Sermon Matthew 4:12-23 Fishing for Men (and Women too!)
By Fr. Bill Wigmore
(This sermon was delivered to a group recovering from alcohol and drug addiction.)
Good evening – Howre you all doin tonight?
Well, its that time of the year again.
The holidays are finally over
and now the 12-Step meetings all over town are filling up.
Youd better get to your meeting early cause the seats are going fast
and it looks like were in for another bumper crop of new drunks and druggies!
Seems theres a near endless supply of us out there!
So much for feeling special!
And some of these new folks who come into the program this year,
they might have been seeing a private counselor or a therapist for a while –
You know, trying that softer-easier-way
before thinking things were so bad they had to come and be with us!
And more than a few of those folks are gonna be in for a big surprise
when they get here.
Theyre going to discover theres quite a difference
between their very kind and very loving therapists
and a 12-Step sponsor that seems to have sprung straight out of the gates of hell.
Someone sent me a little brochure a few years back
and it lists the twelve differences between a sponsor and a therapist.
Ill pass it on to you tonight with the hope
that it might be helpful to anyone here
who might be making that very difficult and god-awfully painful transition.
The brochure says:
#1. Dont expect your sponsor to be all that interested in hearing your long list and well thought-out reasons as to why you drank or drugged.
They really dont care!
According to them we drink cause were drunks and we drug cause were addicts!
Sponsors like to keep things very simple!
Especially our rationalizations!
And #2, your therapist probably thinks your root problem is your lack of self-esteem,
or maybe its your negative self-image.
Get ready for a change cause your sponsor thinks your root problem is: YOU!
And #3), while your therapist wants to hear all about your “inner child and maybe have you give the kid a great big hug and a kiss every morning;
Your sponsor thinks if that kid exists at all,
he probably ought to be “spanked” or maybe even “taken out and shot!”
#4) Your therapist tells you, Dont be afraid to open your mouth and learn to express yourself
Your sponsor tells you to Shut-up and stick a sock in it!
#5) Your therapist wants you to hear all about your painful childhood experiences
Your sponsor tells you that any inventory you take ought to be yours
and not your parents!
And speaking of parents, difference #6 says that yYour sponsors gonna tell you
not only shouldnt you confront your parents for what they did to you, you might consider making some amends to them for what you did to them!
#7) Your therapist tells you to go with that feeling
Your sponsor says, Go to that meeting!
#8) Your sponsor thinks “boundaries”
are things you probably need to start tearing down
and not go around building up.
#9) Your therapist wants you to love yourself;
Your sponsor wants you to love others first!
(But none of that special kind of lovin we all like for at least a year! —
Maybe six months if you get a softie!)
#10) Your therapist prescribes care taking and medi-CAtion;
Your sponsor prescribes prayer making and medi-TAtion.
#11) The only time your sponsor ever uses the word “closure” is before the word — “mouth.”
And #12), After youve been with em for a year, your therapist thinks you should make a list of your goals and objectives for the next five years, starting with getting that GED or finishing off that college degree.
Your sponsor thinks you should spend the day like any other
cleaning coffeepots,
emptying ashtrays
and making those amends youve been dreading and putting off ever since you arrived.
So much to learn and so little time to teach em!
Tonight it seems Jesus is also gathering his little group of new recruits
and he sounds like he can be a pretty tough sponsor himself!
The story begins with the news that Johns been arrested and locked up
and Jesus has moved up north into Galilee, land of the pagans –
Hes moved into territories that are away from the big cities
and into territories that are pretty backwards compared to Jerusalem
with all of its bright city lights.
The gospel writer says the people there were living in darkness
but now into their world a light was coming.
Maybe one of the things that best gets us ready for the light of recovery,
is the darkness most of lived in just before we got here.
Toward the end of my drinking, the fun had long gone out of it
and when I drank, first thing Id usually do was close the blinds,
shut out the light and retreat into my own dark world once again.
But if we make it into recovery,
and when we get a little time under our belts,
most of us wind up being strangely grateful for our pain
and even grateful for our darkness
cause if we hadnt experienced them
wed never have been willing to do the things
those crazy sponsors were asking us to do.
And so now the story tells about Jesus calling his first little group of followers
He starts with Peter and with his brother Andrew simple fishermen
probably not the brightest bulbs in the pack
and certainly not the best educated or anywhere near the wealthiest
but like our first reading said they had something else going for them:
They were humble and they were willing
And for the little group Jesus was asking to join him,
those seemed to be the only requirements for membership.
People didnt need to have to have any great ability
but what they did need to have was great avail-ability!
When the call came they needed to respond.
So the reading says, Jesus spots these two brothers
Peter and Andrew and theyre doing what a hundred other men were probably doing that day on the beach
they were casting their nets into the sea
But when the call comes and I like to believe it came to all those fishermen that day
it was only these two who responded.
If youre new here – youre probably not feeling it yet
but if you made it into these rooms
then youre already one of the lucky ones.
Most alcoholics and addicts die from our illness and they never even make it this far.
But maybe Gods spotted you
and maybe hes made the call to you too –
We all know the darkness of our Step Ones really well
But now were called to get up and move into Step Two
Were invited to come to believe that Gods sending us the light we need
to get us out of our old worlds
and get us into a whole new world that he has waiting just for us
a world where the Big Book says:
well have a new father and a new employer too.
Just like in that first reading, most of us, when we look back
we see that we really are the lucky ones.
Were the blessed and the chosen ones the ones God spotted.
Maybe we were drunk and passed out on the beach
but he spotted us!
And we were restored to enough sanity that we got up
and we joined whoever he sent to us carrying his message.
And so then, a little further down the beach,
Jesus spots another set of brothers
James and John the sons of Zebedee
and later in the gospel these guys are referred to once again
and theyre called: the Sons of Thunder
They seem to have gotten a reputation for themselves in that neighborhood by the sea
They were probably a couple of real hot heads
short-tempered quick to explode Sons of Thunder!
I can relate to James and John and maybe some of you can too.
But with all their shortcomings, with all their character defects they get chosen too.
And when the call comes for them,
the gospel account mentions something really important
that might be easy for us to miss.
It says that when Jesus called them,
not only did they get right up and follow him
but it also says that in doing so,
they left behind their father and they left behind his boat.
In the world these guys are coming from
that means they were leaving behind their family
and leaving behind all of their security too.
They were fishermen thats all they knew how to do –
and they were the sons of their father
and he was head of all the family they knew
but still, they risked all of that in answering this call.
Sometimes getting sober requires that we leave our families
and sometimes it demands that we leave our jobs.
Thats not always the case, but sometimes it is.
I know for me, when the sobriety call came,
it didnt arrive at the same time for my family
or for any my old drinking friends.
I got it in December of 72 – but they didnt.
And so, some of those people
especially the ones that were still drinking and drugging
they thought what are you doing leaving the beach and following those AA wacos? Why are you abandoning us and abandoning the party boat too?
Think youre too good for us any more?
And so some of them tried to pull me right back to that boat
Come fishing for booze and trolling for dope! They said
I got sober 1,000 miles from my home
I probably couldnt have done it in my own neighborhood –
And I remember going back there sober the next Christmas.
And when I get there, there was a party going on in the house.
It was a typical Christmas party in my familys house
The older folks were getting drunk in the kitchen
and the younger ones were smoking dope and popping pills in the back bedroom.
Nothing had changed because nothing there had changed.
I was 27 and I remember the back bedroom bunch feeling like
maybe I was better than they were
cause I was turning down what they were offering.
And back in the kitchen, I remember my father Old man Zebedee
he was three sheets to the wind, ready to throw the kitchen table into the sea –
and asking me rather sarcastically:
So howre you doin with all that Triple A stuff?
That night I had to get out of there
And that night I learned about a new family
I left the house and I went out and I found a meeting
I went out and found people like me
People who were no better than the people back there;
but people whod been called into a new & sober life
People whod answered yes
That night a bunch of strangers I met in a church basement AA meeting
felt more like my family than my own.
If youre new to this recovery thing,
be prepared for a lot of people to have no idea why youre doing what youre doing.
Be prepared for them to call you back to the boat
even if that boat is sinking and even if youre gonna go down with it.
Be prepared for friends to no longer be your friends
cause they werent real friends to start with.
They were just fishing buddies / or drinking buddies / or using buddies /
and if they heard the call at all They were still real busy saying NO.
Jesus called these four fishermen, and then a few more,
and because they answered him the world was never the same again.
And now its our turn.
Now were being called just as surely and just as clearly as they were.
And weather we say yes or no is gonna make a huge difference not only to us
but to a whole bunch of people weve never even met yet.
The truth is, this isnt a selfish program
and the truth is we dont just get sober for ourselves
weve been chosen to be part of a chain.
And there are some people out there wholl never get a chance at sobriety
if we answer, NO thanks not now.
I think Ill just go fishing for fish instead.
Jesus is asking us tonight, just like he asked those guys back then:
Will we drop the bottle will we put down our drugs
Will we let go of our excuses and our securities –
and will get up and follow him?
And the story says: they did exactly that
They abandoned their boat and their father and all their excuses –
and they followed him through the backward towns of a land filled with great darkness and full of hopeless people.
They healed the sick and they brought the dead back to life
And for all the ones who were living there in great darkness,
for them – a light had come. Amen.
Copyright 2006 Bill Wigmore. Used by permission.