Spending Your Life

Luke 5:1-11

Sunday, February 4, 2007

The Rev. Dr. David A. Van Dyke

The Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time  

 

  

Prayer: In the quietness of these moments, O God, startle us by your presence. Silence in us any voice but your own, that in hearing your word, we may see and know Jesus the Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.

 

 

Simon Peter’s confession comes at an odd time—right after the biggest haul of his life.  

 

All night long they had fished and yet caught nothing. They must have been hungry.  They must have wondered, if this keeps up, things like paying the bills and meeting our business obligations—things such as payments on the boat and nets and equipment, payments to owners of the docks—if this keeps up the future is not looking very good. 

 

But then Jesus tells them to let their nets down into the deep water and despite their skepticism, they do it, and to their astonishment, they catch more fish than they ever imagined was possible.  So many in fact that they have trouble hauling them all in, which you’d think would have been a time of celebration.   

 

But instead, Simon Peter falls to his knees and cries out, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  

 

The timing is odd for that kind of confession, so obviously, something is going on there.  And Jesus picks up on it and extends an invitation for Simon to fish for people, or to say it another way, to follow him.  To become his disciple.  In other words, to change his life.  To go from what he had been doing—what he thought was his life’s work, into something completely different.      

 

What was it, do you suppose, about that sudden, unexpected and yet tremendous success that produced a confession like that?  Well I think success sometimes has a way of putting all things into perspective. 

 

Being in that boat all night, pulling in those empty nets, must have caused those disciples to not only worry about their futures, but to say to themselves and maybe to each other,

 

If only we’d have a big catch, a record-breaking catch—if only our nets were full, wouldn’t life be sweet.  

 

It happens time and time again that people who have achieved what the world deems as a lot, or who have been according to all estimations successful, nonetheless find themselves unfulfilled by what they’ve managed to accomplish.    

We spend a great deal of time wondering, worrying perhaps, about what to do with our lives—how we’re going to spend them.  How we spend our lives in many ways, is the most important decision we’ll ever make.  It’s also, I’m convinced, not a decision we make only once.

 

And if you’re like me, you’ve encountered any number of people who are unhappy in the decisions they’ve made about how to spend their lives.  In some cases it was the wrong decision. In other cases the decision they made just didn’t turn out well and they don’t know what to do about it.  They don’t know how to get out of the rut they’re in and change their situation or circumstances. 

 

And the decision about how to spend your life, whether you think about it in these terms or not, reflects your values and your commitments, but also your beliefs about who God is and who you are in relationship to God.  How you spend your life is a theological issue, and we all know that there is good theology and bad theology.    

 

Psychologist David Myers, who has studied human happiness, cites a Duke University School of Business study in which the students were asked to write a strategic plan for their lives.  With few exceptions, what they wanted fell into three categories: money, power and things—very big things, including vacation homes, expensive foreign automobiles, yachts and even airplanes.  Their request, according to the faculty, was this: “Teach me how to be a money making machine because all else is irrelevant (see David Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness, p. 32)  

 

It’s no secret that those of us in the West have an insatiable appetite for money, power and material things.  But make your life’s quest a scramble for those things, and before too long, you will find yourself discouraged, unfulfilled and bored out of your mind. 

 

Some of the unhappiest people in the world are people who will never know financial hardship, while some of the happiest, most fulfilled people in this world hardly have a dime. 

 

And yet I am encouraged by young people I meet, whose passion for a more just world, tells me that all is not lost.  And I think something like that—a life-changing moment is happening in today’s text—and that when that great catch was hauled in, it put all things into perspective and suddenly, a boat load of fish meant as little as little to Simon as would have a boat load of money. 

 

Victor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp. While there he lost his wife and family and yet emerged triumphant.  Frankl observed that there were many prisoners who underwent less hardship than others and yet died, while there were those who endured more and somehow survived.  Frankl’s observation was that the survivors tended to be people who envisioned a future for themselves despite their present suffering—in other words, those who knew that their lives had meaning beyond their current circumstances.  In his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl says,

 

What matters is not the meaning of life in general but the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. Everyone has their own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment p. 171).

 

It sounds cliché to say, but perhaps only because we know it to be true: each of us has gifts—God-given gifts and talents.  Our task in life is to discover those gifts and to determine how best to use them.  In many respects, it is the most important decision any of us can make—how we’re going to spend our lives. And the outcome of our decisions will determine our happiness and our fulfillment and sense of purpose in life. 

 

Not everyone should go to seminary and become a minister.  Not everyone will discover a cure for cancer.  Not everyone will make a huge scientific breakthrough or write a great novel.  We are not called, I’m convinced, to single handedly establish the Commonwealth of God on earth.   But what we are all called to do is to be faithful—faithful to God and to the gifts we have been given.  And faithful to Jesus Christ who invites us to follow him.   To utilize our gifts in the time we have and where they are needed most.  To love as Christ loved.  To live as intentionally and completely as he lived. To risk greatly for something larger than ourselves and our own security.    

 

This was an idea not lost on the reformers of the 16th century, by the way.  As Charles Taylor writes,

 

The affirmation of ordinary life finds its origin in Judaeo-Christian spirituality, and the particular impetus it receives in the modern era comes first of all from the Reformation…The highest can no longer be defined by an exalted kind of activity; it all turns on the spirit in which one lives whatever one lives, even the most mundane existence (see “Divine Summons,” The Christian Century, 11-1-2000).    

 

Each of us has to answer the question as to how we’re spending our lives.   Maybe you’re simply putting in your time as days and sometimes years, melt one into another?  Maybe there is a restlessness burning in you and you don’t know what to do about it? 

 

But while there are some here this morning who need a radical change in their life’s direction—who need very much to leave what they are currently doing and follow their dreams, not everyone can do that.  There are people who depend on you and who need you—you have responsibilities that would frankly, be irresponsible if you were to shirk them. 

 

So perhaps for you, it is a renewal of commitment to the work you have.  To invest more deeply in your current relationships—the ones that nurture you.  To love more fully those who love you.  To see as an opportunity rather than a distraction, the unexpected needs that have presented themselves to you.  To live more intentionally and in ways that allow your gifts flourish and nourish you in the face of those needs and opportunities that have presented themselves to you. 

 

How about spreading joy as your vocation and calling?  Helen Keller once said, “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.”  Or how about working toward peace or spending your life in the care of just one child, or making a difference in the fleeting life of an old person?  

 

How about finding that unique niche that because of who you are, only you can fill?     

How will you spend your life?   How are you currently spending it?  Are you feeling trapped in a tired, lifeless pattern?  Are you bored with the status quo?  Are you harboring  a lot of regrets and feeling like you’ve missed some golden opportunities to become who you were meant to be?  Chances are, it’s not too late to change that.  In fact it’s never too late to change your life.   

 

One time, Jesus was walking near a lake and a large crowd gathered.  He borrowed a boat and turned it into a pulpit and extended an invitation to all who would dare to change their lives, to come and follow him.  Some left everything and followed him.  Some, however, returned home and found new meaning in their lives quite apart from how they made a living. 

 

But this I know to be true: those who follow this Jesus, rarely spend their days looking back.

 

Amen.      

 

 

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