For Christmas this year my children bought me a boxed set of the entire Foyle’s War, a British crime drama set in Hastings and London during the years of and directly following the Second War. As Paula and I watched one episode, we noticed a young actor who played a small role. ‘Is that who I think it is?’ asked Paula. ‘It is,’ said I, ‘it’s a very young James McAvoy.’ McAvoy has progressed into more prominent roles since that episode, but at that moment he was simply a young actor playing a supporting role.
Paula and I often watch movies with an eye for who we might find in the supporting cast. Sometimes a now well-known actor will show up in a walk-on role with no particular importance or perhaps in a supporting role that really does move the plot of the entire film. Then there are those actors who we call ‘character’ actors who play villains, simpletons, thugs or the hapless companions of the main characters.
One of the things that I’ve noticed about so-called ‘character’ actors and others who tend to play supporting roles is that they’re never out of work. Leading men and women sometimes have a shelf-life that causes them to fade out of the picture after a period of time. Some of the great stars of the silent screen could not make the transition to ‘talkies’, while there are actors who become so identified with a particular character that they find it difficult to play any other role.
In preparing for today my eye fell on Zebedee, the father of James and John. From what the Gospels tell us, we can deduce a few things. He’s fairly well-off if he can hire other people to work his fishing boat or even boats. He’s fortunate to have at least two sons who can keep the family business going when Zebedee grows too old to do so himself. But he hadn’t counted on Jesus of Nazareth coming along and drafting his sons into Jesus’ growing but itinerant ministry along the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
We find him in the boat, working with his sons and hired help, providing food for his family, his employees and food to sell to the local populace. He’s minding his own business, in the precise meaning of the phrase, when Jesus decides to turn everything upside down. Although it’s difficult for us from the distance of two thousand years to put ourselves in Zebedee’s place, let’s give it a try. Zebedee watches his sons leave everything, including their social and cultural obligations to support their father and family, to follow another messianic figure among the many who had come before, who were active then and who would likely come later. Off they go and Zebedee is left in the boat with the hired help.
We will hear about James and John again and again, but we will never hear about Zebedee again. His sons will become lead members of the cast of characters who will change the world. Zebedee will only be mentioned in the end credits and recognized only if we’re looking closely for him.
Throughout our lives we have all likely had an experience or two like Zebedee. We’re working hard, doing what we need to do, when a friend or a family member or a co-worker is suddenly called away and becomes a ‘star’. We still have nets to weave, fish to sort, boats to repair and staff to direct, but they leave everything to us and move on to ‘greater’ things. They have been ‘called’; they have a ‘vocation’; we just have jobs and the humdrum of ordinary life.
Such experiences can generate a variety of feelings. Jealousy and envy can raise their poisonous heads and cause us to become bitter and to adopt a ‘only if’ attitude to almost every dimension of our lives. We can become active opponents of everything our ‘stars’ represent and do our best to tear them down and to diminish whatever good they may be trying to achieve. But there is an alternative.
The alternative, I think, is to recognize the gift of being a member of the supporting cast. Supporting actors provide depth to the dramatic action. Without us the stars can become two-dimensional and their gifts only reflections in a mirror. Yesterday we celebrated the ordination of John Stephens as our Bishop Coadjutor and, in a month’s time, he will become our Diocesan Bishop. He is quite rightly the ‘star’ of the show. But he knows that without the full and active participation of all the members of this Diocese, regardless of the role they are called to exercise, the work God has given us to do in this time and in this place will falter and fail.
In his letter to the Christian community at Rome, Paul writes about what it means to be a member of the supporting cast in God’s powerful and on-going drama of re-creation, reconciliation and renewal.
For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. (Romans 13.3-8 in the Common English Bible)
I remember a young reader once misreading ‘extorter for ‘exhorter and ‘extortion’ for ‘exhortation’. Not one member of the congregation laughed nor mentioned it to the young person afterwards. When I remarked on the slip of the tongue, one older member replied, ‘Well, Paul wanted us to do what we do best!’
Friends, all of us have roles to play in what God is doing in the world. Every once and a while, one of us is called into some leading role or another. For the rest of us, the everyday work of ministry continues, each one of us doing what we do best, cheerfully, hopefully, faithfully, so that the full depth and breadth of God’s love for us becomes known.
I’m pretty sure that Zebedee felt let down by his sons and not a little unhappy with Jesus. But I hope he lived out one possible meaning of his name – ‘God bestows gifts’. I have this fantasy that Jesus and his disciples, as they went about Galilee, never lacked for fresh fish provided by the man whom they left behind in the boat with the hired help. After all, without the Zebedees of the world, who will weave the nets, sort the fish, repair the boats and direct the hired help so that the drama of salvation continues to win the hearts, minds and souls of God’s children?
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