Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday January 26, 2019
Scripture:
Matthew 4:12-23
So I have a confession
to make… I don’t really like fishing. I
know, I know… I know that living here near the shores of two rivers, that there
are many of you who enjoy recreational fishing.
I know that living so close to the ocean here, there are many people who
depend on fishing for a living, just as those first disciples of Jesus depended
on fishing. But as a hobby, fishing just
doesn’t float my boat, if you’ll pardon the expression.
The idea of getting up
before the crack of dawn and sitting watching a little floater while being
eaten by mosquitoes – it’s just not my idea of fun. And while I am able to clean and fillet a
fish, I much prefer to acquire my fish with the head and guts already removed.
All of that being
said, if Jesus had come up to me and said, “Follow me, and I will make you fish
for people,” well, I don’t think that I would be tempted to accept that
invitation. That doesn’t sound like an
attractive prospect at all, to me!
But to Simon Peter,
and to Andrew, and to James, and to John – this invitation made sense to
them. They fished for a living. They fished to feed their families, and even
though the economic system was corrupt, they also fished to sell their catch to
the Roman buyers to earn a small salary.
This was their way of life – they knew the ins and outs of fishing; they
knew the nuances of a fishing life that I could never hope to understand, and
so when Jesus invites them to follow and fish for people, this invitation makes
sense to them.
I can’t help but
wonder… If these first disciples of Jesus had been farmers, what would that
invitation have sounded like? Instead of
saying, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”; maybe Jesus would
have said instead, “Follow me, and you will plant seeds of God’s kingdom and
harvest God’s love.”
The thing is, God
calls all of us to follow the way of Jesus, and God meets each one of us where
we are. Each one of us is unique – we
have our own background, our own story, and our own calling. Jesus calls fishermen and farmers. Jesus calls nurses and teachers and mill
workers and engineers and students. Jesus meets us where we are, and Jesus calls
us to follow, to listen, to learn, to imitate, and to become members of the
Body of Christ, this living network of people that crosses denominations and
countries and languages, and that stretches across every generation.
This reading comes
close to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
In Matthew’s gospel, this story is close to the beginning. Jesus has been baptized, as we read a couple
of weeks ago, and he saw the Holy Spirit descending and he heard the voice of
God calling him “Beloved.” Right after
his baptism, he is led by that Holy Spirit in to the wilderness where he fasts
and faces temptations for 40 days and 40 nights – the Lectionary, our cycle of
Sunday morning readings skipped over that story, but if you really like this
story don’t worry – we’re going to be backtracking and reading it in March on
the first Sunday of Lent!
Today’s reading picks
up right after Jesus leaves the wilderness and receives the news that John the
Baptist, the one who had baptized Jesus in the Jordan River just 40 days ago,
has been arrested. Jesus knows that the
stakes are high. He knows that he is
living under an empire that doesn’t tolerate dissidents or people who challenge
authority. And yet he begins his
ministry anyways. He knows that the Holy
Spirit is with him; he knows that God has called him; he knows that he has work
to do.
We were talking in
bible study just a couple of weeks ago about how amazing it is that these
disciples of Jesus just drop what they are doing and follow him. We were speculating about just what it was
about this person that made Peter and Andrew and James and John walk away from
their livelihood, walk away from their families, and join Jesus on his mission
of spreading God’s love and challenging the status quo, despite all of the
dangers. We speculated that there must
have been something special about Jesus, there must have been something
powerfully attractive about him, that people would drop their nets and follow
him to become fishers of people.
I think that it must
have been the Holy Spirit – that the Holy Spirit opened the eyes of the people
so that they could see that he could not only teach people something special,
but that he was something special.
Jesus always contained
God – the eternal Christ was present in him from before his birth – but at his
baptism, his mission and his ministry began when the Holy Spirit rested on
him. Those disciples too, their mission
and ministry began in that moment when God-in-Jesus called them saying, “Follow
me!” and God-in-the Holy Spirit opened their ears and their hearts so that they
could follow.
I think that each one
of us has a call story – a time when God called us to follow. This might look like a dramatic 180 – like
those first disciples dropping their fishing nets to go where Jesus led them;
or it might look more like a shifting in your purpose and intention as you
allow God to use you in the place where you find yourself. It might involve an external event shaking
you out of your comfort zone, like Jesus hearing about the arrest of John the
Baptist; or it might involve a loving arm reaching out to comfort you in a
moment when you needed it.
And I don’t think that
we are called once and that is it – I think that God continues to call us all
through our lives. God’s call will look
different when you are 15 than it does when you are 50, and it will look
different yet again when you are 85. But
no matter what your call story looks like, the one thing that they all have in
common is love. God is love, so when God
is calling us, there will be a deepening of love towards God and love towards
our neighbours.
In a few minutes, we
are going to be gathering around the table and celebrating communion. God is always calling us, and God is always
sustaining us for the journey as we follow Jesus. God loves us, even when we don’t yet know it;
God loves us through all of the different callings that we live in to
throughout our lives; God loves us when we can sense God’s presence, and God
loves us when we can’t sense God’s presence.
And so as we share the
bread and the cup, I invite you to remember that God loves you – that God loves
you not for anything that you have done or for anything that you haven’t done,
but just because you are you. God loves
you, and God is calling you to live in that love, today and every day.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
Everyone is called to the table
to be sustained for the journey
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