source of the excuses Christian people offer when something is done, or left undone. “We can’t do it, there’s not enough time.” “We can’t do it, there’s not enough money.” “We can’t do it, there are not enough leaders.” “We can’t do it because we’ve tried it before and it never works here.” It is not a scarcity of time, or money, or leaders, or success; it is a scarcity faith. It is a belief that God can’t do something in our midst, so why bother trying? And then the excuses begin to fly. The Good News is, our God is bigger than our excuses, and when we let him in on the planning, there are no limits to what we can accomplish, when we pull our boats up on shore, leave our excuses behind, and follow Jesus Christ.

Just one example, and then I’m through. For the past three years, the giving in this congregation has been in decline. For the past two years, we have considered cutting staff salaries. For the past two years, we have decreased our program budget each year. Oh, we each have our excuses: the economy is struggling, our membership is made up of a lot of young families, giving is down everywhere, money is in short supply everywhere. We just can’t do it. We know that this congregation has been doing ministry for 151 years, but this is the worst it has EVER been. We can’t do it. That’s our main excuse; we just can’t do it.

Since our congregational meeting in January, a small group of dreamers has been meeting; we call ourselves “Stew II.” (Or Stewardship Part II). Someone at our first meeting made a rather startling diagnosis of our congregation; he said “There is enough money within this congregation to do everything we want to do in ministry. We just need to convince people that it’s okay to part with it.” In other words, we don’t have a scarcity of funds, we have a scarcity of faith. And once we believe that God’s promises can be trusted, that God will provide enough, then our boats will be filled with plenty. Every Sunday during the Season of Lent, you will hear from Stew II; you will be invited, challenged, thanked, and then astonished by what God can do when we invite him in.

And so the question I have for each of us today is this: What would please God more in this church, a boatload of willing people…or a boatload of excuses? “Follow me” the Savior said, “and I will teach you to fish for people!” Thanks be to God. Amen.

©2010 Steven Molin