03 Epiphany 08
January 27, 2008
Isaiah 9:1-4

Matthew 4:12-23

I go fishing with Floyd Ward now and again, mostly because he gets a new boat every other month or so. Just kidding. We have a pleasant time chatting away and watching for the signs of fish and so on. Sometimes we even catch something. One day I caught only one fish, but I caught him three times.

But I’ve also been out once with Duck Ruark and I got a taste of what it’s like to fish for a living. Now Duck was crabbing, so the methods were peculiar to the task, but the experience wasn’t about fun, though there was some fun to be had. It was mostly work, and it was messy and repetitive and pretty darn difficult.

The day we went was peaceful and warm and calm. But I know that there are many days when watermen go out when the wind is cold and the water is rough. The water, even the Chesapeake, is a place hostile to human life.

A waterman, a fisherman, someone who works on the water, recognizes they operate in a very big universe, under the rule of powers far greater than we. Every fisherman knows, if the water wants to take you, it will take you. And if the water wants to bless you, it will bless you. But we don’t have a lot to say about it.

We live in a world under greater powers than we. The ancients had a lively sense of this, but we, in our modern arrogance, imagine we have somehow conquered all these powers, or that we soon will. We have blinded ourselves to our true situation.

One of our bible students who takes the time to read the lessons before our worship service noted how these four disciples just instantly got up and went when Jesus called them.

Matthew actually explains the situation pretty well. He doesn’t say anything about the power of Jesus’ magnetism as a person. But he does say a lot about the world of the average Jew in the first century. He has mentioned the Romans are in charge. He has mentioned Herod, the corrupt puppet king of the Jews, the slaughter of the innocents, the arrest of the popular prophet. He has already mentioned the great numbers of people who were going out to hear that prophet’s message, “the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.”

A fisherman in this time and place lived a life of unbroken misery and poverty and disappointment, just like almost everyone else who wasn’t part of the small and powerful upper classes, and these were entirely controlled by the Romans. If you resisted in any way, if you even made a noise like you were going to resist, you were killed. And you weren’t just executed, you were usually tortured slowly until you died. The cross was the usual punishment for rebels.

Matthew has already told us that John the Baptist has publicly proclaimed Jesus the Messiah. So when this already famous person walks up to the seashore and asks some people to follow him, they go. They go because they had been praying every day and every night that God would send his Messiah to set the people free, just like Moses set the people free from Egypt. They go because they’ve been waiting for years for just this opportunity. They go because they are ready for the world to change, and they are willing to take a part in changing it.

And one of the things everyone who has ever experienced real change knows is that change is rarely possible without passionate and whole-hearted commitment.

Very few people our ministry reaches will actually become serious disciples. There is a rather judgmental email going around about people with machine guns going into a church and telling them that anyone who wasn’t willing to die for their Lord could leave. Most of the congregation, of course, walks out. A few are left. The gunmen then say, “Pastor, we just wanted to get rid of the hypocrites. Enjoy your service.” And they leave. The thing is called “would you run?”

I don’t buy this picture. There were a lot of people who loved and supported Jesus who didn’t leave their families or give up their lives. I think every congregation needs its “crowd,” the big group that is supportive if not completely committed. Very few of the thousands who came out to see Jesus stayed with him. I think this is as it was supposed to be. Jesus tells many a parable about the harvesting process of the mission of the gospel.

After crabbing with Duck, I watched as Duck and Frances very expertly culled the day’s catch, separating the crabs into their different categories. In just this way, God culls us.

Certainly, the people who come closest to Christ and the ones who really channel his presence into the world are the ones who put him first. This is a troubling truth, because it finds most of us where we are sitting, but friends, I see it clearly in the scripture. It’s a major theme. Jesus speaks about it more frequently than almost anything else: the importance of putting God above all things, even really good things.

If you are truly called to be a disciple of Christ, you will not always be asked to leave your family or your business, but it is likely it will be an issue in your life.

You see, we are dealing with powers that are very great and very mysterious, forces of history and class and clan and culture and politics. These things are like great weather systems, impossible to predict, sometimes hostile, sometimes friendly, but ultimately all greater than we.

We serve these various forces often without knowing it. We are ourselves like fish in a net, being dragged by forces we really can’t see or understand.

Whatever fisherman has caught us in his net, whether it be consumerism or conservatism or liberalism or racism or nationalism or whatever –ism, many of us have no idea we are caught in a net, no idea a force greater than we are is dragging us anywhere, but some of us do sense this. Some of us do have a feeling that something greater than we are is taking advantage of us. Something bigger and more powerful wants us for its dinner.

Into this situation comes the Messiah of God, the Christ, Jesus. He finds us laboring away for nothing and vanity and quietly asks us to follow him. He offers us a way to freedom, real freedom, the freedom to be the being that God has always intended us to be. God wants us for his dinner, and that is the only table we really are meant to grace.

The story is told of a traveler that years ago came upon a site in England where swarms of workers were building a grand church. The traveler saw several men digging a ditch. He stopped to ask three of them what exactly they were doing. The first replied, "Hey! I'm just doing what they tell me to do. All I care about it making a living to support my family." The second replied, "Me? I'm digging a ditch from here to that stake over there." But the third worker stopped, leaned against his shovel, and with a gleam in his eye, said, "I'm helping build a great cathedral.”

People might come to Philippi because we put on a good show. But Philippi’s purpose is not to put on a good show. People might come to Philippi because they enjoy the people they meet here. But Philippi’s purpose is not to be a social club. People might come to Philippi because they are in a crisis and need some direction and counseling. But Philippi’s purpose is not to be a counseling center. People might come to Philippi because they agree with the point of view they hear discussed here. But Philippi’s purpose is not to advance a certain point of view.

Our purpose is to come to this table and offer ourselves to God. Our purpose is to offer ourselves as a meal for the world, a taste of heaven.

All of us have stories of how we came to be here this morning. Some of us have come because we like the preacher. Some of us have come because we like the people. Some of us have come because we’d like to change the world. But we don’t realize, you see, that we have very little to do with how we got here.

We have been caught, and the fisherman is God.

Amen.