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New Testament Reading-Luke 5: 1-11
As some of you might know, NPR has a radio program entitled the National Story Project. The program features stories written and sent in by ordinary persons. The criteria for the stories is this: they are to be true and they are to be “about events that touched” the writer’s life. One of the stories submitted came from a woman named Marie Johnson who lives in Fairbanks, Alaska and has the job of buying videotapes for a library film collection. Part of the job requires that she watch each tape to check its audio and visual quality. She has watched thousands of tapes, and, unfortunately, her job feels more like a boring routine than a non-stop film fest.
Marie wrote her story a week after watching one film in particular. The film begins with a mother and her children riding in a car. Marie notices that they are headed to Santa Rosa, which happens to be Marie’s hometown. She gives this a “mental thumbs-up.” She then watches a little bit more before ejecting the tape and inserting another tape for part two. In the film, it is now night, and “a young girl is running down the street. She approaches a house, runs up the steps, crosses the porch, and climbs in through a bedroom window.” Spellbound Marie moves forward in her seat scarcely believing what she is seeing. This house was house in which she grew up.
Inside the house two girls are talking but Marie hardly notices what they are saying. She is too busy “looking at the room.” It’s her bedroom. She notices all of the room’s unique features. It’s lack of closets. It’s fourteen-foot high ceiling. She recalls sleeping in this room with her grandmother and how her grandmother slept in a small iron bed. Marie then ejects the tape and puts the first tape back in. The car with the mother and children is driving in her old neighborhood until it finally arrives at her old house. The scene follows the action first into the dinning room and then into the kitchen. “Everything is exactly” as Marie remembered it: “the kitchen table under the window, the big white enamel stove, the single cabinet by the sink.” As she continues to follow the action, she takes note of other particulars: the “small oval-shaped knob” for her bedroom door, the side door to the porch where she “made mud cookies” for her dog. Her mind becomes flooded with memories as she thinks of the place where she buried a dead bird, the swing on the apple tree, her grandfather’s garden.
Marie then writes, “I stop the tape. Suddenly thirty-five years and thousands of miles are gone. In some subtle way, I am changed. I can feel the sun on my skin, see my dog’s face, and hear the birds singing. In a world where life is sometimes mundane, repetitive, and often cruel, I am filled with wonder.” In more theological terms, one would say that Marie was suddenly experiencing the sacred. The event is so profound and uncanny one almost feels it could itself be the subject of a film.
Recently for kicks I started reading a book called The Screenwriter’s Bible. I have never written a screenplay, and I am not sure I will, but I find the book fascinating because I am intrigued by the tricks of creating a compelling storyline. According to this book, a good movie will typically have two major turning points: the big event and the crisis. The big event is something “that dramatically effects” the life of the central character. Our scripture reading for today is actually like a mini-plot. The big event is the big catch. It’s pulling in those strained nets that are overflowing with fish. This quantity of fish would have been miraculous back then. One can imagine what it must have been like for Simon Peter who becomes something of a central character in this story. Here is Simon Peter who has this grueling and often disappointing job as a fisherman. We know from the scripture that he had not been at all successful fishing the night before. Everyday his life and livelihood are entirely dependent upon catching fish who may or may not swim into his nets no matter how smart or how industrious he is. When Jesus comes along and tells him to cast his net, he clearly is not enthused about the idea and openly doubts it will lead to anything. After all, nighttime is a better time to fish, so why bother fishing in the day when the fish are already so scarce? When the big load is then hulled in, it is like a gigantic explosion of divine goodness and generosity. The mundane, repetitive, and sometimes cruel job of fishing suddenly has a big splash of the sacred. And so this miracle is the big event.
Sometime after the big event in a good movie there is supposed to be a crisis. The crisis is an event that forces the central character to take the decisive action that will eventually lead to the film’s climax and conclusion. In our mini-plot, the crisis is when Peter becomes overwhelmed with a sense shame. He falls down at Jesus’ knees exclaiming, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” As our Hebrew Scripture reading from earlier today suggests, Peter’s response might have been a common one back then for people who are suddenly realizing that they are in the presence of the divine. Shame overcomes them in the face of God’s goodness. We don’t really know how sinful Peter might have actually been, but what I find interesting is how Jesus responds. Jesus doesn’t respond by either affirming or denying that Peter has reason to be guilty. Rather Jesus essentially says, “Don’t be afraid. Instead, leave everything and follow me.” Jesus accepts Peter for who he is and invites him into a radically new and different life. Following Jesus is the decisive action that Peter then takes.
Now, in its present state the story of Marie Johnson that I told you earlier might not make a good movie script, because all we get is the big event: the realization that it is her old home that’s in the film. This is her boatload of fishes, but there is no crisis that follows it. Still, I like her big event, because it is a miracle that involves things that were once the most mundane objects in her life suddenly intruding into her boring and repetitive job. Since Marie doesn’t tell us what happened next, I hope she doesn’t mind if I take the liberty of doing a little screenwriting of my own. In my movie version of Marie’s life, Marie is a faithful member of First Congregational UCC in Fairbanks, Alaska. She is pretty theologically sophisticated already, and she has lots of experience being affirmed for who she is by her church, so Marie’s experience of the divine as she watches the videotape doesn’t come with a lot of guilt and shame about herself as a sinner. She realizes she is a good, decent person who sometimes makes mistakes and doesn’t need to get hung up about it. Yet, like Peter, she feels like this miraculous event she has experienced is calling her to try something radically different in her life.
That night at home she reflects on how boring her job is and how her church actually is a place where she has some exciting opportunities to do something positive for the world. She starts to make a list of all the things she could do at the church: volunteer at the homeless shelter, help with the community garden, protest the evils of coal pollution, clean bathrooms with Marnie…The list goes on and on, but Marie is having trouble deciding what to do. She calls her friends, and they start talking. Some say they should start a book group for women and read Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest book. Others say they should knit prayer shawls.
Marie and her friends find this decision of what to do so important that they decide they need to do something really special and profound and sacred as they make their decision, and so they have a potluck, and at this potluck the food never tasted so good. There are cheesy potatoes and green marshmallow fluff. There are foods made with only locally grown, organic vegetables and fruits. There is whole wheat bread as well as gluten-free bread for those who need it. There might even be some wine because after all Jesus drank it didn’t he, even though he would most definitely have also been a big supporter of any AA groups in Palestine.
The potluck is so much fun that at the end of the night, everyone including Marie, is prepared to volunteer for something new and exciting. But, instead of telling you what Marie decides to do, I will let each of you write down your own conclusion to this miraculously good script. Amen.
