“Wastin' Away Again in Margaritaville”

• Scriptural Reference: Luke 5:1-11
• February 4, 2007

Jesus cleaned out Zebedee’s fishing business that day. I don’t know what Zebedee did after his sons and their friends left to follow Jesus. I hope he didn’t go under. The text doesn’t tell us. It only tells us that after Zebedee got the biggest take of tuna he’d ever experienced, he immediately lost the best fish finder he’d ever come across, and most of his employees. Wow. Talk about mixed feelings.

When I was growing up, the part about this story that seemed to garner the most attention was the fact that an apparent miracle took place. Perhaps a miracle is implied here, but you’ll notice that Luke never actually says that the catch was miraculous. Of course, if you go fishing on a regular basis, sometimes you think it’ll be a miracle if you catch anything. Some days are like that. But, Luke here doesn’t SAY it’s a miracle. Judging by Simon’s response, I think Luke implies a miracle.

But the miracle isn’t the point. I want to emphasize that. The miracle isn’t the point. Go back to the introductory words here. They had just pulled in the best catch they’d ever experienced in their fishing business and immediately they liquidated their share in the business – no pun intended. Luke wants us to notice something else here and I think it’s this: they left everything and followed Jesus. That’s what Luke wants us to notice.

In our world, you pull off a business coup and you build on it. You don’t leave it. This isn’t how we’re trained. This isn’t what we teach our kids. This isn’t the road to success. If this had been our world, Simon would’ve said to Jesus, “Hey, you’ve got some knack at finding fish. Why don’t you join our team? Oh, sure, you’re not one of the family but I think we can find a way to cut you in.” The whole time he’d be thinking, “Man with this guy on board, we’ll make a killing,” as he began imagining a string of seafood restaurants with an unending supply of cheap food.

It doesn’t go that way, though. Instead, right after this major success, Jesus convinces them that another line of work would be more fulfilling – less lucrative, but more fulfilling. Right there we see the difference in how Jesus views the world and how our world views itself. Our world encourages assessing our lives in terms of what’s the most lucrative. Jesus calls us to assess our lives in terms of what’s most fulfilling. The way we do that is by responding to God’s call in our lives.

I want to notice ________ things about this passage.

First, look where Jesus is when he preaches to the crowds. Is he in a traditional house of worship? The traditional houses of worship during his time consisted of the Temple in Jerusalem and countless synagogues spread across the countryside and world. Jesus made it his custom to attend worship regularly at a traditional house of worship. The fourth chapter of Luke makes this clear.

But where was he when he was preaching to the crowds? Where was he when he called his disciples? Have you ever been down to a wharf where trawlers tie off after trolling, listened to the water slap against the pilings and the gulls screeching? Remember those sounds? Remember those smells? That’s where Jesus was. He was in Marguretaville preaching to the parrot heads.

You remember that song?

Living on sponge cake watching the sun bake
All of them tourist covered with oil
On my front porch swing strumming my six-string
Smell them shrimp they’re beginning to boil
Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame
But I know it’s my own fault.

Don’t know the reason I been here all season
Got nothing to show but this brand new tattoo
It’s a real beauty. A Mexican cutie
How it got here I haven’t a clue

I blew out a flip flop; stepped on a pop top
Bruised my heal had to head on back home
But there’s booze in the blender and soon it will render
That frozen concoction that helps me hang on

Jimmy Buffet isn’t known as the world’s leading theological anthropologist, but he sure gets inside the head of millions of people and vividly frames the scene of a life that’s lost any aim other than to numb the pain. The fact that this particular song remains popular some 30 years after it was first released speaks volumes – or sings decibels.

And that’s where Jesus was – in Margaritaville. All around him were people who were clueless about where the marks on them came from. All around him were people who were just trying to hang on. All around him were people whose lives were falling apart and the only thing they could come to was to admit that they had screwed up. But they still didn’t know where to turn, other than the booze in the blender.

And Jesus didn’t wait for them to come to church. In fact, he didn’t even invite them to church. He said, “Hey come and live the way I live.” And they followed. I wonder if they’d followed if he’d said, “Hey, why don’t y’all come on down to the local synagogue? I’ve got some doctrines for y’all to learn and some bylaws for you to vote on.” The fact that he didn’t say that says that Jesus didn’t think that was the way to begin. Maybe Jesus knew that synagogue attendance was a response. It wasn’t where you began if you wanted people to come to God.

That’s the second thing I notice from this passage. Jesus didn’t tell them that their beliefs were incorrect. He began with what they all agreed on: life can get awfully painful and meaningless and it ain’t worth living unless you have a purpose. Jesus offered them purpose, not a belief system.

Of course, when they found their purpose, they described how they found it, what they did, and who brought it about for them and when all that was written down, that became the things that they believed – but they had experienced it long before they described it in what eventually became something called “doctrine.”

Now, did you know that most churches in the United States have plateaued or are declining in membership? Did you know that the vast majority of so-called “mega-churches” are growing by adding members from other, smaller churches, which in turn become even smaller? This is true of WGBC, as well. Most of the people who join our church come from other churches. We welcome them, of course, and are glad they’re here but over all, in the United States, Christians are declining as a percentage of the population. We’re simply not winning NEW Christians.

Let me hasten to say, too, that despite what uninformed politicians have said of late, the declining percentage of Christians isn’t being off-set by a rising wave of Islam, either. In North America, despite the gains that Islam has made in converts, Muslims only comprise about 1.4% of the population whereas Christians comprise over 84%. Many of these Christians are so-called “nominal” Christians, but remember that Islam has its share of nominal Muslims, too. In the United States, on the other hand, the most rapidly growing population is among those who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. These are the people who live in Margaritaville, just trying to hang on.

I wonder what would happen if we changed our vision of what church is supposed to be like. What if the defining image became Jesus in the prow of a boat? If that were today, Jesus would be dressed in jeans, work boots, and baseball hat with a number 3 on it standing on the tailgate of a mud-encrusted Chevy Silverado while guys in hard hats took off their work gloves, spit out some tobacco juice and stood around listening. He would be in Margaritaville.

If it were today, I’m convinced Jesus would be inviting anyone and everyone to join with him in getting the kingdom’s work done, not engaging in philosophical arguments – unless religious professionals protested his methods.

We tested this on a regular basis at the Virginia Baptist Mission Board. I had learned about a new congregation of Christ followers in Charlotte, North Carolina at a facility known as Warehouse 242. The Warehouse is a congregation of folks that resulted from a group of Presbyterians who decided to aim directly at people who their pastor, Todd Hahn describes this way:

These are children of divorce, many of whom have no church background. They are wary, mistrustful of institutions that have disappointed us all. They are fragmented. Skeptical of certainty. Life is terribly fragile and unpredictable. They long for deep relationships. They relate to individuals, to people, not some idea or ideal or institutional line. They want to see continuity, where they fit in this confusing time. They want to give themselves to something beyond a sort of "white bread" world that they live in, but need to see that that "something" is tangible, that it will work. They process truth relationally, so if they see that a community ... really does stand for something and will be there for them when things are going great and when they suck, then they'll commit to it.

I started thinking about applying something else Hahn said about why they are so successful at Warehouse 242 with attracting these kinds of people. “Belonging comes before believing,” he said. That’s what Jesus did on that beach that day. He asked the disciples to belong to him and then spent the next couple of years teaching them about various beliefs. Hahn and the leadership of 242 work hard at creating an environment to which people feel a connection, a sense of belonging.

So, we told our mission teams at the VBMB not to limit their volunteers to church members or even to professing Christians. Instead, recruit people who could get the job done. We did this ourselves. The Austrian Baptist Union requested that we send a bluegrass band to Austria to do some concerts that would help raise their visibility in Vienna . I put together a band and knew a great dobro player who was not a professing Christian. He IS though, an outstanding dobro player. He went with us on the provision that he not be asked to pray, since, “I don’t do that.”

“No problem,” I told him. We wanted him to play dobro, not lead in prayer, but he needed to understand that this was a mission trip and that others would be doing a lot of praying. He said he had no problem with that.

Before our first concert in Vienna , we gathered with the Austrian leadership, joined hands and prayed, each person in the circle uttering a short sentence. Joe stood apart, bowed his head and stared at the floor. (I know this because I peeked.) Before the second concert the next night, we did the same. This time, Joe put his instrument down and joined the circle. Before the third concert, Joe joined the circle again and just as the pastor took his breath to say the concluding prayer, Joe interrupted and said, “Lord, thank you for my new friends.”

At our concluding banquet after the last concert, I was walking around the table shaking hands and having a general good time amidst lots of boisterous talking and laughter. As I passed Joe’s spot at the table, he grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down close so he could talk into my ear. He said, “Do you know what it’s been like for me on this trip, to get up every morning looking forward to the day and feeling happy? This has been great!”

He still has a tough row to hoe, my friend Joe. He still lives in Margaritaville. But since enough people have changed their vision of this faith thing from changing people’s minds to changing people’s lives, he’s making progress and has hope.

The bottom line is this – let’s let Jesus be our vision, not some institution. Let’s let belonging to the living savior be the center of our vision, not signing some list of propositions. After all, it was a living, breathing person who lived among us and spilled actual hemoglobin after actual bodily tissue was pierced and ripped. That actual person lives among us now. All doctrines, all statements of faith, everything we do is subordinate to how well we do at introducing people to that actual, real, loving person. May Jesus, in the prow of a boat among the screeching sea gulls and stinking muck, or Jesus sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck, be our vision.