Epiphany 3                                 Matt. 4:12-23, 1Cor. 1:10-18                                  1/23/05

What do you think it would be like to have Jesus move in and make Edinboro, Cambridge Springs, Venango or Blooming Valley His home base? 

What would it be like to have Jesus come to where you work and say, “Follow me...”? 

What would you do if your son or daughter said, “Dad/Mom, I feel this call to the ministry of Jesus.  Uh, you’ll have to take over the family business completely and support my family while I’m gone.”? 

We can get a bit of an answer to those questions from our Gospel for today.  After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus made Capernaum his home base.  Capernaum was a small village by the sea.  It is believed to have had a population of about 1000 people, most of whom were either fishermen or farmers. 

The people Jesus calls in this account and elsewhere are not the educated, the religious leaders or even faithful synagogue goers, necessarily.  They are generally simple working people.  Nor do they all fit some ideal mold in personality, gifts or skills.  Instead, they are people with appealing qualities, but also hang-ups and weaknesses. Some are always on the go and others are slower to act.  Some may excel at healing, others at teaching, others at listening and others at still other ministries. Some are assertive and good at witness and some are quieter and shyer.  Each disciple though is a unique individual and will contribute his piece to the church. 

But, notice that with only one exception, each person that is called to discipleship drops what he is doing and jumps to the challenge.  There’s a sense of excitement and of “daring – do” in this call story that is reinforced by the repeated use of “immediately”.  The disciples were open to hearing the call and thus able to recognize Jesus and respond to Him.   

But, what of poor Zebedee?  Dear old dad.  We are not given any real information about him?  Did Jesus not want him?  Was he left behind, as I implied in my earlier question, to take care of the family?  How did he feel, suddenly losing his partners in the fishing business?  And in later years, did he wish he’d tossed his responsibilities aside and followed Jesus anyway? 

An interesting comment was made in one of the resources I consulted.  It points out that there are time gaps in Jesus ministry as recorded in Matthew and that it is possible that the disciples went home between times, that when Jesus was ready to go on another journey He would call them out again.  This is just imagining, of course, but some interesting angles can be made from it. 

And what about being “called”?  Jesus was often spoken of or given the title, “Rabbi”.  This makes sense, since what He does most is teach.  And the word disciple by the way, means “student”.  It would have been unusual in Jesus day – considered bad form, actually - for a Rabbi to call students.  Rabbi’s didn’t ask people to be disciples.  The greatness of a rabbi’s teaching was supposed to attract disciples.  Matthew is seems to be making a point here and it may well have meaning for us. 

Then, there is the somewhat misleading statement, “...I will make you fish for people.”  Ginny was at church Friday morning when I was doing some of my reading and commented that I disliked what the NRSV translators had done to this verse to make it gender neutral.  You can easily read what Jesus said as His intent to force people to fish for people (become disciples).  We got off onto the various ways that statement could be read as translated and Ginny suggested I could build a whole sermon around the word “make”, but I’ll leave that for another time.  For now, I’ll interpret Jesus’ words to mean that He will take the gifts and skills people have and use them for God’s purposes. 

Anyway, having called these fishermen from the routine of their lives, off our happy band went on their first field trip. 

I started out though asking what you (or I) would think if these things happened today, in our communities, within our families.  And I want to go back to that now. 

Jesus has moved into Edinboro, CS, Venango and Blooming Valley and set up a base of operation!  While He used human means in the form of those Hanoverians who started St. Paul’s 150 years ago, it was very much Jesus who established this church.  Furthermore, He expects modern day disciples to carry on His work wherever they live and work. 

There’s a story about a famous monastery that had deteriorated due to getting the reputation for being a place of conflict because the brothers living in the monastery were constantly criticizing and arguing with each other.  This place of prayer and praise to God had become a place of anger and meanness.  

One of the brothers who was more concerned for the monastery and its mission than for engaging in these power struggles went to a wise hermit to seek advice.  The hermit was known not just for human wisdom, but also for what seemed to be messages from God because he was in prayerful communion with God all the time.  After listening to the concern of the brother, the hermit told him to return to the monastery and tell the brothers the following:  “I have been given a message from God, but I can say it only once and you may never repeat it to anyone.  The message is, the Messiah has come among us and taken on the form of a monk.” 

From that day on the atmosphere changed at the monastery because each monk went about wondering if the each other monk might be the One.  And soon the monastery became known once again as a place of joyful praise, deep prayer and profound love. 

This is what Jesus intended the church (all churches) to be – places of joyful praise, deep prayer and profound love.  Sometimes we very human disciples allow our ego’s, our weaknesses, our sinful need for power to turn a church from what Christ intended, to a place of conflict.  This is what Paul is writing to the Corinthian church about.  Their congregation is in trouble because various people claim that their understanding or discipleship is greater than others due to who baptized them.  Later in this letter, Paul gives that wonder chapter on love that we often read at weddings.  You know the one.  It includes the verses, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres...”  We may use it at weddings, but it was not intended to refer to marital relationship.  It was about how the members of the church were to treat each other. 

If we takes Paul’s instruction to heart and if we will hear the message of the hermit – the message of Jesus – and learn to see each other as possibly carrying God within us we can be what Jesus intended us to be. 

Then, like the disciples of old, we can leave here on Sunday and go on our field trips practicing being Jesus out in the world.  We can courageously face the darkness around us – the darkness of co-workers with anger problems, family members who are ill, friends who struggle with life issues – and be Jesus to them and to the world.   

This is our call as modern day disciples to minister to those around us and model for them how Jesus would be to them.  We can do this because we do carry Jesus within us.  Each of us is like one small atom in the body of Christ.  God created each of us to be a unique individual, gifted in our own special way to serve Him and be Him to others.  Knowing this and knowing that each other disciple we meet is also the Messiah, should give us the enthusiasm of those first disciples who dropped what they were doing and followed Jesus.  Ours is a special privilege.  We among all the world’s people have been called by Jesus to go out on these special field trips with Him to proclaim the Good News and to heal people of what hurts them.  How awesome that we should be so called! 

And what of poor old Zebedee?  Well, that’s part of the Good News too.  Jesus keeps coming back and calling.  He doesn’t exclude anyone and won’t exclude those who don’t feel called at first or who are too weighed down with worldly care to respond or who can’t see the Messiah yet.  You see, that’s what grace is: God loving us as we are and never giving up on us, never ceasing to say, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men (and women and children).  Amen.