Switchbacks on the Trail:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

“Immediately”  “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  I find that hard to believe.  People with lives to lead, families to care for, obligations to fulfill just up and leave it all behind.  How can that be?  How can Andrew and Simon and James and John just chuck it all?  Whatever would possess them to do such a thing—without even giving it a moment’s thought?  

That word “immediately”—that’s my stumbling block.  And I know I’m not alone in this.  Others struggle with that word as well.  It sends folks scrambling.  Some folks focus on the lives the disciples leave behind.  You know that argument—the life of a Galilean fisherman was so difficult, so tenuous that of course the disciples rushed to embrace a different way of living, a different way of looking at the world.  Perhaps.  Others suggest that this story isn’t about those fishermen at all.  The way that argument goes, this is a story about God acting in people’s lives, a story about four men’s “yes” to God.   Maybe so.

There are some biblical historians who suggest that this is not even a case of an immediate “yes” to God.  These folks say that Jesus and those fishermen knew each other rather well.  The way the argument goes, Jesus had spent a lifetime hanging around the Sea of Galilee.  He knew Andrew and Simon and James and John.  They knew him. And they knew they could trust him.  So when he said, “Follow me” and they followed, it wasn’t really immediate at all.  It had been a long time in the making.  A decision growing from a relationship with the one offering the invitation.  That happens, doesn’t it.

Each of these approaches to the disciples’ quick “yes” to Jesus has some merit.  But still that word “Immediately” jumps out.  It draws our attention to the moment, to the beginning of the story of Jesus and those fishermen, and it keeps us from seeing all that follows.  Discipleship—it’s not a moment; it’s a way of life.  A way of life growing out of a relationship with God.  A way of life for Andrew and Simon and James and John, and a way of life for you and me and us together as well.  A way of life and a lifetime along the Way.

Whenever I read about Andrew and Simon and James and John dropping their nets, I find myself focusing on the call and that first response and I forget all that follows.  The challenges, the doubts, the confusion.  Disciples bickering with one another.  Followers struggling to make sense of  the parables Jesus tells. And then the moments when anyone standing nearby can see God at work in the disciples—God through them casting out demons, curing the sick, serving the hungry; God through them teaching another way of living and being in the world. The moments of sheer terror and the moments of awe that come with a life of discipleship.

“Immediately”—it can lead folks to believe that discipleship is straight line way of life, a continual and steady progression into a deeper and deeper relationship with God.  That’s not been my experience of discipleship.  And I’m sure I’m not alone in this fits and starts discipleship that seems to mark my life.  You see it Andrew and Simon and James and John and the others too.  Andrew disappears from the scene. James and John squabble about being at God’s right hand.  Simon—we know him as Peter—ends up denying Jesus.  At the end they all flee.  And then they return to the work of their discipleship.  All switchbacks on the trail.  

And still I wonder—I wonder if there’s not something to that word “immediately”.  That gut-level first response the disciples make.  I wonder if we take it not as a one-time-only kind of thing but as a response we make again and again to God’s oft-repeated invitation to come along, to follow on the way.  

“Follow me,”  Jesus says to us today and every day.  This he says to us as individuals and to us gathered here as the Body of Christ.  What will be our first response?  Where will it take us? The answer’s in the living—the living of our discipleship.

Sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.

Beloved:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

We were sitting at a table in Starbucks.  My friend had just come from his wife’s—our good friend’s—hospital bedside.  For two weeks, he had been at her side watching her slip away, catching sleep when he could.  But that day was different.  He had a calmness about him I hadn’t seen before.  We talked about the horror he’d been through and how he was coping with it all.  In retrospect, I suspect he knew that she was dying.  But he didn’t mention that.  What he talked about was how he was getting through those horrendous days.  That’s where his story joins the story we just heard.  

You see, my friend had this deep sense of peace about him, a calm, a fixed point in the storm that was his life in that moment.  My friend kept coming back to how he felt grounded in and held by God.  I think that’s what happens when you know deep in your bones you’re beloved of God.   Everything else seems to fall away.  It’s freeing.  

Look what happens to Jesus when the heavens are ripped apart and God whispers to him, “You are my son.  My beloved.  With you I am well pleased.”  He’s driven out to the wilderness, tempted by Satan, ministered to by angels.  He’s ridiculed by family and rejected by neighbors.  Powerful insiders taunt him and plot against him.  At the end, even his own disciples flee from him.  

And yet Jesus keeps his focus on the work before him—healing the sick, feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind and proclaiming the good news that God’s reign is at hand.  Jesus knows he’s beloved of God and that makes all the difference in the world.  He doesn’t have to worry about earning that love or somehow disappointing the One who loves him or falling short in one way or another.  He’s loved before he even begins his work.  He is; therefore, he is beloved.

That’s true for Jesus and that’s true for me and you.  We are; therefore, we are beloved.
I wonder what it would be like if we lived from that place of belovedness.  Would we, like my friend, develop a deep peace?  Would we, like Jesus, focus on our mission and our ministry?  

I wonder if knowing that we are beloved of God just as we are would make it easier for us to delight in ourselves.  Do you think we could get a kick out of just being us?

And I wonder how seeing one another as beloved of God would change how we treat one another.  Would we be more tender?  More patient?  More attentive?  

How would our expectations of and interactions with one another change if we kept in mind that God is well pleased with us before we do or say a single thing?  Would we be more accepting of one another?  Would we find it easier to delight in each other?  Would we be more likely to show compassion?

One of my seminary friends tells the story of a classmate—a person she found particularly annoying.  When she found out she would be rooming with this woman for two weeks, she wondered how she would ever survive.   Finally, she turned to a particularly sweet priest who had served a difficult parish for a long time.  She asked him how he put up with the difficult ones.  He told her, “Whenever I look out at my congregation, I see the beloved children of God.”  The way my friend tells it, that shift in perspective made all the difference in the world.

Beloved of God.  That’s true of me, that’s true of you and that’s true of all God’s children.  How do we live with this knowledge?

In a few moments, we will reaffirm our baptismal vows.  They are our response to the love God showers on us.  As part of this reaffirmation, I invite you to stop by the baptismal font after receiving communion.  Pick up one of the pebbles.  Hold it your hand.  Let it remind you of God’s love for you.  Let it remind you that you are beloved of God.  How will you live with this knowledge?

Sorry, the full text for this sermon is not available at this time.