When I was a freshman in college, I used to go down to the basement of the student center on Sunday nights and call home from the bank of pay phones there, collect. And that first fall I called my parents one Sunday night to learn that Andrew, the youth minister at my church, the one who made church fun and relevant for me, the one really responsible for getting me to go to his college alma mater, the one who took my friends and me on retreats and helped us grow up, was leaving the church. I was flabbergasted—all was well at church, he was happy, there was no reason to move on. I was angry, and sad, but probably most of all just confused.
Now, when this week’s letter arrived, I’m fairly certain you all had some sort of reaction: maybe surprise, or sadness, or irritation, or glee. But whatever it was, underneath it was the same reality that I experienced that long ago Sunday night in the basement of the student center: change has come; the way things were is suddenly not the way things are going to be. Even before the change actually becomes real, there is a shift in our perceptions, somehow the world is just different.
The way Mark tells the story, we always assume that James and John and Andrew and Peter happily left their nets because something about Jesus was so compelling, it was a no-brainer. But maybe in that moment of encounter with Jesus, Andrew was irritated, because the invitation threw a wrench into his well-oiled plans for the day. Maybe James was immediately anxious, because all their fishing tackle was going to get left behind on the beach. Maybe John felt a wave of relief as he saw a golden opportunity to get away from yet another day of sun and bugs and pulling and lifting. They all may well have been feeling strongly in different directions, but the point is that by just showing up, Jesus changed everything. If they went forward with him, nothing would be the same. And if they didn’t choose to follow, they would go back to their fishing and the world would still be different, because they had the reality of the encounter to digest and the weight of their decision to ponder.
Friends, I’m not just talking about a minister leaving a church, but the feeling you had when you opened and read that letter, the feeling beneath the sadness or the confusion or the relief, the deeper feeling that change has arrived, that is the feeling that comes with, that is the feeling that is the price of, authentic Christian discipleship. Not all the time, not everyday, but that feeling ought to be there now and then, because life—real life—is all about change, and if we are to truly experience the abundant life God intends for us, our experience every now and then needs to be about seeing and embracing significant, course-altering, soul change.
The four fishermen left behind pretty much the whole of their lives as they knew them. And that’s really not in the cards for us, but the impact of their dramatic moment does and should reverberate for us: because we trust God and want to follow Jesus, we have to be willing to leave some things behind, to see and accept and adapt to changes—some of our own choosing, some not; some literal and some less tangible, but no less powerful.
We inaugurated a new President and a new administration this past week, and the same dynamic is at work. That is a change that we can’t go back from—there’s no retreat, no electoral do-over, it’s as final as four fishermen dropping everything and just walking away. And forget the Democrat or Republican thing; no matter who’s leaving and who’s coming, one of the most moving moments for me in this transition of power is when the new President reviews the troops, and the troops acknowledge and honor their duly-elected commander-in-chief, they accept the change and do their duty. Inauguration Day is the moment to put all the campaigning and partisanship behind, not to be nice, but because the deal is done, change has come, and like it or not, there’s a new President and our success going forward hinges on accepting that reality.
And yet on Tuesday I also saw and heard resistance to that inevitability. There were left-leaning people booing the former President as he departed, and there were right-leaning commentators immediately bashing the new one as he arrived. But to what end? The change has come, and we can mourn or complain or gloat, or we can just get moving.
It is our natural inclination to resist change, because we like the safety and security of predictability. That’s a healthy impulse, to a point. Beyond that point, our resistance to change can be counter-productive or even destructive, when we get so set in our ways that we become convinced we’re right and air-tight; when we don’t realize that our habits keep others out of, or at a safe distance from, our little circles of safety; when our familiar ways of thinking and seeing fall into ruts and we lose sight of the bigger picture.
Jesus’ ministry, his teachings, his example, were all about, first, helping us see that some change is inevitable, and that we can trust God to help us through it; and, second, that some change may not be inevitable, but it is necessary, and we can trust God to keep nudging and needling us until we embrace it or choose to destroy some essential part of ourselves resisting it.
Some change in life is inevitable, and the sooner we can see that and prepare for it, the more abundant our lives will be. In a moment, a couple become parents, and change, from which there is no retreat, has come. You earn your diploma and the school says, “So long!” and change, from which there is no retreat, has come. You have a heart attack, or a cancer scare, or one day just realize you’re really getting old, and change, from which there is no retreat, has come. And then someone you care about dies, and change, from which there is really no retreat has come. Those changes are just part of life, and yet how clever and persistent we can be at resisting even them. Lots of babies grow up with parents who don’t embrace that fundamental parental responsibility; there are plenty of examples of the perpetual student who never goes to work, and those who won’t work, and those who just never accept that they have to work; we put off going to the doctor, or try to ignore warning signs of illness, or have procedures to make us look like we’re not getting older; and how uncomfortable we are with death—with being with those who are dying, with contemplating the deaths of those we love, with responsibly planning for our own.
Christian discipleship doesn’t ignore these inevitable changes in human life, it goes right at them. It names them, it identifies them as being of ultimate importance to God, and it affirms that God’s grace flows most freely as we move through those changes.
And then there are those changes in life that we may not want, but are just necessary for life to continue to move toward the vision God intends. Let’s call these shark changes—the shark has to keep swimming, keep moving through the water, or else it dies. To follow Jesus is to keep moving, to embrace changes that may not be easy, but are necessary for the fullness of life God intends for us. Last Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and the issue of racial justice is just such a shark change. Segregation and racism was keeping this country mired, and people started pushing to get it moving. It was hard work, and there was sacrifice, and it wasn’t always easy to know what to do, but in keeping the faith, doing God’s will as best we could discern it, change came, and change for the better. There’s still work to do in racial justice, but from where we are today, we can see that had this nation stayed motionless in its segregation, we might very well be dead by now, at least in terms of the soul of this country.
As a New England congregation, where tradition is so highly valued, those feelings of impending change don’t always sit well. New hymnals and new language and new by-laws and new staff and new issues of social justice—it takes us time to embrace them. The challenge of our discipleship is to not let so much time elapse that stagnation sets in, or the mindset of tradition for tradition’s sake. Being part of a church of Jesus Christ is choosing to fully engage the roller coaster ride that is life moving forward, rather than denying the parts we don’t relish, or trying to control them.
As Peter and James and John and Andrew show us in their encounter with Jesus by the shoreline, Christian discipleship sometimes asks us to leave places, or to leave people we care about in order to move forward, to grow, to live abundantly. Christian discipleship sometimes asks us to leave old habits, or behaviors that don’t serve, or worn out thinking that keeps us mired, stuck in place.
Change comes: a child arrives, a minister leaves, a President is inaugurated, a loved one dies, a tradition is set aside. To be alive is to sometimes take leave of what has been, and we all have to do it. And to be a disciple is to embrace that leave taking fearlessly, not in denial of how hard it can be, but because we have confidence that for those who choose to follow, God offers grace and strength to see any change through to the other side.