Second Presbyterian Church
Roanoke, Virginia
April 27, 2008
“The Incredibles”
Mark 1:16-20
George C. Anderson

16As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 17And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” 18And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Not long ago, I attended an April Fools party where everyone was supposed to dress in some sort of funky way.  I chose to dress as I am now, with a robe that revealed a shirt and tie, pants and dress shoes.  But I had a sign on my back saying that if you wondered what I wear beneath my robe, I was going to reveal it at 8:00 o’clock.  When 8:00 o’clock rolled around, I hoped on a chair, unzipped my robe and opened it to reveal that my shirt and tie were cut off at the top, and that what I really was wearing underneath was a UNC basketball jersey.
Imagine another possibility.  Imagine a damsel in distress—preferably a beautiful woman around my age of about 35 years-old—hanging from her fingertips from a ledge at the top of the First Union Bank building.  Her cries for help somehow make it all the way to 214 Mountain Avenue and penetrate these stone walls. 

Okay, that’s not believable, so let’s say instead that it is because of my supersonic hearing that I hear her cry for help.  I rip off my robe to reveal a superhero’s uniform.  You’re shocked because all this time you thought I was just an ordinary minister.  I run out the door, take off into thin air, and arrive just in time to swoop beneath the falling maiden and catch her just before she hits the Jefferson Street sidewalk.  I would be her hero, of course, and she would beg me to stay.  I wouldn’t, though.  Making sure she is okay, I would take off and fly back here to my church and family and resume the tasks of an ordinary minister . . . embarrassed, of course, by all the attention heaped on me by my church . . . and national press. 

Those kinds of fantasies—of ordinary people having extraordinary power—fueled the success of the fun movie, The Incredibles.  The movie suggests that there are—living among us, in our very neighborhoods, living our kind of lives, having the same kind of jobs we do, paying the same kinds of bills—superheroes.  They are ordinary seeming people with extraordinary gifts. 
The Parrs are a family of these extraordinarily gifted people.  Bob Parr has super-human strength, and his wife, Helen, is incredibly elastic.  But these superheroes don’t use their gifts anymore because their powers no longer meet code.  Bob saved a man from killing himself, accidentally harming 100 people doing so, and both the injured and the man who attempted suicide sued him.  They and their three children are placed in a government protection program in the suburbs, and are instructed not to use their powers.  These extraordinarily gifted people; these Incredibles, have to live ordinary lives.

By the end of the movie, though, the Parrs realize that to deny their gifts is to deny who they are.  The Parrs learn to accept the risk and express their gifts so as to be true to themselves.    
I like the movie’s message.  I’ve noticed that there are pressures in some quarters for adolescent girls not to excel too much at anything because it is un-cool to stand out.  I want all the young women of this church to embrace their gifts without embarrassment, and forget about “dumbing down” to fit in. 

However, I want to go back to the movie’s premise so as to introduce you to a different kind of Incredibles.  The Incredibles of the movie are seemingly ordinary people with extraordinary power.  They have gifts that make them unlike most other people. 

Allow me now to introduce you to some different Incredibles.  I was, myself, introduced to these Incredibles just over a week ago when I was with one of my study groups, the one that has its genesis in seminary days.  For around 16 years, we have been meeting for a week to read and discuss books that most of us do not have the time or focus to read during normal weeks of meetings, visits, sermon planning, and emails.  This year, our reading was St. Augustine’s The City of God.  Toward the end of my long and arduous journey through 1091 pages of small print wilderness (I had the unabridged version. Some of the other ministers brought an abridged version that was half as long. I’m thinking of bringing them up on charges . . .), I came upon the Incredibles of Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo.  I had been thinking that some Walt Disney screenwriter had made up the term, but here was St. Augustine, over sixteen centuries earlier, using a word that a computer spell-check would toss out.  St. Augustine talked about his three Incredibles.

Only, when Augustine talked about his Incredibles, he was not talking about people.  He was talking about spiritual truths.

The first incredible is this: the crucified Jesus rose from the grave.  It is incredible that a dead man became alive again.  It is incredible that the reason he rose from the dead is because he was an extraordinary among ordinaries; a human like all of us--eating the food we eat, putting his sandals on one foot at a time, laughing at some of the same things we find funny--yet he was also divine.  He rose from the dead as God among us. 

Incredible. 

The second incredible for Augustine is that so many ordinary people have changed their lives believing the first Incredible is true.  Jesus’ tomb became a birth canal to a new life, and believing he is risen became a birth canal for new lives.  That so many gave themselves to this risen Jesus, sacrificing so much, living and dying with great hope, is Augustine’s second Incredible.

Augustine’s third Incredible is in stark contrast to the movie.  Once again, the movie’s premise is that there are living among us ordinary people, these Incredibles with extraordinary powers.  Regardless of the movie’s intended message, the premise is that among the many are the gifted few. While the movie might empower those who feel themselves to be the gifted few, it might leave out those who feel themselves among the many. 

What if someone suggested to us here in church that there might be another Mother Theresa among us this morning?  I’m not her . . .  and it’s not because I’m male.  It is because I don’t think I have it in me to give my life in such total sacrificial service of the poor.  Do you have it in you?  If not, then the poor don’t need us, they need the next Mother Theresa, whoever she or he is.  So, we who believe it is not up to us to help the poor, we would like the “next Mother Theresa” to please show him or herself so those poor can get help.

What if someone said that a great theologian of the next generation is a member of this church?  Another Augustine.  Another Martin Luther.  I ask of every person under the age of 40 in this sanctuary, “Is it you?”  I bet most of us who are under 40 have already answered that question with a “No.”  I can imagine a young adult or a teenager sitting out there thinking, “Wow, that would be something.  I know it’s not me, but maybe some day I’ll be able to take my children or grandchildren to a picture in the hallway; a picture of a confirmation class.  And I’ll be able to say, “Look!  That’s her!  Second row, fourth from the left; that’s the author of the three volume systematic theology that everyone is studying in seminary these days.” 

Guess what . . . She’s going to be the Edmunds Lecturer this year!” 

She’s the one who thinks theologically, not us.  It is not up to us to sort out how God is working in our lives, in this church, in this community, or in this world.  We’re going to leave that up to the next great theologian among us.  So, would the next John Calvin please report for duty?
Do you see?  In a spiritual sense, so many of us know we are not the ones who can fly, or lift an SUV with one hand, or have x-ray vision, or the power to read minds. 

Augustine’s third Incredible, though, is different.  If the movie suggests that there are a few among common people with extraordinary power, Augustine finds it incredible that an extraordinary power works among common people.  He finds it incredible that Christ called as his followers such ordinary, unimpressive, everyday people like the characters of our passage this morning.  Peter, Andrew, James and John are not secret agents who rip off their fishermen’s robes to reveal the super disciples they really are.  They are not the A-list, the ones who would be brought to Jerusalem because they are expected to be the top choices of the first round of a Disciple Draft.

Here is how Augustine puts it:
The fisherman whom Christ sent with the nets of faith into the sea of the world were men unschooled in the liberal arts and utterly untrained as far as education goes, men with no skill in the use of language, armed with no weapons of debate, plumed with no rhetorical power.

Augustine, who we today call a saint, was not impressed by the saintly qualifications of these ordinary fishermen.  In another Gospel’s telling of this story, when Peter realizes that he is being addressed by a voice much greater than his own, all he can do is fall to his face and beg to be ignored.  The extraordinary thing is not him, but Jesus calling him.

Augustine then goes on to talk about the incredible witness these ordinary fishermen eventually made.  Augustine said:

…it is incredible that men so rude and lowly, so few and unaccomplished, should have convinced the world including men of learning, of something so incredible and have convinced men so conclusively.

Even if that last quote does not inspire with its eloquence, we should be brought to our knees in awe at its meaning.  The miracle is not that the church has been built and the Gospel has been proclaimed through the super-human efforts of saints, but that God has built the church in and through ordinary people like potters and weavers, blacksmiths and leather workers, maids and court officials.

If Augustine were writing his book today, he perhaps would speak of supermarket clerks and paralegals, surgeons and homemakers, accountants and webpage designers, the disabled and the unemployed, the honored and the convicted felons . . . all those who make up the membership of ordinary churches throughout this country.  He would look at them--at us--and perhaps say: “This is incredible.  Look who believes in the Resurrection.  Look who the risen Christ works through!  Nothing has changed.  God still uses sinners as saints.  He continues to inspire an incredible witness through the extraordinary commitment of ordinary people.”
When you go home today, feel free to change out of your Sunday-Go-To-Meeting clothes.  Change into the uniforms of the Incredibles; those are your everyday clothes.  The charge for every one of you Peter, Andrew, James, and John types is this:
the risen Christ will work miracles through you;
through your daily commitment to try,
by grace, to bear the name of Jesus Christ in some meaningful way. 
The church will be built and the world will change because of God using people like us.
That is incredible!