Sermon: 3rd Sunday after Epiphany
Text: Matthew 4.12-23
Theme: Follow me and I will make you
Prayer:
In our Gospel, Jesus approaches two sets of fishermen by the Sea of Galilee, and says to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately, Matthew’s Gospel tells us, the men left their boats and followed Jesus.
I will focus on this part of the Gospel text but before then I direct your attention to the first part of the Gospel, we had proclaimed this morning – in which Jesus hears about the arrest of John the Baptist and withdraws to Galilee and makes his home in Capernaum. Right smack bang in the middle of a Gentile area – in Zebulun and Naphtali – where the people sit in darkness. Of course, it picks up the Isaiah passage we had, and the author is endeavouring to situate Jesus with what has gone before for God’s people and have Jesus fulfil a prophecy. But that is not the reason for which I draw our attention – it’s the phrase “and made his home in Capernaum.” I have never really pondered Jesus having a home as such. The picture I have is of the itinerant preacher wandering the hill country of Judah and uttering such sayings as, “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” but here Jesus makes a home. Not only that but the inference can be taken that he has retreated to a safe place following hearing the devasting news about his cousin John being arrested. His home becomes the place of security and safety from which Jesus emerges to begin his public preaching about the coming reign of God drawing near. I have been fortunate to have been to Capernaum twice, the last time only last June. There is a beautiful Franciscan Church built over the ruins of a C1 home traditional regarded as the home of Peter, where it is believed Jesus lived! The irony however is that according to our text from Matthew this morning – Jesus makes his home in Capernaum and then calls the fishermen – one of whom is Simon Peter! Jesus has a home before he even meets Peter but putting that little historical oddity to one side;
this week I have been at Clergy Summer School where one of the guest presenters was Bosco Peters who talked about Desert Spirituality. Lots of fascinating material that will take me a little while to process, but one thing did hit me hard. Bosco mentioned that when we think of the vows made by the religious – we normally think of poverty, obedience, and chastity – but we would be wrong – the more traditional vows to emerge out of the desert and make their way through Benedict to other monastic traditions – are stability, obedience and conversio – the lifetime spent turning around to God. It’s the stability vow that struck me – it’s where we put down roots – it’s where we call somewhere truly home – it’s where we are prepared to stay come what may and grow deeper into God. To hear Jesus had a home – a place of stability from which he emerged strong and courageous enough to fulfil his calling – is a sign for me that this place – this church – this community – is to be also our home – our place of stability – out of which we grow more resilient and grow more deeper in our relationship with God. May Christ Church be that for us here and for all who venture to join us.
But now, what about fishing. I hate fishing – I could tell you a long story as to why I do but suffice for you to know now – it isn’t one of my pastimes!
Gospel stories are challenging to grasp even at the best of times, but years of anti-fishing baggage like mine can make the task even harder. But what strikes me now as I think and reflect about Jesus calling Simon, Andrew, James, and John into lives of discipleship, is how familiar and close-to-home his call actually was.
Jesus did not invite them to abandon who they were; he invited them to become their most authentic, God-ordained selves. He invited them to live into the fullness of the Image of God they were born with.
By which I mean: Jesus’s invitation to his first disciples was specific and particular, grounded in the language, culture, and vocation they knew best. What metaphor would make more sense to four fishermen than the metaphor of fishing for people? Simon and Andrew would have understood the nuances of that metaphor in ways I never will.
James and John knew from years of hard-won experience what depths of patience, resilience, intuition, and artistry professional fishing require. These men knew the tools of the trade, the limitations of their bodies and the potential dangers those limitations posed, and the life-and-death importance of timing, humility, and discretion.
Most of all, they knew the water. They knew how to respect it, how to listen to it, and how to bring forth its best in due time. When Jesus called these tried-and-true fishermen to follow him, they understood the call not a directive to leave their experience and intelligence behind, but to bring the best of their core selves forward — to become even more fully and freely themselves.
In other words, I don’t believe that I’m meant to follow Jesus into a self-annihilating abstract which denies everything of who I am. We’re not supposed to heed his call “in general,” as if Christianity comes in a number of pre-packaged, cookie-cutter shapes we have to pummel ourselves into. If we’re going to follow him at all, we’ll all have to do it in the unique particulars of the lives, communities, cultures, families, and vocations we find ourselves in. We’ll have to trust that God prizes our intellects, our memories, our backgrounds, our educations, our skills, and that God will multiply, shape, and bring to fruition everything we offer up to God in faith from the daily stuff of our lives. “I will make you,” Jesus tells the fishermen. I will take and cultivate, deepen, magnify, purify, protect, and perfect the people God created you to be.
I don't mean to suggest that discipleship won't require sacrifice, or change, or risk. It will.
But I am convinced these days that God is gentler with us than we are with ourselves. The spiritual transformations that have had the most traction and power in my life have been the ones that also feel the most organic, the most ordinary, the most close-to-home: those transformations that have occurred over the course of week-in and week-out church life – in all its messiness but also in the truth and reality of its sacramental life. Following Jesus isn’t about renunciation. It’s about resurrection. It’s about abundant and authentic life.
Baptism tells us to expect no less than this. Confirmation publicly strengthens us to embrace this. Holy Anointing and Confession actually turn the darkness of sickness, the fear of death and the bondage of sin into sunlit lands of forgiveness and hope and Christian freedom.
When Jesus promises to “make us,” it’s a commitment to nurture us, not a threat to sever us from all we love. It's a promise grounded in gentleness and respect — not violence and coercion. It's a promise that when we dare to let go, the things we relinquish might be returned to us anew, enlivened in ways we couldn't have imagined on our own.
Most importantly, it is a promise from God to us — not from us to God. The story of this Gospel is a miracle story. Jesus calls, and the four fishermen “immediately” follow. No hesitation, no questions asked. Is this because they’re men of superhuman courage or prophetic foreknowledge? Of course not. These are the same guys who later in the Gospels doubt, deny, and abandon Jesus. They’re as fallible and as ordinary as the rest of us, and their own volition can’t get them very far.
No, they immediately follow Jesus because Jesus makes it possible for them to do so. This is not a story about us. It is a story about God, and about God’s ability not only to call us but also to create us as people who are able to follow — able to follow because we cannot take our eyes off the one who calls us, because God interests us more than anything else in our lives, because God seems to know what we hunger for and because God seems to be food.
What bothers me about the fishing metaphor is that we so easily misinterpret it to mean that we have the power to “hook” or to “catch” others for God. We don’t.
We are not called to cajole, manipulate, trap, bully, or even persuade others to “accept” Jesus, or join our religion. It is God alone who captures the imagination: God alone who makes the vision of his kingdom come alive in a human soul. All we can do is embody the vision in the particulars of our lives, reflecting into the water the profound beauty of who Christ is. The rest is up to God.
In the end, Jesus’s invitation is Gospel, or “good news.” If it’s not good news, it’s not God. If it’s not good news for all — it’s not God. The faith becomes abusive when we focus on numbers, formulas, and glossy success stories, forgetting that Jesus came to call people. “Fish for people.” People who are caught in the nets of exploitation, corruption, poverty, war, exile, homelessness, violence, disease, climate change, racism, sexism, homophobia… the list goes on and on and on. What would count as Good News for them?
The four men “immediately” left their nets and followed Jesus. In time, they made the Gospel their own, sharing its radical power through the details of their own lives and stories. What is the Gospel according for us? What is our Good News, and how will we share it in the turbulent waters of our particular time and place?
“Follow me and I will make you.” Jesus says. He will. The Lord be with you.