2024.02.18 | Jesus Sought Me
Image from sanctifiedart.org. Used with permission.
“Jesus Sought Me”
Luke 5:1-11
Preached by
Rev. Dr. Marvin Lance Wiser
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, CA
18 February 2024
I’m blessed to be wandering with you this Lenten season. Now you know, we hear a lot about the Hawkeye state from the pulpit, so today I’ll share with you a little about where I come from.
I grew up not in tornado alley, but tornado lane, and in a trailer at my beginning, in the foothills of Appalachia, the borderlands of Tennessee and Alabama. I grew up on a very small farm with a few head of beef cattle and on a sawmill in the hollows of Coldwater Creek outside of Fayetteville, Tennessee, nestled in-between the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan (Pulaski, TN) and the home of Jack Daniel’s Distillery (Lynchburg, TN). The statute of the first Grand Wizard of the KKK still greets all persons coming to do business with county administrative offices at the town square. In the same building, I attended Bible studies within the chambers of one of the county judges. Fayetteville, is famous for its slawburgers, Civil War reenactments, and for sending John Neely Bryan to found Dallas, TX in 1841. You can see a replica of his log cabin in downtown Dallas today.
Now Pastor Arlene mentioned last week that when she was in seminary, I was in diapers–I probably would have been in pull-ups, but they had not yet been invented, then again we might not have afforded them anyway. Either way, by the time I was in high school, it was the turn of the century, and kids drove their pick-ups–sometimes tractors–to school, with shotguns and rifles mounted to the back of their trucks. Columbine changed that. While I hunted squirrel, wild turkey, and whitetail deer as a kid, as I entered high school, I exchanged my camo for the love of jazz, reading, and wanting to explore more than the family acreage. I soon realized that I was not fitting the typical mold. I too began questioning dominant narratives of life around me. I spent a couple of weeks in Tegucigalpa, Honduras on a short-term mission trip to take Jesus, only to find out that, at least according to me, they already had Jesus. But they had some things that I did not, nor could I ever attain in Fayetteville, Tennessee.
I was determined to leave, but not only geographically, but religiously as well. You know, that R.E.M. song, “that’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spot-light, losing my religion.”
I grew up in a church tradition that I soon wanted to get away from. I was disciplined once for showing up to a Gospel meeting wearing sandals. I was coming from marching band practice, and I wasn’t about to wear those white band shoes. Of course, I had a pithy and defiant comeback, “what would Jesus wear?” My experience of church was the diametric opposition of the “He Gets Us” campaign. Most were destined for hellfire and eternal damnation. For my tradition, even the Southern Baptists were too liberal for God.
And so I left, but I kept reading the Bible, especially the Prophets and the Gospels, and I liked what I was reading, and my personal relationship with the divine kept expanding. I wound up taking so many classes in Bible in college I wound up a Psychology and Bible & Religion double major. Of course, I shed and with time got over my fundamentalist past, and caught–just barely–the baby, just as I had thrown out the bathwater. But I wasn’t going to become a pastor.
Sure, I was in classes with pastors-to-be, but afterwards I booked my passage in Tarshish and went to Mexico City. Sure there was a nagging in me, but I knew how to satisfy this calling. I’d be a teacher.
I taught English, but also Bible, and all the while found myself engaging more and more in the pastoral and even preaching, though sharing messages very different from the ones I was raised with, in what is now MAGA country. My faith community in Mexico City urged me to go to seminary, as did my friends and mentors, and I found the longing in me to go as well. So, when things come in threes pay attention.
I loved seminary, I was able to deepen a more liberative faith, and still the ultimate goal was to be a professor. I spent just as much time in classes at Boston College, Boston University, Hebrew College, and Harvard University as I did at Andover Newton Theological School, because I was preparing for the professoriate as well as the pastorate. Sure, I could have taken the easier path to the PhD. I could have gotten an M.A. and taken two years less, but after my experience in Mexico, I knew my calling was one also of a pastor. Of course, Yuliana had to adjust a bit with the idea of being a pastor’s wife, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch for a pastor’s sister.
There were many opportunities to hop back on that boat in Tarshish and sail away, being a first generation college graduate from the deep south in Harvard’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations department was enough to make me shake in my boots. But I had a good cheering squad affirming my calling. There were times on the ordination track that one gets so frustrated they are tempted to toss it back to God. The same happened four-fold in the PhD program. But I pressed on with my bi-vocational calling of pastor-scholar, all thanks and praise be to God. The most transformative experiences of my vocation have occurred in Mexico City and right here in Cherryland.
Previously, I had been like Jonah, on the run, not wanting to answer the call–at least not immediately–I could answer God’s calling another way. What I like to refer to as the Jonah Psalm, Psalm 139 states, “Where can I go to escape your Spirit? Where can I flee to escape your presence? If I were to ascend to heaven, you would be there. If I were to sprawl out in Sheol, there you would be. If I were to fly away on the wings of the dawn, and settle down on the other side of the sea, even there your hand would guide me, your right hand would grab hold of me (Ps 139:7–10).”
My calling was pursuing me, chasing me, even as I distanced myself from it. God was pursuing me. Have you ever found yourself running from something?
In today’s scripture reading, Simon Peter resists the abundant catch of fish and Jesus. He goes a step further, and exclaims, “Go away from me, Lord; for I am a sinful person!” I told you, in my sermon last month, “Fishin’ for Folk,” that there was more to Mark’s version. The casting down of nets and following the messiah is not as immediate once we slow down for the details.
Perhaps, that too was in the back of my mind, when I resisted my call early on, that I was not worthy. I mean, there’s only so many times of hearing “you are not enough,” “God is angry,” and “a lake of eternal hellfire awaits worshippers who clap their hands,” before negative effects take hold in the psyche. What might you have been told that serves as impediments to living fully into your calling? Have you thought about that? Have you spent time unpacking that baggage? Deassessing? Reassessing? Or do you lug it around with you?
Like Peter, when we are suddenly encountered with abundance, do we feel jarred? When something good, holy, clicks with us, do we feel unworthy? What are you resisting that God is offering you?
Like Peter, when we accept callings, there are dramatic shifts, perhaps not immediately, but choices and commitments often lead to turning points, and a lot of them are good and we could never have dreamt them up on our own. For example, Yuliana and I would not be here today in the Eden Area, had I not said, “Here I am Lord.” And what a transformative life-giving and expanding opportunity to partner in ministry with you all.
Have you ever pivoted your life in order to follow a new calling? If not, what’s holding you back? Peter probably felt unworthy, but you know what Jesus said? Jesus’ response was “Do not be afraid.”
I invite you to turn to your neighbor and repeat the words of Jesus, “Do not be afraid.” Go ahead, “Do not be afraid.”
Jesus has got our back on this journey, through Lent and through life. Jesus sought me and Jesus seeks you.
This Lent, we’re joining Peter in figuring out faith. We will wander alongside him, glimpsing Jesus through his eyes. When we allow ourselves to be vulnerable and step out, we will find that God’s love washes over our wandering hearts, and affirms us just as we are to partner in making reality the liberative and life-giving Good News of Christ.
Jesus sought me and Jesus seeks you. That’s the call. What’s your response? Amen.