INTRODUCTION        Warning: this will be a participatory sermon. The questions I am about to ask are not rhetorical. Feel free to yell out the answers.

Does anyone remember the last time we focused on the story we read this morning, the story of the Great Catch and the Call of the Disciples? Yes! It has been the theme-story for our Christian Stewardship program for the past two years.

Our Guest Steward, Nick Carter, President of Andover Newton Theological School, preached on this text here in 2005. A year later, our next Guest Steward, Jim Antal, Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC preached on this text in 2006.

If you are worried we are over using it, I hasten to tell you about a colleague of mine, a minister in the United Church of Canada who, in the course of a single year, preached ten sermons on the story of the Ten Lepers!

THE UNEXPECTED CATCH AND CALL OF THE DISCIPLES: The story of the Unexpected Catch is one of the truly great stories in the New Testament. We’ve just read the story aloud and you have a copy of it in your bulletins.

Let us begin at the beginning. Who was there? Who are the characters, the participants?

Yes, Jesus, Simon, James and John, an unknown number of fishermen, the crowd, and fish!

Note the presence of the crowd. This entire episode takes place in a very public place, in the
presence of lots of people.

Let’s set the scene: what is going on? What do you see? Hear? Smell? Feel? Tell me everything. (Members of the congregation paint a verbal picture of the scene.)

Everything hangs on this moment, this story, this call. The entire New Testament depends on this. You see, the whole thing would have come to naught, God’s Good News would have shriveled on the vine, if no one had followed Jesus. There would have been no Pentecost, no church, no Epistle to the Romans, no Michelangelo’s Pieta, no Mother Theresa, no Old South Church.

Everything depends on whether these fishermen follow Jesus. Everything depends on their willingness to cast off … to put out into deep water … to put down their nets … to leave their fishing boats and their fishing village … to risk … to move out in faith.

Because they do risk and follow Jesus, their story comprises the first chapter in the story of the Christian Church. Subsequent chapters are printed in the rest of the pages of the Bible.

THE STORY ISN’T OVER: WE ARE STILL WRITING THE CHAPTERS

In the United Church of Christ we are convinced that the story isn’t over. The book is still being written. There are more chapters yet to come.

It is a shame, really, that the Bible comes with a front cover and a back cover. It makes you think that, with the final chapter in the Bible, God stopped. But that’s not what we believe. We believe God is still (what?) Speaking! Yes, and acting and tending and caring and weeping and judging and rejoicing and creating. In other words, God is still being God.

So long as God is still speaking, so long as God is still being God, we are still listening and writing new chapters.

If you look at the pulpit you will see there a stack of books. Can any of you guess what sort

of books those are?

They are histories of Old South Church in Boston! They tell the story of this congregation’s Christian discipleship: books and books (stacks of books) and chapters and chapters, each is filled with stories about how the people of Old South lived out their faith and continued the tradition begun by Peter, James and John of responding to God’s call and following Jesus.

The books on the pulpit contain chapters about the earnest if sometimes terribly misguided convictions of our Puritan forebears who desired to build God’s City Upon a Hill. Theirs was an adventure and experiment in Christian discipleship … an experiment they conducted right here in Boston.

Those books contain chapters about the engagement of the English with the American Indians whom they met here, chapters about the so-called witch trials, chapters about the American Revolution, about the Civil War, about abolition and suffrage.

Those books tell the story of our forebear’s determination to found eleemosynary institutions – countless numbers of them – to serve the poor, the ill and the vulnerable: orphanages, homes for widows, homes for the aged, ministries to persons with mental illness, to prisoners and to seafarers. They tell of the founding of schools, hospitals and hospices, boarding houses and social service agencies.

Those books contain chapters about how our forbears passionately engaged themselves in the important matters of the day: slavery, the right to vote, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and civil rights. These books tell the story of a people to whom God said, over and over again, open the door … open it wider. Let the people in.

Open the door. Let them be baptized. Let them be emancipated. Let them read. Let them vote. Let them be ordained. Let them eat at the Lord’s Table. Let them marry. Let them sing of a God who defies our definitions of male and female. Open the door.

Old South members heard those words so often and so clearly, they had them etched in stone over our portico … words from the Bible: “Behold, I have set before you an open door.”

Now, our forebears were a collection of saints and sinners. And, like us, not one of them was exclusively one or the other. So, honesty requires that we confess that our ancestors were never all always on the right side of the door. They fought and argued, preached and prayed, over which doors to open and how far and how soon.

Even so, the historical record of this people – our people, our ancestors in the Christian faith – shakes out as a remarkable chapter in the story of Boston, in the story of the United States of America and in story of the Christian Church.

350^th ANNIVERSARY: THE NEXT CHAPTER           Most of the books on the pulpit were written on the occasion of anniversaries of Old South: the two hundredth anniversary, the 250^th, the 300^th, the 325^th. Every twenty-five or fifty years a book was commissioned in order to put into chapter form what had transpired in the previous era: to capture the stories and ministries, the adventures in discipleship, the opening of new doors, the putting out into deep water.

So, where is this leading? In the year 2019 (just twelve years from now) Old South Church will turn 350 years old. Three hundred and fifty years … spanning five separate centuries! When we commission a book to tell the story of this chapter – the chapter you and I are writing right now – what story will it tell? What door is God calling us to push open?

Just as the first chapters in the Christian story began with the call of Jesus, so has every good chapter begun in that way. We have been responsible for shameful chapters … chapters of history wherein human pride, prejudice or privilege got in the way of hearing God’s call. But the good chapters – the shining, open-wide-the-door, chapters – these tell the story of a faithful people, a prayerful people, a biblical and pious people, a people who were listening to the voice of the still speaking God.

LISTENING: DISCERNMENT The leadership of Old South proposes, therefore, that we spend quality time, deep time together. The Church Council proposes that we use this time together to listen for and discern God’s voice to us today. As I hope you know by now, we have embarked upon a Congregational Spiritual Discernment Process: a listening process … by which we intend to spend time together listening for and to the voice of the Still Speaking God.

Last Fall the Church Council authorized this process. In the Congregational tradition it wouldn’t be right, it wouldn’t be seemly, it wouldn’t be Congregational to attempt such a thing without a Committee! We have just such a Committee: the Congregational Spiritual Discernment Steering Committee. This steering Committee has been meeting often – very often – to prepare for the discernment sessions we will hold on each of the five Sundays in Lent. We have high hopes that you will join us … that you will participate in this effort to listen to and for the voice of the Still Speaking God.

Let me introduce the members of the Steering Committee: Ian Holland (chairperson), Larry Bowers, Jay Blackwell, Lois Corman, Bill Ghormley, Russ Gregg, Tom Hehir, Judie Pierce, Ruth Purtilo, Pam Roberts, Laurel Smith-Doer, and John Stainton. Quinn Caldwell and I help to staff this Committee.

In the story we read this morning everything depends on the response of the fishermen; everything hangs upon their willingness to listen to and follow the call of Jesus. So, too, will our discernment process depend upon our willingness to listen to and to follow the call of Jesus.

Today at the Annual Meeting, we will kick-off the congregational phase of this process with a presentation on Spiritual Discernment.

Where and how is God calling Old South Church in Boston, and you and me? What is the Still Speaking God saying to us? What will the next chapter of our own Christian discipleship look like? What new door is God calling us to open? What will our children and grandchildren read and think about our turn at practicing our faith, our turn at putting out into deep water, our turn at responding to Jesus’ call?