The Adventure of a Lifetime

January 22, 2017

Matthew 4:12-23 

We are now several weeks into the filler season.  It doesn’t even have its own name; we just call it The Season After Epiphany.  The miraculous stories of Christmas are over and we have ages before anything exciting happens.  There’s a whole month and a half until Lent when we start getting ready to come close to the mystery of Easter.  So here we sit in this in-between time, which the Church used to call Ordinary Time.   Which certainly doesn’t sound very exciting, but at least it’s honest.  

But we’re in luck, because today we are being invited to escape this ordinary time and head out on an adventure! 

Today we see disciples-to-be Peter, Andrew, James and John doing what they did before Jesus - casting and mending their fishing nets.  The waves are lapping at the shore, the stench of yesterday’s catch still lingers.  They are in the midst of their ordinary world, with their ordinary relationships and responsibilities. 

And then Jesus walks by and sees them.  “Follow me,” he calls.  And after that, nothing will ever be the same.

I love these stories about Jesus calling his disciples.  I love that he finds these unremarkable people in their mundane places and invites them to join him just as they are.  I find these stories so easy to relate to, with these imperfect, foible-laden disciples.  I can imagine myself into these stories more easily than some of the more miraculous stories of Jesus’ ministry.

And so I was thrilled when I was reading about this passage and came across a writer who mentioned that Joseph Campbell would have talked about this moment of Jesus’ coming upon the disciples and inviting them to follow him as the disciples’ Call to Adventure.  The moment when something shakes up their ordinary world and invites them to some kind of change.

This definitely caught my attention.  I love adventures!  I’m constantly proposing adventures to my kids when we have a free day.  It might be a new waterfall, a hike in the woods, an interesting installation of wacky art, or a picnic.  Anything that is outside our ordinary routine, that makes us get out of the house and try something different.  Apparently, I propose adventures so often at home that it has become something of a joke.  On a day off recently, my son Dylan asked if I was going to make them go on one of my “adventures.” (He even used the air quotes.)  

So, I say, lucky for Peter and Andrew and James and John!  They are being invited on the adventure of a lifetime!  And better yet, we already know they say yes and it changes everything for them!

This is just what we need right now too, don’t you think?  To escape the dreary weather, the political climate, our fears of the world.  To run away from everything and head out on an adventure that will make us forget it all!  To break free from the Ordinary!

Yesterday I brought my older daughter for an adventure into DC for the Women’s March.  

We wore our St. Aidan’s “Walk in Love” shirts and joined the throng of folks gathered on and around Independence Avenue.  

It was neat to be there in the sea of pink, reading the clever signs, listening (when we could hear) to the urgings of a slate of famous women.  There were more curse words and R-rated references than perhaps are ideal for my 13-year old, but there wasn’t a single person to be found that was anything but joyful, kind, helpful and friendly.  Walk in Love seemed to be the theme of the day for more than just Sophie and I.  While inspired by events of the recent past, the focus was largely on the future — how could we stand together to protect women, children, people of color, immigrants, gay people, the environment.   It was definitely an adventure, and I was glad to be there, but when it was all over, I couldn’t help wondering whether it would eventually mean anything.  Would it be more than some pretty incredible photos in the next day’s newspaper?  Would all of these well-intentioned, caring people be up for more than a one-day adventure?  Would we be able to really delve in to work on the harder but perhaps less inspiring everyday challenges that await us? 

That is always the rub of an adventure.  Even for a total adventure seeker like me, my interest sometimes lags and my enthusiasm depends on what kind of adventure it is and how long it takes.  

My chosen adventures are interesting, but fairly safe.  I want a fun chance to explore and learn new things, but I’d sort of like to eventually come back pretty close to where I started.  I prefer an adventure that I have some control over.  One I can prepare and plan for with the right maps and snacks and water bottles.  Truth be told, my kind of adventures give plenty of fun memories and great photos and some fodder for my journal — but they don’t completely upend things forever.

So I have to admit that many of the “adventures” in the Bible aren’t always the kind I’m looking for.  Like the adventure Moses had leading the people in circles in the desert for 40 years. 

Or like the adventure Jesus had in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.  

And, when I think about it, maybe even like the adventure these disciples begin in our story today - leaving their families and careers and homes and creature comforts and pretty much everything they have to start out on an unknown path with a fairly unknown guy.  If we’re honest, probably few of us would envy them the adventure they end up on.

Maybe, in truth, today’s story isn’t offering so much an escape from the ordinary, but a delving more deeply into it.  Like last week’s story, where Jesus asked two disciples-to-be what they were looking for and invited them to “come and see.”  I don’t think any of these disciples when they met Jesus knew what they were looking for or what he had to offer.  Maybe they just had a feeling they were missing something.  Or had a feeling they weren’t quite the person they were created to be.  Maybe they longed for something they couldn’t quite put their finger on.  And then they met this person who was unlike anyone they’d ever met.  Who met them where they were and loved them as they were and just by his example and his presence called them to be more and better than they ever imagined possible.  Who upended their lives completely - not to make them easier, or safer, or more fun, but to make them deeper and more meaningful and life-giving.

Maybe this ordinary time is when the real work happens.  When we delve in to the truly life-changing adventure that never ends.  The call to adventure isn’t just for Peter, Andrew, James and John, but for all of us modern disciples.  Maybe this is when today’s story really starts in earnest, for all of us.  Jesus isn’t asking for us to make some once-and-done grand show of fealty but to shake up our ordinary world by continuing to do the hard work of walking in love with each step every day.  This is the only way to make any headway to the place where we long to be -- the place of our deepest desires and most daring hopes, the place where there is justice and peace among all people and the dignity of every human being is respected.

The disciples had the courage and wherewithal to keep coming and seeing, to keep following.   To continue their daily walk on this completely different kind of adventure, without really knowing where it would lead them.

I wonder if we do too?