Dock of the Bay

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday January 25, 2009, the 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time.

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

On Wednesday night as we were studying this scripture, Marie Bolerjack made an observation. She said that Jesus went to the common people. Now, if you want to say this is obvious, you can. If you want to say “Amen” that will be even better. As obvious as this may be, the way she said it made it so clear, that Jesus’ affinity to the poor was absolute. This is where we start today, Jesus going along the Sea of Galilee with the common people, the working people.

The area Jesus passed was the place where the commercial fishermen gathered. If you’ve ever been to a wharf you know the place. Scores of boats lined against the shore. There were men preparing the day’s catch for market; fish were being gutted and deboned with abandon.

Others tended to the nets. The adage that a stitch in time saves nine may not have come from net tenders, but it could have. One well placed stitch on a net would prevent a small hole from becoming a gaping wound in the net, a place where half of the catch could escape.

I imagine there were even others tending to breakfast for the crews. There could have been some sort of café—someone who had a fire prepared and took a fish or two in exchange for cooking for a boat’s crew.

Imagine too if you will all of the birds, probably gulls of some sort, coming for the fish guts left behind by the fishermen.

It would have been busy and it would have been loud. Men would have been shouting instructions to one another, there were probably few if any women around this scene. It would have been a rowdy time, with bragging rights for the day’s catch being debated over by the men. Men would have been shouting things men do over a hard day’s work.

The fishermen were in their boats before the sun, working hard in dangerous conditions. Hopefully, nobody had been injured that day, or worse killed. It was hard work, manual labor. It was a hard life lived by hard men, and into this mix comes a carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus was another man of calluses. His hands would have been marred by years of working with wood. I imagine there would have been scars from tools that left their marks on him instead of on the wood. There would have been ripples in the muscles of his arms and chest from handling the stock. How many of these men working on their boats had known Jesus from their work? Might these men have come to know Jesus by his? Might the old men on the boat known Joseph—and of course all of the stories from thirty years hence?

There would have been joy in Jesus’ eyes seeing the works of other working men, and joy in his voice as he makes a new proposition. He proposes that the men of the sea, first Simon and Andrew, then James and John follow him. Jesus proposes that they should increase the size of their catch from a few pounds to about 160 pounds each, from fish to people.

Here’s a simple truth, Jesus could have started to select his disciples anywhere. Mark’s gospel tells us that he came to the sea, a place where tough men were tough; a place where the threats of life and death meant life and death. He could have gone to the marketplace, he could have gone to the moneychangers, he could have gone to the officials of the temple; instead he went to the fishermen.

We can ask ourselves if Jesus might have gone to the others first. He might have approached the merchants, moneychangers, and priests first, scripture is silent about whether this happened or not. But two things we do know. First, if Jesus had come to the white collar workers first, they rejected him. Second is that when Jesus approached the fishermen, the common working men, the men whose families lived from hand to mouth; these hard scrabble men responded to the Good News Jesus had to share with them and with the world.

People who are secure in their own lives do not need to hear the good news. Most of the moneychangers and temple priests did not need to have anything to do with the Lord. As the hymn goes, “people need the Lord,” and as Barbra Streisand sang, “people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” If we have all we need and need no one or nothing else in our lives, there is no place for the Good News.

People who are wrapped up in their identity as someone important have no special need for the Lord. And, people who are wrapped up in their identity as victims have no special need for the Lord either. When we as people become so consumed with our identities that we are content with our lot in life, we don’t need the Lord. Neither of these extremes, satisfaction or victimization is healthy. Yet, many do not work to move from either of these unhealthy extremes.

We are familiar with the people around us who have all they need from this life. They are rich enough that they can walk onto the TV set of a corporate boardroom and scream “you’re fired” as America cheers waiting for the next week’s victims like the people in the Coliseum waiting for the Emperor’s next thumb’s down. We may be less familiar with the person whose fate is on the opposite end of the spectrum of wealth, but shares the same consumption with their lot in life.

There’s an old soul song, one of the greatest of all times, Otis Reading’s (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay. The bridge goes like this:

Looks like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can’t do what ten people tell me to do,
So I guess I’ll remain the same.[1]

It’s a cry of frustration, it’s a cry of helplessness, it’s a cry of hopelessness. Nothing is ever going to change, so I guess I won’t either. The way of life is futile, and the way of change is even more futile. This is the cry that nothing is ever going to change and there’s nothing that can be done about it. But our Old Testament reading tells us this is not so.

Jonah is called by the Lord to take a simple message to the city of Nineveh, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” There is no hedging, no wiggle room in this message. This is a warning that in less than six weeks you will meet your maker, literally. The Lord’s message has no if’s, and’s, or but’s. It is just a simple message from the prophetic equivalent of the Town Crier.

So the people did what people do, they cried out to the Lord. They cried out by fasting. They cried out by putting on sackcloth. They all cried out to the Lord from the greatest to the least.

The people of Nineveh had everything they wanted, but they did not have what they needed. When the Lord’s warning came to town, to use the words of Mark’s gospel, the people repented and believed in the Good News. By this, they were saved. What is amazing is that the Lord did not promise salvation to the Ninevites, but the Lord bestowed his grace upon the city and all that lived there.

All was helpless for Nineveh. There was no way out of the predicament they had put themselves into, but when they put their faith in the Lord, repenting and believing, a new day was known in the city, a day that was Good News to the people who needed good news. Good News not for the glory of the repentant, but for the glory of the Lord.

Humility is necessary to hear and live the Good News. People need the Lord and people need other people to live as God intended. There has to be knowledge that without the Lord, without the community of the Lord that is the body of Christ, we do not live as we were intended; in God’s good creation and as the Body of Christ. At times like this I thank God that I say this to people who know this is true.

Based on census information, Presbyterians fit into what could easily be the self satisfied comfortably living population. Based on the quality of life of Americans compared to the rest of the world, we fit into what could easily be the self satisfied comfortably living population. Yet I look around and know that we all know there is more to life than what we can provide for ourselves. We know that there is more to our lives than what we can provide ourselves. We know that we need the Lord and we need each other to live as God intended.

And we know this for the same reason Jesus knew, because “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.”

The time has been fulfilled; the special time which God has assigned has come to fruition. The time is like a tomato ripened on the vine, and picked at perfection. It is not mealy or pithy; not too firm and not squishy. It is perfect. It has reached a rich fullness;[2] there is no better moment than this. Time itself has reached this moment as Jesus walks along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Time has reached the moment of perfection and Jesus says, “Follow me.”

This is the call, the vocation that Jesus has placed on our lives. Jesus says “follow me” and we follow. We follow because in Him, the kingdom of God has come near. Scripture teaches that the kingdom of God is the kingly rule of the Lord, the sovereignty of God, not some physical place. The kingdom of God is an eternal fact that comes to be fulfilled as hope for in the future.[3]
The kingdom of God is rooted in the Old Testament. It can be seen in the Lord’s wrath against Nineveh, and even more in the Lord’s grace toward Nineveh and its people as they repent and believe in the good news.

This is what we are called to share, the coming of the kingdom of God in the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are called to join Simon and Andrew and fish for people. We are called to take the good news and take it to all who need to receive it.

There is a word we are all familiar with, evangelism. In our culture this little word carries an awful lot of baggage. Some say evangelicals are not too smart. Others say evangelicals are bigoted or small minded. Evangelism has been given a bad name by the way it was often coupled with imperialism. But none of this has to do with what evangelism truly is.

Evangelism, evangelist, and other words like these come from a Greek root meaning “good message” or “good news.” Evangelism is sharing the good news. An evangelist is one who shares the good news. That’s all. And this is our call, we are to know the good news and share it with creation.

Marie Bolerjack said Jesus went to the common people. Notice the active verb, Jesus went. He didn’t wait for the people, he went to the people. Jesus comes to meet us where we are, whether in the temple or on the dock of the bay. By his grace and peace, we hear and experience the good news. How can we do anything less than share this with the world?

[1] Reading, Otis, (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay, from “The Dock of the Bay” 1968.
[2] Kittel, Gerhardt, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, volume VI, page 285.
[3] Kingdom of God, Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, G.A. Butrrick, Dictionary Editor, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962, from the Electronic Edition.