The book Mike Kelly’s is working on, American Lazarus and His Savior, explores American Evangelicalism’s vision of Jesus by reexamining what he said and did (and didn’t do) in the Gospels. Below is an excerpt from the chapter, “Balance.”
Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, he asked him to put out a little from the land.
During our church plant in the early 1990s, I was on my way through Ball Hospital in Muncie, Indiana to visit a parishioner when a doctor who visited the week before recognized me. Evidently my sermon made quite an impression. “Pastor!” he exclaimed too loudly for the setting, “Thanks for that sermon. It was great!” I said something about the Spirit making a sermon good, but all the sudden, I was thankful he was talking too loudly.
“I do have a question, if you have the time.”
“Of course,” I answered, imagining the kind of queries my homiletic art might stir.
“Did you actually mean all that?” he said still too loudly, “or were you just, well you know, preaching?” I wanted to ask him if he really meant what he just said, but all I could muster was a bland, “Yes, I did,” as if it was a fair question considering, well you know, preachers. I never saw him again. It is true that preachers get swept up in the vortex of our own momentum, but there’s more going on in moments like that than preacher-issues (which are legion). Peter’s measured relationship to Jesus and sensibly divided attention prefigure American Lazarus’s vision of a well-balanced disciple. We are as eager to support Jesus as Peter was that morning, maybe more. The American Church is a financial and operational juggernaut. But Jesus doesn’t need a juggernaut. When he calls the people he redeemed, he’s not asking them for help. He’s not suggesting. A close look at his way with the disciples should make it clear that he’s not all that into life-balance.
For example, when the multitudes pushed in on Jesus, he stepped into Peter’s boat without asking. That seems like a little thing unless it’s your boat, but more is happening here than crowd management. Every step Jesus took was part of the long walk his Father began in the cool of the day after our First Parents decided he didn’t really mean the thing about that tree. God didn’t stop walking at the Gates of Eden. He came in the words of prophet after prophet until he sent his Son. Getting into Peter’s boat was the next step in the journey that has little to do with “balance.” ‘Surely,” he said, “they will listen to my son’ (Matthew 21.37).”
If Jesus measured stability by the sensible terms of worldly prudence, he’d never have left the Father’s side.
If Jesus were just another rabbi getting in a boat, the keel could balance them all just fine; but he’s the Son of God. That’s the problem with the Gospel of Life-Balance. If Jesus measured stability by the sensible terms of worldly prudence, he’d never have left the Father’s side. And if he somehow got carried away and decided to make a grand gesture like incarnating himself, being born in a manger still seems a little extreme. The life of a carpenter is the opposite of extreme, unless the whole cosmos coheres in the that carpenter (Colossians 1.17). But, if for some fanciful reason he did all that, he’d never do what came next. In the name of balance and common sense, he would never let himself be torn apart, while his mother watched him die. Jesus stepped into Peter’s boat without asking for the same reason he entered the world it was in without asking. He came to set right what was so distorted.
The Gospel of Life-Balance minimizes the one person who can truly steady us all.
As soon as he got in Peter’s boat, he started making ‘requests’ that Peter can’t reasonably refuse. The word Luke uses is translated into “ask”, but not all asks are equal because not all askers are. Peter knows that and dutifully pushes off, while Jesus finishes his sermon. Once it’s over, Jesus demoted Peter to a deckhand and told him to get busy casting his nets. Luke leaves Peter’s attitude about all this to our imagination, but he gives an artful hint that cues up the story’s denouement and begins to expose how the Gospel of Life-Balance minimizes the One Person who can truly steady us all.
Peter will learn that soon, but his natural response is to inform the carpenter-turned-rabbi-turned-fisheries expert that he spent all night doing his job and the fish were laying low. We can imagine an eye-roll. “This is not your place, sir, but since I’m out here in front of everyone with a trending influencer, I’ll do it.” That’s a paraphrase, as you guessed. The “sir” part, however, is not. Peter subtly signals what he thinks of Jesus by using a word that can also be translated “master.” Either of those work, what’s important is that it’s not “Lord.” Peter will call him “Lord” in a moment and change his center of gravity forever. For now, however, he’s fine with his leveled life and uses a term of respect that doesn’t unreasonably exalt the person addressed. Like that doctor and everyone else in the Church of American Lazarus, Peter was interested in what the new preacher had to say, but after all, Jesus was, you know, just preaching.
