About 10 years ago, the whole country was interested in the story about the young military couple with a 8 month old baby who drove through a snow storm in the upper Western Mountains to get to a funeral. The only problem is they got stuck in a huge snowdrift on a deserted road 20 miles or so from any town. They spent the first 3 or 4 days in the car conserving heat until no fuel was left and feeding the baby and changing him only as little as possible.
One day they ran out of food and decided to get out of the truck and go for help. Putting on all the clothing they had and harnessing the baby in a suit bag off they went. They walked 2 days and realized they had gone the wrong way. The father bravely knew he had gone the wrong way and left his wife and baby in a cave. He was found and soon also was the baby and mother. All alive. They baby had no damage except dehydration and diaper rash, but both adults had toes and parts of their feet amputated. What a miracle! All because they trusted God!
As all risk takers know, it only takes one misstep to ruin your day or perhaps even worse, kill you. Risk takers absolutely must believe in a higher power to get them to where they are going, no matter what the journey.
You never know what kind of position you will be put in next. Just yesterday, a lady coming to the prayer breakfast at First Pentecostal stepped out of her car and fell on the ice - ice no one could see. We must keep her in our prayers today .
You know what, I’ve learned through all my mishaps, what that father and mother definitely learned in the snow in tennis shoes walking for 2 days, and what they lady who fell must be thinking now---- walking is hard.
Walking is NOT easy. We take walking for granted because we all learned how to master this complex motion when we were just a year old. But walking upright on two legs is a remarkable accomplishment.
Just ask your dog or cat. Better yet, spend a little time observing a baby as it goes through all the stages it must master before any walking can happen. A tiny newborn infant just lays there. Yes, they are adorably cute. Yes, they can bellow at a remarkable number of decibels. Yes, they can fill a remarkable number of diapers. But the only movement they can muster is to thrash their arms and legs about weakly. If it weren't for the fact that babies always learn finally to roll over at exactly the moment you take your eyes off them, you could safely leave a tiny baby up on a high bed or changing table. It just can't locomote.
But eventually this changes. The first hint that a baby is developing its muscles needed to walk is that it learns flopping.
Like the fish on the deck of Simon Peter's boat in today's Gospel reading, a baby will flop about, arch its back, swing its legs from side to side. Everyone knows that if you're going to walk you've got to crawl first. But before you can crawl you've got to flop. Perhaps that’s partially what the Gospe;l lesson is telling us this morning,
Once a young baby finally masters rolling over and sitting up, there's always that day when excited parents think their beloved is just about to take off. The baby gets up on all fours and rocks back-and-forth. To us the child looks like he or she is revving up to speed forward. But they're not. Rocking is another necessary pre-walking, pre-crawling activity that gets the child used to feeling off-balance, educates its muscles to adjust and readjust to motion and the pull of gravity.
Rocking is followed by a kind of insect-like wriggling called squinching, which finally leads to full-fledged crawling. But the baby is only half-way there . . . and is still on all fours. Eventually babies do get up on two feet and learn the art of standing. Then using furniture, their brothers and sisters, the dog, and most of the breakable things in the house as guideposts, babies quickly move on to cruising about their homes.
Finally, only after mastering all these incremental steps -- thrashing, flipping, rolling, sitting, rocking, squinting, crawling, cruising -- a baby learns how to maintain a state of permanent dis-equilibrium called walking. One-year-olds travel a long developmental road before they ever start walking down it.
Jesus led his soon-to-be-disciples through a similar series of incremental baby-steps on their way to confessing faithfulness. You can call it the Faith Walk.
First, Jesus directs Simon Peter to participate in his teaching mission in a simple, straightforward way: by letting his fishing boat be used as a floating platform from which the crowd may be more easily addressed.
Next, Jesus ups the stakes. Now he instructs the fishermen to take their boat out into deep water and to set out their nets for a catch. Not surprisingly Simon stumbles a bit on this step. After all, he's the fishing expert, and Jesus' directive goes precisely against all his experience. Nevertheless Simon picks himself up and gamely points his fishing boat out into the deep water. He has enough faith to do that.
BUT…..It's not until the huge catch of fish, so weighty that it threatened to sink both fishing boats, that Simon loses his footing completely and falls to his knees. Despite his prior glimpses of Jesus' greatness as a preacher, a teacher, and a healer, Simon's fledgling faith is swamped by this catch.
This dramatic call of the first disciples isn't just some archaic, first-century fish story. The step-by-step process into faithfulness that Jesus offers these fishermen, is the same developmental exercise all persons of faith must flex their way through.
The three steps to the Faith Walk are as follows:
1) TRUST ME
The first step is Trust Me. Not having Simon Peter's first-hand experience of Jesus preaching in our home church, or coming over to supper at our house after services, or (by the way) healing a family member of a debilitating illness before dinner time, the trust issue is big for twenty-first century would-be believers.
But it's trust that plugs us into the power source that is Jesus the Christ. In the words of the Psalmist, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your path."
I love the story of Harry, a TV repairman, who was called to fix a television set that had neither sound nor picture. Left alone in the room, Harry spotted the cause immediately: the set was unplugged. Harry faced a dilemma: one part of him said he shouldn't charge the homeowner. The other insisted he be paid for his time. Finally, he presented the owner with a minimum-charge service bill, which read: "Restored isolated connecting cable to primary power source. $25."
You and I are isolated connecting cables that need a power source. Can we trust that power source enough to get plugged in?
2) LAUNCH INTO THE DEEP
Jesus doesn't call us to take half or half-hearted steps. Jesus calls us to launch out into the deep waters of discipleship. The walk of faith is not about safety or risk-free living (although these are noble characteristics). The walk of faith is all about passion and compassion.
In fact, theologian Douglas John Hall insists that "Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it's delivered as easy and amusing, it's another kind of religion altogether." (Journal for Preachers, Lent 2000, as quoted in Martin E. Marty's Context, 32 [15 May 2000], 5.)
Jesus doesn't call disciples to wade in the waters. Jesus calls disciples to launch into the deep with this promise: I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).
3) LEAVE EVERYTHING BEHIND: GIVE GOD YOUR FUTURE.
Leave your old ways behind. Let’s face it. We all have habits, addictions, of some sort. We are not perfect. Just because we are Christian doesn’t means things in our loves will be easy. On the contrary, our lives will be harder because we are fighting against the dark powers that would have us separated from the love and peace of God.
Only God can create in you a whole new way of being in the world. LET HIM DO THAT TODAY!
Fuller Seminary Professor Lewis B. Smedes is an author who has influenced many Christians through his writings and lectures. In December of 2002 he died at the age of 82, having just completed the last chapter of his memoirs, My God and I. In the last chapter of this, his last book, Smedes wrote under the title of "God and an Impatient Old Man:"
"When I was young I hoped with all my heart that Christ would never come, that he would stay up in heaven where he belonged and leave me alone. Every Sunday morning as my family shuffled down to our pew in the Berea church, I was scared half to death by a biblical prayer, taken from the Book of Revelation, painted large on the front wall: Maranatha, Even So Come Quickly Lord Jesus. I countered it, each Lord's Day, with a prayer of my own: "Oh, Jesus, please take your time. Now, when I am lying in bed awake at night, I find myself humming an impatient gospel song that chilled me to the bone every time the congregation sang it, always as if we were standing at the station waiting for a tardy train that is carrying our soldier boy back from the wars.: 'Oh Lord, Jesus, how long?/How long ere we shout the glad song:/Christ returneth, Hallelujah, Amen.'
"This is where I find myself now on the journey that God and I have been on, at the station called hope, the one that comes right after gratitude and somewhere not far from journey's end. It has been 'God and I' the whole way. Not so much because he has always been pleasant company. Not because I could always feel his presence when I got up in the morning or when I was afraid to sleep at night. It was because he did not trust me to travel alone. Personally, I like the last miles of the journey better than the first. But, since I could not have the ending without first having the beginning, I thank God for getting me going and bringing me home. And sticking with me all the way."
What God has begun in you, God wants to complete in you. Will you press on in faith? Will you press on toward the mark of your high calling in Christ? Or will you keep looking back, yearning for the old you and the safe life rather than the new you and the adventurous life?
