But John Lennon faced a huge case of writer’s block. He struggled for days to write a song, and that struggle was a part of his own feelings of self-questioning and doubt. He was young, handsome, stylish, wealthy, and famous. And yet he was very troubled. His unstable mother had handed him over to her eldest sister to raise, and then, while he was still a teen, she was killed when a car struck her, leading to a lingering grief throughout his life. He had a young toddler and a troubled marriage due to his own physical and emotional absence. And now he couldn’t write.
He finally laid down after hours of struggling—and within minutes, supposedly the basics for a song came to him nearly whole, and came from the depths of his insecurity and feeling of drift. Unlike most of the previous Beatles songs, and in fact most rock songs at the time. This one did not feature a boy, or a girl, or romance. Instead, Lennon wrote about his own feelings of aimlessness—disguising the autobiographical nature, by writing in the third person. And the song “Nowhere Man” came into being and was included on the Beatles’ sixth album Rubber Soul, released in December of 1965.
The song starts out with the four Beatles singing in harmony, in 5 chords that descend steadily in pitch, mirroring the descent into introspection:
He’s a real nowhere man
sitting in his nowhere land,
making all his nowhere plans for nobody. (1)
This song was groundbreaking in being able to frame the self-doubt that so many people experience periodically throughout their lives. Haven’t we all, at one time or another wondered if we were “good enough” to accomplish some task or achievement? Even more pointedly, haven’t we all questioned, at one time or another, whether we are “good enough” as human beings at all?
I know that some people are not really blessed with a sense of self-awareness deep enough to realize when they have done wrong—we see that far too often in celebrities and other powerful people behaving badly. We see it in the constant rise and fall of movements throughout the last two centuries that give rise to dictators who promise to give people scapegoats and a sense of superiority to drown out the voice of individual conscience that should be setting off alarms in their heads. But most of us, I would wager, are acutely aware of our own failures, of our own times when we have caved into weaknesses or even joined the herd in doing something dumb or even callous.
That feeling of unworthiness is a universal impulse. We see it today in our readings. The great prophet Isaiah has a vision of the glory of God calling him to bear a message of doom to Isaiah’s people—hardly an assignment that will win Isaiah friends. But he answers the call—by overcoming his feeling of unworthiness.
In our reading from 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul acknowledges the continuing shame he feels for having persecuted the earliest members of the church and therefore Jesus himself, calling himself “the least of the apostles” and indeed unfit to be called an apostle at all. And yet, Paul also recognizes that the grace of God throughout his life has led him to where he is at that moment: a leader and planter of churches all over the Greco-Roman world. If he had just stopped there without then humble bragging about his work ethic, his admission of self-doubt might have been better. But that’s Paul for you.
And then we have Simon. Simon is a simple, hard-working fisherman on the Sea of Genessaret. He encounters the holy man Jesus as he is ashore, washing his nets after a frustrating, futile night of long labor—a night in which he has caught nothing. He probably was questioning his own abilities as a fisherman when Jesus asks Simon to lay aside his nets and row him out a way from shore so that he can actually teach the crowd that is clamoring after Jesus so earnestly they practically have him up to his knees in the water. We don’t hear about the exchange. And so I imagine Simon sitting there in the boat while Jesus talks, frustrated and alone in his thoughts.
Jesus finishes with the crowd, and in the next breath, turns his attention to Simon—telling him to get his nets, and row out into the deep water to try for a catch.
“Now? In the middle of the day?” I imagine Simon wondering. Every fisherman knows that the fish aren’t close enough to the surface to be caught in the heat of the day. But after a token protest, Simon does as he is told—and here we see a miraculous catch of fish, so huge that it threatens to swamp not just Simon’s boat but the boat of his associated James and John as well.
This miraculous abundance changes Simon’s self-doubts about his abilities as a fisherman to the much more crucial self-doubts about whether he is worthy to be in the presence of someone who has the powers of God, for everyone knows that sinners cannot see God and live. In terror, Simon begs for Jesus to get away from him.
Simon KNOWS all his faults. He KNOWS he is not good enough to be so near someone so holy.
And yet, nonetheless, Jesus not only reassures him and comforts him in his terror. But then, even more mind-boggling, Jesus specifically calls Simon to follow him and share in Jesus’s work of teaching, healing, and ministry. To catch people instead of fish.
That metaphor might give us pause—after all, aren’t those fish that are caught slaughtered and eaten? Maybe that’s why you will notice that this is a miraculous catch of fish that gets abandoned once it has served its real purpose. The purpose of this miracle was not to nourish anyone’s bodily hunger or need to make a living. The purpose of the miraculous catch was to awaken a spiritual hunger—to light a flame of hope in a downtrodden, anxious, fearful people living in a downtrodden, anxious, fearful time. A time much like now.
And so Jesus calls those who follow him to share in his ministry. To catch people, but instead of entrapping them like fish, to lift them up out of the depths and offer them the good news of salvation, reconciliation, and hope. And even though Simon has NO qualifications for any of those tasks, nor do his friends James and John, they themselves are “caught up” in the power of the message that Jesus has been offering, and without a backward glance at those bulging nets and swamping boats, they leave it all behind to follow Jesus.
Simon and James and John and all who follow Jesus will still occasionally experience doubts about their abilities to work for change, will doubt their own worthiness. People who follow Jesus regularly have doubts about whether what they do actually matters. And people following Jesus under the crushing oppression of empire have these doubts in quantities sufficient to sink a battleship—because that’s how empires subjugate people. By making them scared. by making them feel powerless. by making them feel small and insignificant. By using force and terror and playing to all the pettiest, cruelest, most callous impulses people usually keep buried down deep. By encouraging exactly the same kind of violence, exploitation, and cruelty that Jesus came to us to call us away from.
We just have to believe enough that we CAN make a difference. And we CAN come to that conclusion—if we remember that we are never walking alone in our constant struggle for true justice, peace, and dignity for all. God meets us where we are—whether on the shore or in a boat or behind a desk or washing dishes—and calls us to follow. Jesus called those first disciples from their nets and led them to a horizon they had never imagined before. Jesus will walk alongside those first disciples—and all the ones who follow after, even now. That’s why, when we are asked to promise to walk in the ways of God at our baptism, the answer isn’t just “I will,” But “I will—with God’s help.”
None of us are expected to live a life of meaning and purpose alone. Even John Lennon realized that he could be a force for good and for change—even if just by writing songs that touch us all, recognized that in his song, when he wrote later in his song:
Nowhere man, don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry--
Leave it all—til somebody else lends you a hand. (2)
There’s truism in ministry—God doesn’t call the perfect. God perfects and strengthens the called. Jesus is calling the church right now to push off from the safety of shore, and row out into the deep water. To row out into the deep water, and begin hauling in those who are most vulnerable and targeted for hatred right now. We are being called for this moment just as Simon and John and James and Paul and Isaiah were called for theirs. As we recount during Black History Month, as God called Absalom Jones and Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer in our own recent history.
We have all been called to carry the light of Christ into darkness, and to bring the hope of Christ’s saving help to those struggling in the deepest waters of our time. We are called, but we are called in community known as the Church for exactly that reason.
We are called and equipped for this moment by Jesus himself. Jesus shows us we can walk the path of justice and reconciliation because he first led us and walked that way first.
We just have to believe that we are good enough. Because God promises us that we are.
Amen.
Preached at the 10:30 am Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.
Readings:
Citations:
1 and 2: John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "Nowhere Man" from the Beatles album Rubber Soul, 1965.
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