A Grander View of Living
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A Grander View of Living
October 30, 2011
by Rev. William “Buck” Day
Well, we are finishing up our four-week journey of “Walking Across the Room.” We have been talking that in classes and here on Sunday morning. I know that you have been working hard, so I want to give you a little break. I want to take you on a vacation. Who is ready for a vacation? O. K. Very good. With a little stroke of good luck and a little bit of imagination, imagine yourself being whisked away to a tiny island in the Bahamas. Upon arrival it is such a fantastic day that the only thing that you can think about doing is going snorkeling. So within twenty minutes you have your mask, your fins, your snorkel, and your swim suit and you are on the boat and headed out. As the boat begins to get to the place where you are going to dive and the driver cuts the engine, you begin to scan the water for where you want to go in. As you jump into the water, you enter into this kind of peaceful floating rhythm as you are floating on your back and you are enjoying the surroundings. You are enjoying the deep blue ocean, the high sky with the sun and a few clouds floating through there. Perfect day, isn’t it? Perfect day. As you float on the top of the water you go, “Wow! This is great!”
What is wrong with this picture? (silence) Nothing!! (laughter) There is nothing wrong with this picture. You have scored a free trip to the Bahamas; you are floating in the middle of the ocean on a perfectly sunny, calm day…what more could there be…hanging out and enjoying it.
But what if I would tell you, and you knew that this was coming, didn’t you? What if I were to tell you that right below the surface of the water you were missing out on an unbelievable activity in a whole other universe? So what you do is you put on your mask, you clear your breathing tube, you roll over and you look under the water. You take in the surroundings and you are blown away by what you see. Where did all these fish come from? …you are thinking. How come they are not hitting my legs and touching me? Wait a sec …Is that a barracuda coming by? Push that away! And you are trying to take in all the colors and all of a sudden a giant school of yellow and neon blue angel fish swim by you. It is amazing. As you enjoy it, there is a certain smell to the surroundings. Yes, it is the salt water, but it is even more than that. It is this idea of, things are alive. So you pop your head up above the water again; and, as you lift your head out, the contrast is baffling to you. Because, above the water, it is all still and calm and tranquil; but below the surface, there is all kinds of activity of events going on and movement and even challenges that are there for you.
Life! Life from a different perspective! Acknowledging that there is more to life than what we just see on the surface. That is what we are calling “a grander vision for living.” That is what we want to talk about today, a grander way to view our lives and our world, as well. Well, what is “A Grander View of Living?” Well, since we are already at the sea, how about a little fish story? Huh? It is a story that many of you have probably heard before and we want to maybe dissect it in a way that maybe you have never heard before, hopefully. And out of that I want to give you just a couple observations and then an exhortation. So with that, I want to turn to our Scripture today, and it comes from Luke, Chapter 5, and I invite you to follow along with me: (Luke 5:1-11)
1-3Once when he was standing on the shore of Lake Gennesaret, the crowd was pushing in on him to better hear the Word of God. He (being Jesus here) noticed two boats tied up. The fishermen had just left them and were out scrubbing their nets. He climbed into the boat that was Simon’s and asked him to put out a little from the shore. Sitting there, using the boat for a pulpit, he taught the crowd. (Maybe I should take that on, huh?)
4When he finished teaching, he said to Simon, “Push out into deep water and let your nets out for a catch.”
5-7Simon said, “Master, we’ve been fishing hard all night and haven’t caught even a minnow. But if you say so, I’ll let out the nets.” It was no sooner said than done—a huge haul of fish, straining the nets past capacity. They waved to their partners in the other boat to come help them. They filled both boats, nearly swamping them with the catch.
8-10Simon Peter, when he saw it, fell to his knees before Jesus. “Master, leave. I’m a sinner and can’t handle this holiness. Leave me to myself.” When they pulled in that catch of fish, awe overwhelmed Simon and everyone with him. It was the same with James and John, Zebedee’s sons, coworkers with Simon.
10-11Jesus said to Simon, “There is nothing to fear. From now on you’ll be fishing for men and women.” They pulled their boats up on the beach, left them, nets and all, and followed him.
Quite the day, isn’t it? Quite the day for Peter, who is known as Simon, and James and John. They had just hit the mother lode, hadn’t they? They had just hit the mother lode. So the point that their nets were just about to break because of all the fish and I can imagine the scene here that Jesus is probably laughing to himself in all the commotion of trying to get the guys’ attention. Jesus is saying to them “Hey guys, you think this is fun? You think catching unbelievable amounts of fish is fun? How about if we multiply that fun factor by a thousand? How about instead of just making some money on a good day’s catch, how about landing a few destinies? Instead of going after 6 inch minnows, let’s go after 6 foot people. Come with me. Come with me and you will see what real living is all about.”
This is an odd little miracle that Jesus puts out there. But in doing that I think he begins to lay out one of the critical aspects of his teaching, which might be called this idea of the little fish versus the big fish. Think about this with me. From the moment that Jesus arrived on the scene all the way up to today, Jesus is asking all sorts of people one simple question: Are you going to throw away your one and only life pursuing small fish? Or, are you going to be risk taking and throwing your nets out to catch some human size ones? Are you going to keep your head above the water? Or, are you going to dive headlong into a grander vision for living?
This grander vision of living starts with making people a priority, making people a priority. Jesus wanted these three career fishermen as well as us, all of us here as a people of Faith, to understand what life is all about. It is about people. A grander vision of living has its priority always on people. Jesus wanted the disciples and he wants us to prioritize people in our lives. Prioritize them above everything else that vies for our attention and we all know what that is. Walking across the room for people is what we are to be about. Caring about others more than ourselves, having what might be called a radical inclusiveness for all people, even if they look different, they talk different, they maybe think different, act or vote differently. It doesn’t matter. Jesus is asking all of us who want to be these walk across the room folks that we have been talking about over these last four weeks. He wants to say “Will you choose a grander vision for your life?” It is a big fish opportunity, he is telling us. You can catch fish or you can be “fishers of men and women” as our text said. You can be a successful business person or you can get busy about the business of redeeming lives. You can be a top student or you can focus your attention on studying people. You can be a superstar salesman or you can start letting people see the light that shines in your life for all the people around you.
Jesus was clear about which path was better. As you look at this verse from Matthew 5:16: “Let your light shine before others in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” Notice that it says “in such a way,” in such a way. Jesus says that, that must mean that there is more than one way. Jesus says you know what? You and I get to choose. You and I get to choose whether we are going to be people of light, whether we are going to let our light shine so that it would impact people. Because, our light is either going to shine to point people towards the Father, or we are going to keep our light to ourselves and deny the people that we supposedly care about the opportunity to have a relationship with Christ.
Jesus is saying the people come to know the Father by how we treat them, how we respond to them, how we embrace them, how we prioritize them. Notice here it says “Let your light shine.” Let your light shine—not your pastor’s light shine, not your small group leader’s light shine, not your Christian friends’ light shine. Let your light shine, meaning then that all of us have a role to play. It is about doing the little things that is really what we have been talking about over these last four weeks—doing the little things that make an impact. It is not about doing some kind of giant theological dump on somebody so they are backed into a corner and because of our great wit and logic that they are going make a commitment to Christ. That is not what we are talking about. It is about doing the little things. It is about building friendships. It is about walking with people even when they are far from God. When all of us do that together, then we can have a huge impact on people’s lives.
Living with that kind of grander vision of life is how the kingdom of God gets done. But even beyond that, living with that kind of grander vision of life is the way that our souls also get satisfied. It is like having all the beauty and excitement of being under the water rather than just floating on the surface. Jesus knew that if you and I build a lifestyle around getting to know people— caring for them, serving them, listening to them, embracing them, exposing them to spiritual things, prioritizing people—if we do that, we will never crave our old life again. And that is what it means to have this prioritizing people as one of the ways we live a grander vision of life.
The second observation for a grander vision of life is that we are to live by focusing on the potential. Focus on the potential. Think about our story with Jesus. It didn’t matter to him that these soon to be disciples who were really teenage boys responded to his notion of throwing out the nets in something less than an obedient fashion. You can almost kind of hear them whining, can’t you? “We have been out all night.” “We know there is nothing out there, we know how to fish.” “There is nothing out there.” But Jesus saw who these guys could be. He saw past that once they began to choose a grander vision of life.
Last week we were talking about the power of stories and we were talking about our before and after stories. Think about what was it that Jesus looked past in your before story? What did he look past in you to embrace you, to accept you, to enfold you in his grace? Because I guarantee that every person in this room he has looked past something. Everybody has something that needs a little shaping, a little refining before we come to Christ. The key is to let God do the work in the people’s hearts and in their lives, instead of us becoming what might be called lifestyle referees with everyone that we meet. My hope is that all of us will approach people with that same kind of radical inclusiveness, that same eye on their potential, that each of us are grateful to God that he had for us, remembering that he saw something valuable in each one of you to take you in, even when we were living in the middle of our own sinfulness. That is why I love the saying that “Jesus loves us so much that he won’t let us stay the way we are when we come to faith in him.” And that helps us begin to build a grander vision of life.
Levi, the tax collector, also known as Matthew, is a great example of this. In Luke Chapter 5 a little farther past the story that we read this morning, Jesus calls Levi to leave his job and to follow him. Jesus saw the potential in this cheating tax collector and invited him to leave his collection booth and follow him. As Jesus began to give Levi a grander vision of what life could be like, as it began to take root in his life, Levi said “I want to expose more people to this. I want to expose my family to this, I want to expose my friends to this, to this love, this acceptance, this hope that I have found in Christ.” He knew that their lives would be blest as they came to know Christ; but he had no idea how to make that introduction, how to start that process.
So using our language from our first week, four weeks ago, Levi was standing in his new found “circle of comfort” with all of his new Christian friends; and yet, he saw his old buddies, the other tax collectors that were once his familiar group but now in reality were his “circle of the unknown.” In that, something was tugging at Levi’s heart, so he made a decision. He decided to take a walk. He cleared it with Jesus and the rest of the disciples and he acted. The one thing that Levi knew how to do, that Matthew knew how to do, Matthew knew how to throw a party. He knew how to throw a party because he had thrown a lot of them for his buddies. So he decided he was going to throw a party; but not just any party. He was going to throw a party where he was going to stick his old tax collector buddies in the same room with Jesus and the other disciples. Then he was going to hope and he was going to pray that some of the good stuff that he saw would rub off on those guys—that they might taste a little bit of grace. A Matthew party. A Matthew party with Jesus and all his disciples with all of these tax collecting buddies. Matthew had the right view of his role in his friends’ lives. He knew he didn’t have his act together. He knew he didn’t have it all figured out; but the one thing he did know he had securely, was the hope of heaven. He had the hope of heaven and that reality single handedly motivated him to take action. Matthew knew that God had saved him for a purpose and the purpose was for more than just his own salvation. It was to be salt and light in the world.
A purpose centered around living out of a grander vision for what could be, making people the priority, looking for their potential and then getting all over the task of walking across the room; because Matthew knew that people were the only thing that he was going to be taking with him to heaven. And the same holds true for you and me. The same holds true for you and me. So, the invitation has been extended. Will you opt for a grander vision or will you settle for a lesser vision? Don’t settle for just what is at the surface of your life. Imagine the magnificent gift you have to give to a world that is waiting, the gift of a relationship with Christ, one that is like no other. Jesus is the one who cast aside his own agenda to reach out to people; and that is why we walk across a room. That’s why we walk across rooms—in order to share our changed lives with those that don’t yet have that hope. Who don’t have the assurance of life here on earth, as well.
So here is my exhortation for us. Throw a party! Throw a Matthew party! Throw a Matthew party. And as you think about what that might mean and what that might look like in your life as it says here, “Keep it simple. Do what makes sense for your setting,” O.K., what makes sense in your environment with your circle of friends and then go with that. You don’t have to spend a lot of money. Just, how do you get folks together to enjoy themselves, to begin to cultivate those relationships, to discover stories like we talked about last week? And then the last piece here I want to hit on is that as you think of having a Matthew party, when it says get the ratio right, I think it is really important that there are more people who are far from faith than those who are followers of Christ. In other words, make yourself outnumbered, because part of that is that you want to have people feel like this is a good environment, a safe environment and they don’t feel like they are getting set up. Because if they feel like they have been set up, they are going to shut down and you are going to have a very hard time making any difference in their life. So that is my challenge to us. Walk across the room. Throw a Matthew party. And then let the Holy Spirit do its work. That is God’s gift to us to share with the world.
Would you pray with me please?
Lord God, thank you, thank you that you are Lord over all and that, in fact, you have saved us for a purpose, Lord. If we weren’t supposed to do something here after we have become followers of yours, you would just take us up to heaven but you didn’t do that Lord. You have called us to be salt and light. So mighty God I ask that you would move in our hearts to care about people, to walk alongside of them, to encourage them, to accept them that in that they might, through the power of your Holy Spirit, be touched by the grace that has touched each one of us. Lord that is what I ask for this day, for all of us, in your name, Jesus. Amen.