(a first person narrative sermon)
Mark 1: 14-20
Roger Lynn
January 26, 2020

In that one crazy moment my life changed – completely and forever. And from that moment then to this moment now – I have been striving to live fully and completely in God’s “now!”

How am I supposed to explain a thing like that? What words could I possibly use that would adequately describe the experience? All I’ve ever been able to do is struggle around the edges, lift up the corners just a little bit, shine a dim light here and there into the shadows of the mystery. But in spite of such vast limitations – of language, of creativity, of personal gifts – I continue to wrestle with the challenge of telling the tale. When your life takes such a turn, you really have no choice but to share it. How could I not?

I know that it seems crazy when you look at it from the outside. I’ve read what that Mark fellow wrote about it in his Gospel, and that helped me realize just how difficult it is to capture the essence of such an experience. To the casual observer standing on the sidelines, it was just some ignorant fishermen demonstrating an incredible lack of judgment and common sense as we turned our backs on life’s responsibilities to follow after some stranger. But seen through my eyes, in that moment when my brother and I looked up from our nets to see Jesus standing there in front of us, saying “Follow me!”, it was as if a whole new world opened up and I knew as certainly as I have ever known anything that I needed to step through that door. Who can say for sure how and why such things happened? I only know that they do.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. It’s not like I knew what I was getting myself into – at least in terms of any details or specifics. There is no way I could have foreseen where that path would lead me when I took that first step. In many ways it is fair to say that it was a crazy, risky, dangerous decision which we made that day when we chose to step out of our boats and out of our routines to follow Jesus. But in the face of the possibilities I saw revealed in that moment, I knew it was a risk worth taking. It was a call which demanded a response of nothing less than my whole self. A halting and half-hearted answer just wouldn’t do. The journey since then has been both long and challenging, and I have not always lived up to the confidence Jesus placed in me. It has certainly not always been a safe journey. But never have I regretted my decision to step away from my nets and into this new life.

In the years since then I have learned the word which at least partially labels and describes what it was we experienced that day. In Greek it is the word “kairos” – which speaks of a kind of time. Not time which can be measured by the arc of the sun, or the cycles of the moon, or the rhythms of the seasons. Kairos time might best be described as the “right” time. It is the moment of opportunity when all of the pieces of the puzzle fall into place and the picture suddenly becomes clear before your eyes. It was kairos time I glimpsed in that moment when Jesus said “follow me.” It was color filling my vision to reveal that I had only been seeing shadows. It was a chance to come fully alive and breathe deeply for the first time. Of course I seized the moment. It was the chance of lifetime in a lifetime of chance.

And what I have come to realize in all the long years since then, is that the kairos time which seemed so rare and surprising when first I came face to face with it there amidst my nets and boat and the ordinariness of my life is actually all around us all of the time. Every moment holds the potential to be a kairos moment, when the extraordinary abundance of God’s presence breaks into our awareness and calls us to respond. One of the great lessons I learned from my time with Jesus is that it is possible to live fully and completely in God’s “now.” Everything else in life falls into a different kind of perspective. It isn’t that things like family and friends and jobs and responsibilities become less important. In many ways they become more important. But stepping into the “now” of God’s kairos time allows them to be seen for what they are – important, but not ultimate – valuable parts of the whole, but not the whole in and of themselves.

Let me be very clear – important decisions, like leaving behind one way of life and setting off in a new direction, should never be made casually or lightly. There is just too much at stake. But what I learned that morning at the edge of the Sea of Galilee is that sometimes you are given the chance to see beyond the veil of hours and days and years into the heart of time where time stands still. In the eternal now of God’s kairos time, we are each of us offered the opportunity to truly live. And if we are brave enough (or foolish enough – who’s to say where one ends and the other begins) to respond to that call, then life will never be the same again. And for that gift I remain forever grateful.