Big Decisions and Little Choices| Mark 1:4-20
Mark 1:14-20
Big Decisions and Little Choices
As I’m sure you all know, we interviewed a ton of people for our youth ministry position after Steve Lefebvre was appointed to serve another church. We did a lot of zoom calls, met some people face to face. Ron Whitler and I drank a lot of coffee around the table in my office and out in different restaurants. The search committee did a great job with advertising and with initial interviews before candidates met with the full Staff Parish Relations Committee (SPRC). It was a lot of work. Some of the candidates were very strong; some not as strong as others, but, all our praying and hard work really paid off. We are so grateful Alison Bocking has joined our staff and church family.
She grew up in the United Methodist church and served on the staff of United Methodist Churches and Christ Cathedral, Episcopal Church in downtown, Nashville.
She is familiar with Cedarcrest and other resources that we have for youth in the Conference. She has hit the ground running and is getting to know the kids and parents and setting things in place. So thank you all for making her being here possible and especially thanks to those of you who served on the search committee of the SPRC and of course, most of all, thank you Lord for answering Prayer.
I have hired a lot of youth directors, associate pastors and other staff members over the years.
In all the churches, I have served when searching for a staff person the process has essentially been the same. You want the person with the best education, the most experience, who works well with other people, and loves God, who you can afford.
There is usually a search committee. It’s a long process.
It is actually nothing like the scene described in our text today as Jesus called those who would work with him and help him teach and serve during the three years of his earthly ministry, and who would go on to lead and build the church after his death and resurrection.
Jesus did not advertise on the conference website or Linkedin. He did not go to the seminary or the divinity school or the rabbinical school. As far as I know he didn’t screen candidates at the Good Cup.
He went out to the lake. Those he called to follow him were not experienced in the ministry. They had not been to Bible college or Seminary. They did know how to fish. Some of them knew how to collect taxes.
Interestingly, what is said of the disciples could also be said of Jesus to some degree. He did not graduate from seminary. He was not an ordained elder, or a rabbinical priest. Other than his mother, no one would have expected him to be a rabbi.
He was trained as a carpenter. The Greek word is Tekton. I know that is the exact word because I looked it up in my Greek New Testament. What I’m not so sure about is exactly what it means. Some scholars say that the word “Tekton” stands in contrast to other trades, like stonemasons. Other scholars say that a Tekton can be a person who works with stone. Either way, Jesus was a person who worked with his hands and not someone you would expect to be a rabbi
In that day, for someone to leave a craft they had been trained in their whole life would have been unheard of and normally quite disruptive.
It would cause raising of some eyebrows. As you know, we don’t hear a lot about Joseph after Jesus was a child and there’s a lot of speculation that he died early in Jesus’s life; but in that culture, even if Joseph was no longer alive, for Jesus to pull his apron over his head, lay down his hammer, and walk out of his shop was a much more significant event than we probably recognize.
In fact, in certain circles, it would been considered not only disruptive, but scandalous. Why? Well, remember that famous line from Tevye in fiddler on the roof?
Tradition!
The tradition was you followed in your father‘s footsteps.
“…because of tradition, we have kept our balance for many, many years”
Did you notice anything in our text today? James and John, who were fishermen, left their father in their boats with their hired workers.
That was not the way things were done.
Jesus is shaking up some families Jesus is challenging tradition, and the status quo from the get-go.
That is not real popular thing to point out these days. We like to hear about how Jesus just gives us peace and comforts us, and solves all our problems, but here at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry He is very likely really shaking things up.
It would be great if following Jesus always meant that our lives were gonna be easier and that if we always do what Jesus has for us to do everybody would love us and think that we are great; but that is not the case, and it has never been the case.
Sometimes Jesus rescues us out of trouble, praise the Lord for that, but sometimes Jesus can get us into some trouble and there’s no getting around it.
James and John left their dad in that boat with just some hired hands so that they could go and fish for people. I hope that their father understood or at least came to understand that they were doing a good thing, but I can’t help but think it might have broken his heart — at least at first.
I can tell you that when I started following Jesus there were some people who are very happy for me. A lot of people knew I needed something, that I needed to make a change, but there also were some people who were not excited about me beginning to follow Jesus.
I think sometimes we forget just how fundamental a change Jesus makes in our lives when we choose to begin following him just like James and John that day when they left their father in that boat with hired workers.
I read some neat quotes recently in my devotional time this week from Amy Carmichael who was born in the north of Ireland in 1867. From the time she was a little girl, she felt called to be a missionary, and just like my wife knew she was going to be an educator from an early age and became one, Amy Carmichael became a missionary.
She served briefly as a missionary in Japan and Ceylon, which today is Sri Lanka but eventually made her way to India. Just imagine, this was back before commercial air travel. She traveled to those places by boat and train. She stayed in India for the rest of her life and for 55 years worked mainly rescuing girls from prostitution. She founded a sanctuary in 1901 that provided a home for over 1,000 children. She also wrote over 30 books.
Amy Carmichael was a lot like Jesus and a lot like James and John. There were some pretty huge “yeses” in her life, but in one of her books she writes about how the real challenges we face so often aren’t with our big yeses but the little yeses they come in following Jesus every day.
Here is a quote from her book, A Very Present Help:
The tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life, silly little nothings, things you were ashamed of minding one scrap.
You see that in the life of those disciples who began to follow Jesus, described in our text today.
They made a huge and perhaps scandalous decision to follow Jesus. No 401k, no dental or vision insurance. No credit card for ministry expenses, leaving their father to run their business.
They were really good at saying yes to Jesus when it came to the really big things, but the little things that come up every day was another matter altogether, like when they were traveling down the road on the way to the next worship service and couldn’t stop arguing about who among them was the greatest.
In other words, to use Amy Carmichael’s language, “the little rubs of life, silly little nothings that in retrospect, make you ashamed to even have focused on” can trip you up if you’re not careful.
So what can we learn from this story from the gospel of Mark?
Big fresh starts are important, like the decision to follow Jesus and the decision to be baptized. That is so huge. But , it’s just as important to follow Jesus in the day in and day out trips down the road and to work and to school and in all the little seemingly unimportant decisions we make, the ones that turn out to be not so important after all.
The good news is, Jesus enables us to make those huge decisions and gives us grace for all those little day in and day out decisions too.