Youth Ministry Initiative

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Year of Publication

1995

From Harold Masback, A Mighty Fortress is our God" (January, 12, 1995) at pages 6-12:

We pile stone upon stone, as if we could protect our hope behind a fortress of physical blessings, personal effort and good intentions. We savor our good fortune and presume ourselves safe from the lapping tides of adversity. But the book of Job asks, “What would happen if the lapping tides became a maelstrom of misfortune? Would our fortresses withstand assaults of random horror and innocent suffering? Have we built our fortress on rock or on sand?” Imagine this sanctuary as our ancient fortress – long ago and far away. You and I huddle within its walls, besieged in a war that has raged for years. We have had good years and bad years; years of triumph and joy and years of defeat and misery. We are now hopelessly outnumbered, surrounded by armies of estrangement, guilt, anxiety and death. They have marshaled their troops against us and thrown up siege works on all sides. Our cries for help have gone unanswered, and it has been months since we had fresh supplies of food or firewood. We shiver hungrily and weigh the latest surrender terms: we are offered safe passage to cynicism if we will only abandon our King, abandon our hope. Suddenly, as we are discussing our plight, our watchman spies a lone horsemen wearing our King’s colors and streaking across the muddy flats. The horse leaps the siege works and races through our opened gate. We press around him hungry for news. Perhaps reinforcements are on the way. Perhaps we will be saved. But no, it’s only Job. Turns out Job is now working as the King’s Chief Engineer. The King has sent Job to survey our fortress walls, and Job sets silently about his task. After several hours, Job has finished. He comes over to us muttering to himself and shaking his head. “Trust me,” he says, “I’ve worked with fortresses just like this before. The walls look impressive enough, but none of them will survive the long haul. Some of you will maintain your energy, skills, and luck, but some of you will not. God offers no assurance that your skills will be appreciated or that markets will not change or luck turn. Family love is beautiful, but cars can run off roads, marriages can fail, and children can grow distant. As for health, the only sure thing is that you will all eventually lose it. And as for virtue, well, when it comes to innocent suffering, let’s just say, I wrote the book. “Look, if it was up to me, I’d strike the walls altogether, they’re only a distraction. Enjoy the blessings of life as you can, and do your best by God, country and family, but base your hope, your faith on something more durable.” With that, Job heads out to his next inspection. As he rides off into the black wind, we call after him: “Wait a minute: Are we winning the war? Is the King sending reinforcements? Will we be saved?” But Job doesn’t answer. He rides off without looking back. We strike the walls as Job had suggested and set up tents. As the night grows darker and colder we huddle around a fire made from the last scraps of broken up furniture. We can now see the enemy campfires all around us, and surely they can see ours. You know, we miss those walls. They had given us a sense of security, however illusory. There’s more talk of surrender now. We all wonder if we will be able to hold out throughout the night. We awake around 3:00 AM to the sounds of a huge stallion pounding furiously up to our encampment. Sitting there astride his charger is King Yahweh himself. He is a magnificent sight: tall and powerful in his armor. It’s clear he has never known fear or anxiety, never hungered or shivered, never faced defeat or despair. The stallion’s eyes are wild; his veins bulge in his neck, his majestic snorting is terrible, he paws violently as Yahweh wheels him from side to side as Yahweh speaks. “My servant Job has told me of your suffering and doubt. I bring you words of encouragement to help you survive the siege: It is I who laid the foundations of the earth and I who stretched the line upon it. I shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, and I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band. I prescribed bounds for the sea, and I set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you go, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped.’ “I built the storehouses of the snow, and the storehouses of the hail, which I have reserved for the time of trouble. I am the Creator of the lion and the antelope, the hawk and the mouse. I created you and gave you cause for hope, and I unleashed the forces that surround you and make your hearts grow faint. . . Oh, and one more thing, I thought you might take some comfort from the fact that I have planned this campaign from before the advent of time. Light and dark will contend for eons, but the variegated splendor of life will never be dimmed. Indeed, I have so perfectly honed the balance of order and spontaneity, the balance of destiny and freedom that life is possible and worthwhile but at the same time sufficiently free to allow you to participate in creation as a co-creator, free to choose for hope or despair, faith or distrust, love or self-interest.” With that, King Yahweh’s horse reared, wheeled and thundered away. As he rode off we cried, “But King, King, ’tis all wonderful, truly, but what about us? Great to hear that creation and life will prevail and all that, but what about us? Will we make it through the night or will our foes overwhelm us? Will our company march in the victory parade or are we one of the lost units whose sacrifice makes the victory possible? If only we knew we would survive, our hope would survive the night”. Yahweh seemed to answer as he rode off, but his words were lost in the whirlwind. All we could make out were something about “big picture,” “creation,” “triumphant,” “freedom,” “spontaneous.” Just as in the Book of Job, Yahweh had assured us that he had Providence in hand, that we each had a role in a creation that would triumph, that he was on the side of creation. But, again, just as in Job, Yahweh had ignored any plea for a personal redeemer, any assurance of our individual destinies. As we stumbled back to our bed rolls we all marveled at Yahweh’s magnificence, but some still counseled surrender. Could we say yes to the creation Yahweh had described? Could we have hope? Could we love, trust and obey a King whose providential care for the universe was irresistible, but who left the individual buffeted by forces we could neither control nor comprehend? As the cock crowed we moved numbly to our lines, bracing for what promised to be an endless round of dutiful battles followed by nights of small comfort. The cold light streaming over the eastern horizon revealed a scene we could see but not believe. Our foe’s campfires smoldered abandoned in the distance. Their troops, their tents, their horses had all vanished. While we rubbed our eyes in disbelief, we heard a voice from behind us, “They’ll not be back while you stay close by me.” We turned to see the King’s son, Prince Sabbath, standing with us. He had evidently slipped into camp just before dawn. His eyes had none of his father’s fierceness, but there was something invincible in them just the same – something that said “I have suffered your estrangement and more, I have suffered your anxiety and more, I have suffered your death and more, and yet I live forevermore.” He said, “My father has considered your cries and sent me to you. I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. I bring you the good news you have sought from the beginning of the age: My father has broken into history to bring a new way of being, a way of being above and beyond the flux of worldly forces, a way of being open to, surrounded by, reunited with God’s eternal life. I shall conquer your estrangement by leading you home to my father’s kingdom; I shall conquer your guilt by assuring you are forgiven, you are acceptable just as you are; I shall conquer your anxiety by assuring you that neither hardship, nor distress, nor persecution nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril nor sword can separate you from my love. And I shall conquer your death by breaking down the walls that separate your soul from participation in God’s eternal love. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. While you are in the world, you will still face rounds of daily joys and daily tribulations. The worldly struggle must rage on back and forth. But take courage; I have conquered the world. All I ask is that you follow me to the father. Follow me with trusting hearts. Say yes to the abundant life. My father and I shall be the fortress of your hope, a bulwark never failing. We formed ranks behind the Prince and began the long march homeward. With the rising sun shining bright and warm in our faces, we sang the last verses of the old Psalm: We thank you that you have answered us and have become our salvation. The stone the builders rejected has become the chief
cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! AMEN!

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Year of Publication

1995

From Harold Masback, Follow the Glow" (July 9, 1995) at pages 4-5:

Let’s start at the only place in the world as fascinated by the word love as the church: the movies. Amy and I saw a great movie this week: “Apollo 13”. The movie recounts the story of an ill fated flight to the moon commanded by astronaut Jim Lovell. There’s a flashback in the movie that tells a powerful parable of grace. Lovell is asked by his small son whether he has ever been afraid while flying. Lovell thinks back over his long career as a navy pilot and how there had been plenty of close scrapes. The worst had occurred while Lovell was flying a night mission off an aircraft carrier cruising South Pacific waters. As he returned from the mission both his radio and his navigational systems failed. He circled vainly, looking for the carrier in the dark while his fuel gauges wound down to zero. Finally, facing the prospect of ditching into the sea, lost in the dark, he turned off all his instrumentation lights and stared out his windows, hoping to somehow pick up a running light from the carrier. There were no lights in sight. As he was about to give up hope, he suddenly spotted a glowing, pale green path leading right across the water to the carrier’s tiny silhouette on the horizon. The green glow led Lovell like runway lights back to a safe landing on his home ship. As he concluded the story, Lovell explained to his son that the green glow had been the light from phosphorescent organisms stirred up by the carrier’s propellers. “And you know,” he said, “if I hadn’t turned off my cabin lights and let my eyes adjust to the dark, I never would have spotted the glow in the water and I never would have gotten my aircraft home.”

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Year of Publication

1995

From Harold Masback, Small Things Matter" (September 5, 1995) at pages 2-4:

Bella Tovey is a small, 67 year old woman. She stands, at most, 4’10”, with a slight, almost fragile frame. I had arranged for a youth group to meet with Bella. When we first saw her, she was standing in a museum hallway, completely unremarkable. I think most of us would pass Bella on the street without the slightest sense that we were in the presence of one of the most remarkable, spirit-filled, heroines of our times. Yet, as Bella spoke to us, as she told her story, there was a gravity, a deep sadness in her eyes. She stopped every so often to compose herself, and then, drawing breath deeply, she would begin again. Quietly but determinedly. We were transfixed, sitting in dead silence as she spoke. And as she continued, the presence of this small, frail woman grew to fill the room, to enfold all of us. This was no longer just one more event on an already eventful trip, we were in the presence of the extraordinary

Notes:
  1. and every single person in the room knew it. Bella Tovey had been a Jewish girl of 12 when the Nazi’s marched into her Polish town. Her father and mother and all but one of her 6 brothers and sisters were killed at Auschwitz. Bella survived one slave camp after another, finally ending up at Bergen-Belsen, weakened but not defeated by the horrors the Nazis had inflicted on her. But here is the really important part: her stories of struggle and survival, of suffering and triumph were not played out on the big stage; they weren’t stories of incredible gallantry and dashing heroism. They were stories composed of small moments, the kind of small moments we might tend to rush past in our search for the defining events of history. She told us of how the Nazi’s had orchestrated a careful, incremental campaign to strip Jews of their humanity and will to resist. In one occupied town, a man lost first his right to participate in community events, then his job, then his home. He was forced to wander the streets with a yellow star sewn to his jacket, cut off from the non-Jews by laws that forbade them to have any contact with him whatsoever. So, as he trudged through town looking for scraps of food or sticks of kindling, the townspeople typically turned or looked away as he passed. But every so often, some one would defy the law, brushing up against him and slipping a heel of bread into his pocket, or perhaps just turning to him and offering a silent, sympathetic smile as he passed. He survived the holocaust, and, when asked how he managed to stay alive, he said he thought it was just the occasional smile that kept him going – just this most minimal act of acceptance and encouragement. Small things matter. Bella told us of her own struggles in the slave camp, where she was given only one pound of bread every Sunday and an occasional bowl of thin soup. Most of the girls ate the bread ravenously within a day or two, and most died. Month after month Bella struggled to make the bread last all week, cutting off a thin slice each day. Month after month she failed, never ever making the bread last the entire week, but she usually could make it to Thursday before she gave in and wolfed down her remaining morsel. She never lasted all week even once, but she is absolutely certain that this day or two difference is the only reason she survived. Small things matter.
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Year of Publication

1994

From Harold Masback, Holding Course" (October 9, 1994) at pages 7-8:

Triumphs push us off course to pride and hubris, a belief that we are self sufficient and that our blessings are just deserts for our self-made competence. God and faith become unnecessary hindrances; the prideful and powerful face almost irresistible temptations to dispense with the charts and sextants of life and rely on their own power or genius. Perhaps you’ve read of the two-star admiral on the bridge of an immense aircraft carrier working its way along the New England coast. Spotting a light in the darkness directly ahead, he ordered his signal officer to flash the message: “We are on collision course, suggest you bear off 10 degrees to South.” But ahead in the darkness came the blinking response: “Suggest you bear off 10 degrees to south.” Irritated the Admiral signaled: “I order you to bear off; I am a two star admiral.” And back came the signal: “Suggest you bear off.” Furious the admiral played his trump card, signalling “You must bear off, I am a 1200 foot Aircraft carrier.” And, finally, back through the night came the response: “Suggest you bear off, I am a Lighthouse.” As the Bible says: Pride goeth before the fall.

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Year of Publication

1994

From Harold Masback, Building an Ark Together: Faith as a Way of Family Life" (September 12, 1994) at page 6:

So, I asked the family counselor if he had any hunches as to why we were seeing such a rise in family conflict. He said he and the other Fairfield County counselors were seeing couples trying their hardest for their families, but just exhausted by their efforts. He said, “Dad typically commutes a couple of hours a day and then travels during the week. When he’s in town, he staggers in off the late train and it’s all he can do to say goodnight to the kids before collapsing onto a couch or bed for a little mind-numbing television. The weekend is the one time the couple might be together, but Mom takes a kid and heads for lacrosse games in Wilton and Dad takes a kid and heads for hockey games in Rhode Island and so it goes ’till Sunday night. The parents have almost no time for each other, no time to nourish their friendship, and when they hit the rough patches in life they find they just don’t have a resilient enough relationship left to survive.

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Year of Publication

1994

From Harold Masback, Chasing Mechanical Rabbits" (July 24, 1994) at pages 8-10:

Surely, if I have any lesson from my own life to share with you, it is this: I chased the mechanical rabbit long and hard, and it never brought fulfillment. When I was in high school they said if only you pour all of your energies into your school work, you will do well and get into a good college and then you will be set. When I got to college they said, “Congratulations, if only you pour all your energies into your work you will do well, get into a good law school and then you will be set.” When I went to law school, they said, “Congratulations, if only you can get a good job with a really good firm you will be set.” At the law firm they said, “If only you do really well as an associate, we will make you a partner and you will be set.” But then I talked to older partners and they were miserable, striving to be on the executive committee so they would be set. And the members of the executive committee were struggling to protect their perquisites and set up their investments and pension plans so they would be set. Well, I am sure you can see the pattern developing, and I wish I could say that I did too. But I was still convinced that there was some way I could change the nature or quality of my practice that would ultimately lead to contentment, fulfillment, meaning in my life. And, as you might guess, each bob and weave, each shuck and jive just made me even busier, and somehow not more fulfilled. The faster I ran, the faster the rabbit ran ahead of me and the less time I had for family, friends, community, or God. Which brings me to the really important part: I don’t think the mistake was in pursuing achievement in school, or practicing law, or even working hard at my practice. The error was in believing, like the Rich Fool, that I could find fulfillment and meaning in my life by putting these worldly ambitions at the center of my life and letting love of God drift off to the periphery. So Jesus looks down at us chasing our mechanical rabbits and says, “You Fools! Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” God has already made a life of meaning, fulfillment, and contentment available to those who choose it. But first we must see the choice clearly for what it is it. We must see that the mechanical rabbit is a phony.

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Year of Publication

1994

From Harold Masback, May God Have This Dance?" (July 10, 1994) at pages 3-4:

Has this ever happened to you? You are dancing to music you really enjoy on a half-lit dance floor. You are lost in the music; your eyes are closed as you move unself-consciously to the rhythm with your partner. If there are any self-aware moments, they are moments when you feel graceful, free, clothed with the music’s beauty. You open your eyes for just a fleeting second and catch a glimpse of another fellow dancing across the room: arms akimbo, shirt tail flapping sloppily, a shock of hair awkwardly askew, and, in that microsecond before you remember you are not supposed to be judgmental, a snap judgment forms: Boy! What an awkward guy! As your mind starts to catch up with your reflexes, your snap judgment is overtaken by a pang of remorse at your unkind thought; but this pang is in turn overtaken by a far more penetrating horror: you have not been looking across the room but into a mirror, and the object of your pity has been your own reflection: the awkward guy is you! Well you dance on bravely, taming your elbows, nonchalantly tucking your shirt tail back in, patting that errant shock of hair back into place. You steal some furtive glances at the mirror and reassure yourself that you now look all right: arms under control, shirt and hair tucked in and squared away. But this passing comfort comes at a high price, for you have been caught up short by the shock of recognition. You realize that you have lost the beat. The dance now seems more forced and you have certainly lost that free, unself-conscious sense of oneness with the music. The music is outside now, not inside, apart from you and not a part of you.

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1994

From Harold Masback, Lessons From Our Youth" (June 6, 1994) at pages 3-5:

By the time I arrived here, I knew there was something askew with my old professional habits – I knew they were diametrically opposed to the Christian proclamation that every person is a valuable child of God whose well being is the paramount end in itself. But I hadn’t worked out any new model for how I was to approach life’s tasks. And even if I doubted my professional instincts, they were still deeply embedded. On one level I was still ready to view the youth group as my new case, my new challenge, the new problem to be solved. And that’s where my 30 young tutors took over. The first lesson they taught me was that the really important progress made by our group always occurred when God’s spirit moved through the hearts of our young people to stimulate new love and growth. Moreover, this movement always seemed to break out quite independently of any efforts by the advisors. Let me give you an example. We are an exceptionally diverse group, and we have always been challenged by the need to reach out to each other across clique and interest lines. We all knew that last year’s mission trip provided us with the year’s last, best opportunity to break down some of the walls that divided us, but the date of the trip conflicted with my exam schedule, and I didn’t have time to plan any trip events to facilitate trust, tolerance or conflict resolution skills. We set off for West Virginia with no master plan other than to travel, work and return, and my secret fear was that we were a disaster waiting to happen. Surely the prospect of working long, hard hours at close quarters guaranteed that conflict would break out within the group, and we had no plan to head off anticipated trouble. Well, my fears were realized, and we soon hit the inevitable squalls of frustrating jobs, cramped quarters and intra-group squabbles and fights. But just as things began to unravel, the kids in the group began to step up to the challenge: one here with a reconciling pat on the shoulder of yesterday’s adversary, one there with a suggestion that we hold a group meeting to share our concerns, one here volunteering to switch work details to help everyone stay on schedule, one there taking a new friend on a walk to talk out his trouble. Eight days later we cruised back into Guilford with a sense of cohesion and fellowship few of us had imagined possible when we left. And here is the point: The Spirit blows where it will. Paul didn’t plan his epiphany on the road to Damascus, the disciples didn’t plan the breakout of the Spirit at Pentecost, and we didn’t plan the break out of fellowship on our trip. Rather, it was a capacity to love, a potential for harmony that was always inside the hearts of our kids just waiting for an opportunity to blossom. To paraphrase what Paul said in Philippians: it was God who was at work in our group, enabling them both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

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1994

From Harold Masback, Back to the Future" (March 27, 2994) at page 1:

Imagine we are exploring an underground cavern together. The further we venture into the cavern, the darker and cooler it becomes. As we continue on, the stillness and dampness press in on us. Our glib banter fades as we each turn inward, absorbed in our own thoughts, alone with our private hopes and fears. We shuffle on in silence, when slowly, without a word, the realization ripples through the group that we are lost, cut off from light and life and groping in the darkness. There is a palpable shared fear, but also a palpable hope, a yearning for light, for warmth, for wholeness in our lives. One of us lights a match and holds it up. Its flame casts a faint light on the cavern walls. Before us we can now see dimly that the path forks. One branch seems to lead up, back to the light – the other leads down into deepening gloom. There on the wall just above the fork we can just make out handwriting in the flickering light. The first words are: “I know how you feel. I was there once myself. I am there with you now. If you will follow me, I will lead you to the light, to a life of abundance and wholeness you have never known. BUT, before we can go up, you must first follow me down.” As the match flickers out, we see a name: “Jesus of Nazareth” We light another match and see another writing on the wall. It reads: “I know how you feel. The disciples and I were there once ourselves. But in the moment of our greatest doubt and despair, Jesus was suddenly in our midst and we followed him out. BUT, we had to follow him down before we could follow him up.” And there below this writing is a different name: “Mark, Disciple of Jesus.” The match burns out and we light our last match and see another writing. It says simply: “I know how you feel. I was there once myself. While I was listening to the passion story in the year 375, Jesus was suddenly at my side and I followed him out. BUT, I had to follow him down before I could follow him up.” And with the last light of our last match we see the name: “Egeria, Spanish Nun and Pilgrim.” So there in the darkness – and here at the end of a hard winter when so many of us have struggled with death, illness and brokenness, we stand together at a fork on our path through the cavern – we stand together on Palm Sunday: the gateway to Holy Week: to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

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1993

From Harold Masback, James on Trial" (November 10, 1993) at pages 3-8:

What if you could push Mark’s account without having to worry about how you looked or sounded – just ask every question the story stirs in your heart. Or, maybe it seems a little intimidating to cross examine Saints and Scripture, so lets really take this illustration to the wall. What if some lawyers had James on trial and were cross examining him on the call and we could sit in. It might go something like this. James takes his seat in the witness box right about here. After the oath is administered, James glances over to you in the jury box and then back to the prosecuting attorney who is beginning his examination. P: Sir, would you please; Identify yourself for the record? J: Yes, my name is James. P: What, sir, is your occupation? J: I am a Disciple of Jesus. P: I offer you an exhibit marked as People’s Exhibit 1 and ask if you can identify it. J: Yes, this is an excerpt from the Gospel of Mark: Chapter I verses 16-20. P: You would agree would you not, that this excerpt is commonly referred to as “Jesus Calls the First Disciples”? J: Yes, that’s correct. P: And in fact, this account is often offered as a model of faithful response to Jesus’ call, isn’t that right. J: Yes. P: And it’s held up as a model because Mark includes elements of discipleship that have been accepted as the very criteria by which faith responses to Jesus are to be judged, isn’t that right? J: Well, yes… P: And these elements include the fact that you decided to accept Jesus’s call immediately and without deliberation? J: Yes P: And that you decided absolutely, abandoning family, profession and belongings? J: Yes P: And that you decided irrevocably, committing to a lifetime of discipleship. J: Yes P: And you are aware, sir, are you not, that for 2,000 years preachers have been holding up these criteria as not only the criteria of discipleship but also the admissions standards for the Kingdom of God? J: If you say so. P: And you would agree would you not, that it is only fair that your discipleship be judged by these same exact criteria? J: Well, I suppose so. P: Well then sir, I ask you, and I remind you, you are still under oath, isn’t it a fact that you yourself, James the Apostle, fail to meet even one of these criteria of discipleship? Your decision for discipleship was not immediate, was not absolute and was not irrevocable? J: No, I don’t think that’s right. P: Oh no? Well, let us see. As to immediacy: You are sir are you not a practicing Jew? J: Yes, I am. P: And you had been going to temple or synagogue services for more than 20 years before your encounter with Jesus? J: Yes P: And there you listened to the reading of scripture? J: Yes, certainly. P: You were familiar with the Psalms, with the story of Jonah in Nineveh, calling the people to repent, and with the prophets and their calls to repentance and their prophecies of a coming Kingdom of God. J: Yes, certainly P: And certainly you had heard stories as told in Mark 1:15 that the Nazarene was in the area preaching that the time was fulfilled and the Kingdom of God had come near? J: Well, perhaps. P: So you were not entirely surprised when Jesus beckoned to you from the shore were you? J: No P: And even then, with all that preparation, the fact is that when Jesus called you, you did think about your family, you did ponder his call, you did say good bye to your father. In fact, isn’t it true that Mark’s version of the event is the record of an oral tradition worn smooth over the years? J: Well,… P: Yes, exactly, so much for immediacy, and as to absoluteness, your father still owned the boat after you left, did he not? J: Yes P: And he still had the hired men, did he not? J: Yes P: And there’s nothing here about not taking the occasional leave to help your family out at home is there? It doesn’t say whether you had time in the winter to help mend the nets? Time in the summer to help with the catch? J: No. P: And the boat, the nets, your father and the men would all be there whenever you went home, were they not? J: Yes. P: Yes, exactly, so much for absoluteness, and as for irrevocability, Sir, is it not true that your so-called discipleship was marred by prideful bouts of concern about your primacy in the Kingdom? J. Well, yes. P: Yes, I thought so. And finally sir, do you still contend that your discipleship was irrevocable when everyone in this courtroom knows that on the night of your master’s greatest need you fled into the night and scattered with your fellow disciples? J: Well, I… P: Your Honor I have no further questions. The defendant is convicted by his own testimony. He has failed the test of discipleship he himself acknowledged: his decision to follow Jesus was not immediate, not absolute and most certainly not irrevocable. The Prosecution rests. Well, the prosecutor swaggers over to his seat and sits down, and he has one of those smug smiles of lawyerly self-satisfaction that we have all come to loath. All eyes in the courtroom turn to James. What do you suppose he did? Well, the one thing we can be sure of is that he didn’t waste any money retaining counsel himself. So I imagine he might simply rise quietly and ask the Judge if he might say a few words in his own defense. And he might have proceeded something like this. Yes, like every clever but wrongheaded prosecution, there had been a deceptive grain of truth in each of the Prosecutor’s attacks. Yes, I had been a religious Jew and, perhaps like some of you, I had gone to weekly services and studied the word of God. It was probably true that the groundwork for my encounter with Jesus had been laid years before. In fact, far from immediate, it might more accurately be said that God and creation labored for millions of years to gather together the strands of history that intersect at our encounter with Christ’s call. But for all that preparation, I still knew that when Jesus looked into my eyes across the water, the decisive next step had to be mine. More to the point that last step was one of grace, made in the grasp of immediate faith, and not deliberation or intellect. In sum, in every meaningful sense of the word, my decision for discipleship had been immediate. Second, of course my decision had not been absolute in some woodenly literal sense of the word. The nets, the boat, the family were all still there the moment after my response just as they had been before. And yet my relationship to them had been absolutely changed the moment I accepted the call. As I looked into Jesus’ eyes I suddenly knew that the first decision was not about fishing nets at all but a different kind of net entirely.

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