The readings for this Sunday's service are Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27, and Matthew 4:12-23.
I know that some of us may think that we’ve left Advent behind us. What’s with all this waiting? Didn’t we just do that? Well, yes. We have. But here we are again at the beginning of the journey of Christ’s ministry in Matthew’s Gospel and I’m struck with the tension presented of waiting with the reality of finding…of experiencing the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Listen to the words of the Psalmist. There is such spiritual wisdom here in naming the tension between waiting and the promise of faith. The Psalmist will wait because they know that the goodness of God will come. It is something to experience in the land of the living. No doubt of this. No question…yet even with all the waiting and the struggles with adversaries…Patience, says the Psalmist. Have patience. I have been leaning heavily on this Psalm of late. With the Annual Meeting coming up and the report from Shared Directions on the horizon, I have lived in this tension a bit. I’m certain that I am not the only one. And I hope you will all continue to pray for the committee as they continue in their work. Pray for them. They have been working very hard and deserve our gratitude. Patience. Faith. Waiting. God’s goodness. They are for the Psalmist all of one piece. They are what it means to be alive in this world. There are adversaries (some embodied, some more ephemeral). There are struggles. And yet…there is this acknowledgement of God’s goodness that is present and real. This is the promise of faith. And one may assume that we’ll know it when we see it. God’s goodness is like nothing else on earth. We just cannot help but know it when we see it, right? Well, to be honest I’m not so certain. Look at this passage from Matthew. Now, tell me, what made them drop their nets? What made them get out of the boat and leave the security (and responsibility) of their fathers and mothers, their homes, and do something new? Was it foolishness? Was it Jesus’ charismatic leadership style? Were they simply bored with fishing? It’s impossible to know. We only know what they tell us and Matthew tells us that “immediately†they left what they were doing to go with Jesus. So, I’ve been scratching my head to find my way into this moment. I’ve fed my imagination and have come to a conclusion. They were foolish. I’d like to think that the apostles were spiritual superheroes and knew the goodness of the Lord when they saw it. So, they jumped at a chance to follow Jesus because they recognized in him the goodness of the Lord, but I don’t know. You see, Matthew tells a story where the apostles struggle and fight with one another. They will even stand in opposition to Jesus from time to time. It seems to me that it may not be all that easy to recognize God’s goodness in the land of the living after all. I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Lord God, please give me the wisdom and strength to recognize it and to follow You. It’s no easy task. It occurs to me that even as I say this, maybe the issue about discerning God’s goodness isn’t really about recognition. Not entirely. Maybe it’s also about courage…the courage to leave things behind, the spiritual chutzpah to do the surprising thing, the risky thing even when you don’t know exactly how it will turn out. You cannot know. The apostles could not know. They doubted even with Jesus standing right there before them. They questioned and pushed and doubted all the way to the cross and beyond. Jesus walks through a wall and Thomas (one of our spiritual super heroes) says, “Gee, guys, I just don’t know…†Patience. Waiting. Faith (and doubt). God’s Goodness are all of a piece…they come together. I think that the truth of this passage from Matthew is not so much that Peter, Andrew, James, and John have some miraculous spiritual insight. No. Matthew will go on to tell a story of confusion and grief, of joy and celebration, of faith and doubt. This is what it’s like to follow Jesus. Certainty, I believe, belongs in someone else’s religion. I prefer faith. Nonetheless, I love the way that Matthew tells us this story. “Immediately they dropped their nets...†As busy as we are, how often does the immediacy of Jesus grab us? How often does the immediacy of anything shake us loose from our day-to-day lives? What will cause us to be as rash and foolish as the apostles? The birth of a child or grandchild, perhaps? This image is used again and again by Jesus to explain the way that the Kingdom of God enters the world. Its' something you know is coming. The whole world is pregnant with the waiting that the Psalmist shares so beautifully. You see it grow. You feel it kicking. But then, no matter what color you have chosen to paint the walls of the nursery, that baby comes and you feel totally unprepared for the absolute immediacy of everything. Your heart grows. Your focus narrows. Your allegiances change. Your habits shift…and the rest of your life is strangely confusing. This is the kind of shift that I imagine the apostles experienced. There they were doing their usual business. Then they leave their livelihoods, their parents, all to follow Jesus. They don’t even know where. They just know that in Jesus they experience the goodness of the Lord. They experience the Kingdom. Jesus proclaims the Kingdom of God, the end of poverty and oppression, of illness and destitution in every form. Jesus heals every illness, those of the body and those of the soul, individual and communal. Thus, two thousand years later it is the task of the Church to go out into the world to proclaim the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Immediately. Without the full picture. Foolishly. That is all. Anything we do as individuals or as congregations is to support that singular purpose. How we pray, how we raise our children, how we sing and praise God, how we share this space we built so long ago, how we do anything at all... But what form will this purpose take? How will our shared lives be structured? Are we fishermen? Shepherds? Priests? What's the form? What's the model? Well, the model, the paradigm is Christ. The paradigm is Jesus himself. So, Jesus takes us and sets us right. Fishermen will fish for people. Doctors? Lawyers? Teachers? Managers? Congregations? Whatever the form we currently occupy, God will take it and set it right. God sets us right so that God can send us out. It's not to relish in our rightness. It is not to reminisce about how we were once … something else. Never. God reaches into lives and hearts so that those same lives and hearts might go into the world and be messengers and activists, prophets for their own age, agents of transformation and grace in a world that is in desperate need of healing and love, a world that often appears to be unmoved by need and poverty, by death and illness. The people who have been walking in darkness have seen a great light. This. This is the immediacy of the call of the Kingdom of God. There's no five-point plan. There's no legislative process and a three-year feasibility study. There is only the Gospel and the call of Christ. One day you’re fishing with your father and the next day, well, you aren’t. And we’ll cry, “But we only know how to fish!†And Jesus will say, “That is enough…let me show you another way.†It takes courage, a certain kind of courage called the “foolishness of the cross†that is spoken of so frequently in the scriptures. It’s spiritual courage. It’s seeing light where others see darkness. It’s leaving what you know, what your forebears have given you, to find in a new form. It is becoming Christ, gradually, over time, step by step. Leap by leap. Jesus needs us to leave the fishing nets behind. We’re not casting for fish anymore. I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I believe that what God wants from us can be answered and found in this life we have together today. We don’t have to wait for the next life. We discern together where God is in this life and follow God wherever God leads. Immediately. Thus, to get up and go, to embody the immediacy of the apostolic call, is our vocation. The One who we have been waiting for us is standing before us. Patiently. He wants us to lay aside what we think we know. He wants us to step away from what our forebears have given us …not to abandon it …not to neglect it …but to break it wide open. And so Jesus says to us: “What you have is needed. You’ll fish, all right. But now your lake is an entire world. Will you come and follow me?â€
