On Tuesday, August 30th, the Gospel reading for the day was from Mark:

Mark 1:16 “Now as he walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. 17 And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. 18 And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him. 19 And when he had gone a little further thence, he saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets. 20 And straightway he called them: and they left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him.“

One of the things I work on doing is trying to put myself into the actual events I am reading about in the Bible. It is too easy to skim by the narrative because the duties of the day are calling to me. This morning, as I read the passage, it struck me that this was a violent disruption of what appeared to be a normal day in Zebedee’s life. Just another day out on the lake fishing, or perhaps they were mending their nets after a catch and . . . HEY!! Where do you boys think you’re going?”

“Father, Yeshua has called and wants us to join Him. We must follow Him.“

Try to imagine Zebedee’s consternation and confusion as he watches his sons walk away with Yeshua, the rabbi who has suddenly become the subject of dinner table discussions in Jerusalem. I have to think that when the boys went back home for a visit, the air at the dinner table was a bit strained.

“So, what are you two doing, now that you left your father struggling to run the business by himself? I understand you almost got arrested last week, and the week before, there was a near riot. Seems your rabbi is not as popular as you would have him be.”

“We do not follow him for popularity, Mom. He will restore Israel and bring in the Kingdom of God. Have you listened to him preach? Have you seen the miracles he has done?”

One thing which appears to be a constant in the Bible is that wherever Jesus goes, He disrupts things. God comes for a visit and life is suddenly and surprisingly turned upside down. There are adjustments to be made, sometimes quite intense. Zebedee’s life is disrupted. His sons are gone, and he must suddenly find help to run the fishing business. Think of the blind men who were healed. Used to begging, now, after all the hallelujahs die down and the crowds go home, the blind men must adjust to a radically new life. What will they do? They are accustomed to begging and perhaps have no real skills by which they can earn a living. The same is true for the lame and the terribly sick who are healed. Accustomed to being cared for, they will now have to approach life with self-sufficiency. I wonder how they made out after this sudden and intense disruption of their lives?

Jesus appears and Matthew leaves his table and coins to follow him, never again to serve Rome or her taskmasters. How did that go? Did Matthew’s overseer find him one day and berate him in public for leaving his post? Was Matthew threatened with punishment? These are the quiet parts of the Bible, yet I believe they are very real to those who lived them. Imagine Zacchaeus, the hated little tax collector who climbed the Sycamore tree to see Jesus. Imagine when he went out and began to make good on his promise to restore that which he had taken by overcharging people on their taxes, a common practice among the tax collectors of Jerusalem. I bet that for all his good intentions, someone, maybe more than one, cussed him out good, snatched the money from his hand, and then pushed him out the door, possibly even spitting on him. Zacchaeus’ life is disrupted. He goes from a life of riches to the austerity of the common folk, for he is now one of them. And if he was married, I can just hear Mrs. Zacchaeus saying, “What do you mean you have stopped being a tax collector and are returning the money to the people from whom you stole it? Are you nuts?” Yes, the story of Zaccheus and the Sycamore tree is inspiring. The life for Zacchaeus which followed his dinner with Jesus was mostly likely quite challenging.

Most famous in the many disruptions Jesus brought to Israel was the time He went into the Temple and saw it being used in a manner dishonoring to God. Braiding a whip He fashioned with his own hands, I don’t think we take proper time to imagine just how violent an act this was. Furious at the thieves in the Temple, he crashes through the greedy crowd, flipping over tables and driving people out in His righteous anger that the Temple of God is made a den of thieves. Every plan, every profit these men were counting on that day has been turned on its head.

Sometimes the disruptions are all joy. Imagine the grieving widow who walks crying beside her son’s coffin. This is more than just the sorrow of a mother. This is a death sentence, for as a widow, she will have no one to take care of her. Becoming a common beggar is in her future, with the distinct possibility that if no one cares for her, she could starve to death. Her sole source of support lies carried between the arms of the men who are bringing him to burial. Then Jesus appears and all is disrupted for joy. Stop and think of how she must have felt. Did she cast herself at Jesus’ feet and tightly clasp them, kissing them with the fervency of one who has just been given not only her life back, but the dearest thing to her heart – her son.

When Jesus shows up, disruption is the norm. Ask St. Genesius. Genesius had been a leading comedic actor on the Roman circuit. This was not necessarily a good thing. Unlike the high-minded dramas of ancient Greece, theater in ancient Rome often was treated as a joke. The stage tended to be a place for cheap comedy, blasphemy, and outright pornography. Genesius had been a lifelong pagan who relished the opportunity to mock Christendom. When he was given the opportunity to perform before the emperor Diocletian, Genesius envisioned a way to turn his mockery into career advancement. On stage before the emperor, Genesius played the role of an invalid who was screaming for baptism. Then came the moment for Genesius to receive his mock baptism.

This time, however, things were different. Genesius had a genuine conversion on stage. According to Michael Freze’s book Patron Saints, Genesius saw a vision of an angel who not only “showed him his sins in a heavenly book” but also “wiped clean” these sins, indicating that Genesius, through his moment of sincere conversion, had been forgiven for his life of blasphemy.

Not only St. Genesius, but over the two millennia of Church history, God has suddenly appeared to a man or woman’s heart and turned their life upside down. I, for one, am profoundly and eternally grateful for this, since I would be long dead and in my grave had Jesus not shown up at a Bible study in Virginia Beach where a Pentecostal preacher brought me to Him. After four years of the most dissolute living imaginable I was holding onto life by a thread. The demons that were running my life were intent on running me over a cliff, similar to the way they treated the swine in Luke 8:33. I am alive today because the demons within me were disrupted, being cast out of my life by the Lord who loves mankind. Scarcely a week later, I noticed that the hallucinations from LSD were gone, my heart was at peace, and my mind was clear.

Jesus even disrupts religious people in their piety: Father Walter Ciszek, A Jesuit priest found this out:

Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experice, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.

He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”

He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith

At the end of the book, Father Ciszek relates that the experience of the Communist gulag showed him that he lacked humility and was depending on himself rather than the all-sufficiency of the Lord. Once out and in freedom, he stated that his imprisonment was, from a spiritual standpoint, the best thing that could have happened to him. No one wishes or encourages suffering for himself, yet St. Paul looks at suffering in this manner:

Romans 5:3 “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience.”

Modern American Christianity wants the glory without the cross, the patience without tribulation. Do not disrupt us Jesus. We are comfortable in the way we practice our belief in you.

Look back over your life. What disruption of plans did God bring to pass for you? What was the result? Millions have testified to not understanding why their dreams were dashed, their plans short-circuited, and their lives turned upside down. I have shared the wonderful way in which the plans for my destruction, by demons who were driving me to sin, were disrupted. What about you?

I would love to hear what God has done for you when He disrupted your life!