Abiding Church Matthew 4:12-22, 1 Corinthians 1:10-17

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been nearly two years now since I was in Israel
and I stood on the deck of our hotel watching the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee.
Down below me I remember I saw a fifteen foot boat putting out onto the water
and there were two sturdy looking young men in the boat,
one operating the outboard motor and the other arranging the nets.
They were fishermen.
They could have been Simon and Andrew.

It was my tour group’s third and last morning in that beautiful spot –
right on the beach, the green hills rising in the background.
I’d just stuffed myself at the breakfast buffet for the third day in a row
and I remember thinking I could be very happy right there for a long time.
But I wonder how those fishermen felt. Were they happy?

Were their roots so deep, their love of Galilee so great
that they couldn’t imagine being anywhere or doing anything else?
Or did they itch to get out of Tiberius, lousy with tourists, and go to Tel Aviv?
Did they yearn to, once and for all,
scrub the smell of fish from under their fingernails
and maybe get some technical training.
Learn computer graphics? Create video games?
Or maybe go to Jerusalem and be part of the political scene?


I’ve always read the story of Jesus’ call of Simon and Andrew, James and John
as a calling to make a hard choice, to give up something very important
for the sake of a higher vocation of discipleship.
I’ve always read that lake-side invitation
as a strong, clear example of Jesus’ compelling personality, his irresistibility,
the innate authority with which he carried himself and spoke.
Jesus doesn’t get ALL the credit, of course.
The four new disciples certainly deserve our admiration for responding to the call.
I’m not sure what’s different,
but for some reason I’m reading this story with new eyes this time.
This time, as I read this story of Jesus’ call to his disciples by the shore of Lake Galilee,
a new thought occurs to me.

What if Simon and Andrew, James and John were sick to death of fishing.
What if Jesus was not so much a charismatic personality
with the booming voice of James Earl Jones,
as he was simply a good student of human motivation;
somebody who could read the eyes of the people he met.
Isn’t it possible that Jesus simply recognized those four fishermen
as young men ready for an adventure; dreamers itching to leave;
bored out of their skulls
and looking for any excuse dry their feet, straighten their backs,
and do something different?
Granted, Jesus didn’t take them very far from home in geographical terms –
no junkets to Rome, no cruises to Greece –
but he did offer them a change of scenery at least,
a chance to expand their minds.


Maybe it’s a sign I’ve grown less romantic in my outlook as I’ve gotten older,
but what if Simon and Andrew, James and John weren’t being so NOBLE
as they were being OPPORTUNISTIC in responding to Jesus’ call.
Maybe the harder sacrifice to make
is not the sacrifice of leaving, but the sacrifice of staying put.
Sometimes the EASY thing is to leave, to walk away, to drop what you’re doing,
leave your old commitments behind, and start over.
Sometimes the harder thing, the more noble calling, is to simply stay.

Every year at Christmas I watch at least part of “It’s a Wonderful Life,”
with Jimmy Stewart playing the role of George Bailey.
You know the story. George can’t wait to leave Bedford Falls and go to college
to be an engineer or an architect.
He clearly hears an enticing, and, one could certainly say, noble calling to leave
and go make his mark on the world.
But just as he’s getting ready to take his first step into his limitless future
he’s called back to take over his father’s little, penny-ante savings and loan.
Go and be free or stay and suffocate, that seems to be his choice.
We know how the movie ends – with him staying and everybody in a group hug.
But really…Did George miss his chance to answer God’s call
by not taking the first train out? Or did he do the right thing by staying put?

I raise this question about whether it is nobler to leave to follow ones calling
or to stay put and “bloom where you’re planted” so to speak
because this Sunday our other New Testament lesson
is from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians
It’s got me thinking about ongoing struggles some are having
in the older, established “mainline” denominations (of which we are one),
struggles over whether to leave the old and follow what they perceive
to be a genuine NEW calling to faithful discipleship
or whether to stay put, to abide.

Last week I spoke of how Paul called the Christians in Corinth “saints”
as a way of giving them a nickname to live up to.
This week though, we begin to get a clearer picture of how far they have to go
to be the people God was calling them to be.

“It has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there are quarrels among you,
my brothers and sisters.”
Quarrels. I should say.
Corinth was a cosmopolitan port city with temples honoring a number of Greek gods.
The people there were used to having choices when it came to their religion.
Among all the church’s other faults and failings, it seems,
was a tendency to choose up sides, to divide into camps
with competing celebrities as their leaders – Apollos, Cephas, Paul.

Each group no doubt had their reasons for gravitating toward one leader or the other,
they had things in common in the way they identified their beliefs or lived out their faith.
It’s not that any of them were WRONG in expressing their differences,
not that they should be judged BAD for wanting to emphasize in their faith expression
a preference for ethical living or abundant grace or lots of institutional structure.
To Paul’s way of thinking, what made them wrong
was that in pursuing their preferences
they felt they had to separate themselves one from another;
in following their calling they felt they had to divide into factions.
“Has Christ been divided?” Paul asks. “Was I crucified for you?”

From the very beginning, the sole requirement for being in the church has been baptism.
John Calvin, our father in the Reformed tradition,
spoke of baptism as an “engrafting” into God’s family where flawed human beings
are joined by grace to create a single organic whole, the “Body of Christ.”
As Barbara Wheeler, President of Auburn Theological Seminary, points out,
“The grafted branch no longer lives on its own;
it draws it’s very being from the host.”1
In other words, the unity of the church is a gift from God
and we are part of the church, not by our own wisdom or choice,
but by God’s gracious invitation.
“Furthermore,” Wheeler writes, “What is the purpose of the church?
The purpose of the church is worship, the giving of thanks and praise to God.”2
We human beings make up the church,
but it is not our prerogative, nor is it even possible, for us to unmake it,
no matter how contentious we become.

The point is this.
Throughout the history of the church there have always been people
who say they feel called to leave the old church
in all it’s corruption and hypocrisy and staleness;
to leave old Zebedee behind with the nets
while they follow Jesus with new energy and purpose;
the way Jesus was MEANT to be followed!
They state that calling passionately and forcefully,
and who can say for sure that they’re not right?


On the other hand, human nature being what it is,
isn’t it possible that the perceived call to leave one situation for another
could be more a sign of human frailty than strength,
a failure of nerve or commitment more than God’s plan.
Could it be that the more noble calling is the calling to stay engaged where you are?
To learn to accommodate each other’s preferences
and yet stay united in Christ?

This is a big topic which needs much more time to address it,
but let me close by calling attention to a neglected word in our English language,
a word I used earlier. It’s the word, “Abide.”
If you look up the word “abide” you’ll find it is a verb with at least three meanings.
All three meanings seem relevant here.

The first meaning is “to remain, to continue, to stay.”
As we try to discern Christ’s calling to us in this increasingly discordant world
and as we do our best to live up to Paul’s designation of us as “saints”
I’d like to see us at least consider the option of staying engaged,
of ABIDING where we are despite it being difficult sometimes.
Often, what gets us thinking about leaving is not so much pain as boredom,
and, as I used to tell my daughter when she would complain of being bored,
boredom is a failure of imagination.

The second meaning of “abide,” is “to put up with, tolerate, stand.”
Sometimes it requires a sheer act of will to put up with our fellow Christians
and for them to put up with us, but like it or not, we’re family
and family doesn’t just give up on one another – we ABIDE.
The last meaning of “abide” is “to wait for patiently.”
The meaning of our life is rarely clear until the end of our life
and sometimes not even then.

While there are times it is prudent to cut your losses,
more often the real payoff and satisfaction in life comes only through waiting it out,
only through endurance.
If we learn to abide patiently, my hunch is we will grow closer not only to each other,
but also to God.

Simon and Andrew, James and John followed Jesus,
leaving their homes and work behind.
Was it the right choice? The noble choice? The predestined choice?
Or just the easy choice?
There’s no way of knowing, really, just as there is no way of knowing for sure
when we’ve made the noble choice or the easy choice.
What we do know is that in any call to follow Jesus there is a cross involved.
And in the cross, in the sacrifice, there is power.

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1 Wheeler, Barbara, “True Confession: A Presbyterian Dissenter Thinks about the Church,” The Church and Its Unity, Office of Theology and Worship, Church
Issues Series, No. 1, PC(USA), 1999.
2 Ibid.