Epiphany 5B – George Yandell
Community organizing is just about the hardest work people can do. Fishing for a living is harder. When Simon Peter and his partners met the finest community organizer in Galilee, the fishing got harder still.
The formula for successful grassroots community organizing is simple. Immerse yourself in the community. Study its history. Learn how people relate to one another. Meet individually with all the people you’re interested in getting to know. Listen for their passions. Ask questions that agitate people around their passions- it moves them off dead center. Hold small public meetings with people of passion to raise up the problems that confront folks in their daily places. Challenge those people to break down the problems into manageable public actions. Teach them to agitate others around their mutual self-interest. Confront them to make them accountable for changing the community. Act publicly in large meetings to hold the powerbrokers accountable for changing the community. Get what the community says it wants through negotiation and repeated, determined public presence. When you accomplish a major action, reflect on your successes and failures and give the people credit for their accomplishments. Begin to work on the next problem the people raise up. Continue the cycle until the community leaders act for the common good, and all the people treat one another with mutual self-respect. Then go on to the next community. That’s a brief synopsis of Jesus’ actions in this first part of Mark’s gospel. Jesus was an intentional community organizer- as were prophets before him.
The most practical book I’ve ever read is the Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide. How many of you have read it? I’ve learned more from that book than any other book, except the Bible and maybe the Boy Scout Handbook. In different ways they answer the question, “What’s in the water?” What the Orvis Guide teaches is to sit and study the water. Don’t even think about rigging your line and plunging in. Stop and really see the surface and its movement, then look deeply into the depths of the stream or lake. One can begin to see the effects of the invisible, hidden structures in the water and anticipate where the fish are.
Reading the water, the wind, the effects of the sunlight, the way birds are feeding on the water can combine to make fishing a nearly mystical experience. If the fish aren’t biting one place, go to the next hole, study it, and let out your line. A fisherwoman can begin to catch fish where she never knew to fish before.
Simon Peter and his partners lived on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. They knew how to catch fish. In today’s gospel, we hear that Jesus left the synagogue after healing the demon-possessed man. Then he entered Peter and Andrew’s house. Peter’s mother-in-law was ill. (Peter was married- did you know that?) Jesus took her by the hand and lifted her, the fever left her, and she began to serve them. On the Sabbath. As the Sabbath was ending the neighbors brought all who were sick or demon-possessed, and Jesus healed them too. And the whole city was gathered at the door of the house. Early the next morning before dawn, Jesus went to a deserted place along the shore. His friends went hunting for him, they found him and told him that even at dawn people were seeking Jesus out. His answer was that of a gifted organizer:
“We’re going on to the neighboring towns to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom there as well. That’s what I do.” Now that’s how to begin successful organizing. Jesus didn’t load Simon up with scriptures, theologies and doctrines, or steep him in yesterday’s traditions and today’s quarrels. He had shown disciples and all the residents of Capernaum what the kingdom of God is like. They all had moments of passionate discovery. Peter and Andrew’s souls opened to Jesus. They followed him, their fishing vocation now become works of healing, just as Jesus had said days earlier- “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And they learned how the kingdom of God opened to them and started learning the way Jesus organized people- by healing, exorcizing, meeting people where they were and moving them out of themselves with a new vision of holy community.
What passions deep within us does God beckon to the surface? What do we need to recognize to confess the truth within us? I have been guided more since mid-life than ever before by words chiseled in marble on the entrance to the library at Virginia Seminary: “Seek the truth, cost what it may, come whence it will.” Jesus stirred the deepest passions by confronting Simon Peter, Andrew, John and James at their place of work. They found the depth of meaning for which all their days of striving had led. They followed Jesus. With him to lead them, they began the strongest, longest-lived community organizing effort the world has known.
The recipe for gospel organizing isn’t complicated: fish where the fish are, and fish deep. That is, organize successfully. Find out what people feel most passionately about. Respond to people as people actually are, listen to the depth of their needs, touch the depths of their longing. Demonstrate how power comes from acting together in mutual self-interest. Proclaim a God who loves deeply. Keep the nets open, and don’t be afraid of success. What complicates is the letting-go that accompanies serious fishing. Loss of intimacy, loss of familiarity, loss of status, loss of excuses for not trying, loss of former dreams, loss of certainty, loss of yesterday’s battles, loss of places to hide from one’s aging, loss of control. In short, do what Jesus does.
Everything changes when a Church starts fishing for real. Community organizing is tough work. The risks of failure are huge: not just disorienting people in trying new ways of doing church, but loss of confidence and self-worth. The costs of success are extraordinary, too: hard work, expense, change, confusion, new alliances. But I stand here to say, the gifts from working together passionately in God’s name far outweigh the costs. A community transforming itself to give and receive respect, to honor mutual self-interest, and to seek the deepest truths in our souls- that sounds like the domain of God. It is love made flesh. It’s our flesh that makes it love.
When did Jesus call Simon Peter and Andrew to be the first in organizing the new community? After he had confronted Peter. When did Peter and the rest change? After they had seen his mother-in-law healed by Jesus, along with the whole village’s ill and possessed. They set out just after dawn to walk the way of Jesus.