STITCHING SCOTLAND TO THE SAVIOR

Jonah 1: 1-10; Mark 1: 14-20

One of the things I have learned while taking my most recent class at Columbia Seminary, the theological training ground of the Rev. Peter Marshall, who is credited with creating the Kirkin' O’ the Tartans service, is that traumatic events experienced early in life have a lasting influence on a person. That is so with John Knox, the man credited with bringing the Protestant Reformation to Scotland. It is not too much to say that Knox brought the Bible as the Word of God back into the Christian pulpits of Scotland’s Churches. His fiery sermons were thundered from the pulpit of St. Giles Kirk, and he took on everyone from the devil to Mary, Queen of Scots. What were the things that happened to Knox as a young man? In his book KNOX THE MAN, Gordon Donaldson lists two of them:  

"One was his association with George Wishart, [a distant relative of the late Ron Taylor of this congregation.] Knox, you remember, carried a two-handed sword before Wishart for his protection. But when Wishart was arrested, [for preaching without a license!] he advised Knox not to seek to join him in martyrdom saying, 'One is sufficient for a sacrifice.’ It rather recalls our Lord's rebuke of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he bade him put up his sword. Wishart's advice, I suggest, may have implanted in Knox's mind the idea that he would be of more service alive than dead, and this is an idea which, I believe, influenced his later actions. [Can you imagine an age when government, highly controlled by the throne at that time, would put people to death for preaching the gospel? Wishart was burned at the stake.] The other episode which affected [John Knox] was his experience in the galleys." [Edinburgh, St. Andrews Press, 1975, p. 3]

Knox was on ship at sea, as Jonah was, but there the comparison ends. Jonah tried to run from God, would not preach when God called him to preach, and would not call for repentance from people he loathed. John Knox, by contrast, was an unwilling passenger on a French galley (or slave) ship for 19 months, and his experience there might have hardened the heart and steeled the soul of this opinionated and outspoken man. But unlike Jonah, he did not flee from God’s call to preach, he seized the opportunity! He stoked the boilers of his soul and set forth, like a refiner’s fire, to preach repentance in the footsteps of John the Baptist. He had cleansing to do! He had change to bring about for God in Scotland! It was treacherous territory like the land itself could be, because of those in power. Although his mentor was John Calvin—the father of Presbyterianism, the man who he believed taught and administered the finest Christian School in the world—he was living a treacherous life, almost like the fiery John the Baptist. We heard in God’s Word for today that John was arrested, and imprisoned also by a ruler, Herod Antipas. He later was given a capital punishment sentence. Knox had watched as the same thing happened to the faithful Christian leader, George Wishart, who guided Knox’s thinking, saying he could do more good for the Reformation of the Church alive than dead. But it did not quell his fiery voice or accusative stands. The group that will go to Scotland with Rev. Gee in May will certainly stop at St. Giles Kirk in Edinburgh; take time to stand near the bust of John Knox, or step into his pulpit if you are allowed to do so! What history happened there! What Godly preaching worked to change an entire country of clans, and herdsmen, and warriors, and scholars!

As Knox read Scripture from the giant Geneva Bibles that were in the Kirk or in his study, he would have read our passage today about the call of the disciples countless times. His Savior passed along a sea; virtually any man in Scotland was a man of the sea; many made their living from the sea; trade necessarily came from the sea; and the winter winds that chilled and summer breezes that blew made inhabitants ones who were in touch with the sea. Knox could have related to his Savior. And alongside the Sea of Galilee, his Savior walked. Why was he there? Was Christ there to contemplate; was he there to catch fish for a meal? Yes perhaps: but more than that he was there to call; notice he did not ask: “Would you like to join me for an adventure?” No! Our Lord’s call is not a question; it is an imperative: Follow me” he said first to Simon (Later nicknamed ‘Peter’) and his brother Andrew. Did they know him? Almost likely they did, all of them growing up in the same small region. But if they did know him, why not question him? Who among us asks friends to come with them without the friends asking “What for?” But there was something about this man from the Galilee, this man from God, this man from Mary, that somehow spoke to their souls. They must have known they were not being asked to go to lunch or do an errand or have a discussion. Scripture says a word that appears often in Mark’s gospel: immediately. Immediately. When was the last time you did something immediately without questioning? Don’t almost all children question, or sit awhile longer when their parent wants them to move now? The passengers on the Costa cruise ship tried to move immediately last week when their captain delayed the order to abandon ship. But do people move immediately when someone yells fire? And yet, these men whom Jesus was addressing, probably fatigued from casting nets—an exhausting job—went immediately after him! There were no questions asked as the story is related in any of the gospels. But if the Lord Jesus has claimed you, or brought you to your knees with the power of the Almighty in his voice, perhaps you followed him immediately too. What will you do when Christ’s call falls on your ears?

Next we notice something remarkable: they left their fishing equipment at the shore. These were not wealthy men: the life of a fisherman was often hand to mouth. Certainly buying or replacing fishing nets was not cheap. And if they were left at the shore, would they have been taken by another person who noticed they had been abandoned? What careful fisherman would leave his gear? My son-in-law Brian is a fisherman and he is careful to maintain his boat, his trailer, his fishing poles and tackle, and his electronic equipment. Few fisherman I know would leave there equipment behind. Did Simon and Andrew do so with some inner feeling that they were being led to a new way of life? Did Simon and Andrew get a feeling from Jesus that he needed them right then? Have you dropped your former life—your sins, your job, your habits—when Jesus called you to follow him? Or have you tried the exhausting and equivocating balancing act of trying to hold on to an old life and also live a new life with Christ? It won’t work friends: many wonderful Christians have learned that over the years: the Apostle Paul preached it in his second letter to the Corinthians saying: “Anyone who is in Christ becomes a new creation. The past is finished and gone; everything becomes fresh and new.” [5:17] Paul became new in Christ. John Calvin, a Frenchman trained as an attorney, became a new creation as he moved to Geneva Switzerland and brought Christian theology and polity to a city that was spiraling downward. And thanks be to God that John Newton, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace” was changed by Christ. He was indeed wretched in his mind as he looked back on his own life of working and beating and killing slaves. He was delivered from his hellish life. You too can be delivered from a life of mediocrity or ambivalence; from a current life that is eating you up or dragging you down. You can imagine yourself symbolically by the Sea of Galilee, going about your business, doing your work, providing for your family. And then a voice, a warmth, a power, a presence comes near you, and you are strangely drawn to him. Follow Christ: he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Jeffrey A. Sumner January 22, 2012