3rd Sunday after the Epiphany

 

Matt 4:12-23

This week we continue ongoing Epiphany series about what it means to be called be called by God and how we live and grow as Jesus’s disciples.  Which seems fitting as we gather together to reflect on our ministry together at our annual meeting, rejoice in all we have done in the past year and begin to look toward our future together.  To help us on our journey, in our lesson is week, we essentially heard another version of the story from last week about Jesus meeting and calling Peter to be among his first disciples.  Only this time we hear it from the Gospel of Matthew.

So one day, Jesus is walking by the sea in Capernaum and he meets two pairs of brothers Peter and Andrew and James and John while they are out cleaning up after a night of fishing and he calls them to follow him.  He tells them he will make them “fishers of people” and they immediately leave their stuff and follow him. 

Now often when we hear this story, it is easy to find it super intimidating.  When we hear sermons on this text, they are often filled with Pastors talking about leaving everything to follow Jesus, possibly lifting up stories as exemplars of people who literally left everything to become a missionary or serve the poor or become a priest or a nun or some other radical expression of faith.  And while those stories can be uplifting, they can also leave us feeling inadequate or excluded because few if any of us are actually called to that life.  I have devoted my whole career to this calling, but even I didn’t leave everything to pursue it.  I have a family and children and full life alongside of this work that is an equally important part of my Christian vocation.

So when we hear this story only in the context of leaving everything to follow Jesus it is way to easy to look around at our own lives and say “Welp, I guess this story doesn’t really apply to me because I haven’t and probably won’t ever do anything like that in my lifetime.”  But when we do this I think we are actually missing out, because leaving everything is not actually what this story is about and that is almost definitely not what Jesus wants from you and it is not even what Jesus wants or gets from Peter, Andrew, James and John. 

Because here is the thing, people often talk about the disciples leaving career and family to follow Jesus but that is not really what happens.  When we actually look closely at what happens in the rest of biblical narrative, we see that these disciples don’t leave their lives or vocations behind when they choose to follow Jesus.  These 4 guys never stop being fishermen.  And they certainly don’t abandon those boats on the seashore that day because Peter and John clearly still own their boats for the rest of the story.  These boats are how Jesus and his disciples get around for the rest of his ministry.  They are how he crosses back and forth across the sea of Galilee at least half a dozen times in the next few years.  These boats are how Jesus manages to reach all these new places where he shares the Good News with great crowds of people.  He uses them as a speaking platform, as a means of escape and as the setting for some of his most impressive miracles.  And all that time they are manned and operated by these same skilled professional fishermen.  And in between all those major ministry moments that actually make it into the written Gospel, the disciples keep working as commercial fishermen which is probably how they funded their lives and all these missionary travels.  Even at the very end of the story, in the Gospel of John, the first time Peter sees Jesus after the resurrection is from this fishing boat after he has still been out working all night.  Jesus doesn’t call his disciples to abandon their vocation, he just expands it. 

He also doesn’t actually call them to abandon their families.  Not so long after this Jesus very intentionally travels to Peter’s house in order to heal his mother-in-law, and consequentially calls the first Deacon, which also means Peter has a wife, who he stays with.  Now we don’t know exactly what happens to James and John’s father Zebedee after this, but we do know that James and John’s mother was still around and involved in the ministry and knew Jesus well enough to come to him personally to request a favor for her sons much later in the Gospel.  It appears quite plainly that rather than being cut off, the disciples’ families remained an important part of their lives and the support system of the nascent church as it was getting started.

Jesus, in this story or anywhere else, isn’t asking anyone to become something they aren’t, instead Jesus is yet again becoming exactly what we need and asking us simply to do exactly what we were made to do.

When Jesus appears to Peter and these disciples, he doesn’t tell them to give up who they are, to go be something they aren’t.  Instead he tells them, “I will make you fishers of people”.  I will take the skills and talents and experiences you already have and I will help you use them to further the kingdom of God.

And it is the same for us.  Jesus isn’t looking for some sort of radical separation between our faith life and our every day lives.  He doesn’t want us to cut ourselves off from our friends and neighbors, even those with whom we deeply disagree.  He doesn’t want us to give up on the jobs and vocations, hobbies and pursuits that have sustained us through our lives. He doesn’t want us to closet off our faith life from everything else or hide it away.

In fact, just the opposite.  Jesus calls each of us to use our skills, our talents and our experiences to further the kingdom of God right where we are.  To use what God has given us, not to throw it away.  To use the skills and resources we have developed in our lives and careers outside the church in holy ways.  Not just inside the church walls but out in our neighborhood and community as well.  Whether that is sharing joy through music, helping to build or fix things, feeding those around you, cooking, sewing, driving or faithfully stewarding the money you have earned.  Everyone has God given skills and talents to share in the world.

And it is the same with our families.  A lot of us here have people in our family, maybe most of our family who are not currently active in the church.  Jesus invites us not to be disappointed or to turn away but instead to look for where we can bring our lives of faith and experiences of God’s grace and love into theirs.  Where we can share our memories and traditions and stories of faith with children and grandchildren who may not know them.  Where we can show gracious love and tell God’s story through word and deed wherever they are.

Being a disciple doesn’t mean abandoning the world or sequestering ourselves away to worship Jesus.  Just the opposite, it means bringing ourselves and our skills out into the world to spread the Good News that is where true discipleship lies.  Amen.