Sermon: Third Sunday after Epiphany

¹²Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. ¹³He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, ¹⁴so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
¹⁵"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles —
¹⁶the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
light has dawned."
¹⁷From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
¹⁸As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea — for they were fishermen. ¹⁹And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." ²⁰Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.
²³Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

Good News: God continues to call.

The Calling

“You have come down to the lakeshore seeking neither the wise nor the wealthy, but only asking for me to follow…”

(“We are called to act with Justice. We are called to love tenderly. We are called to serve one another. To walk humbly with God.”)

We’re going to sing those words in a minute; words that repaint the picture we have in today’s gospel and place us in the role of Peter and Andrew, James and John.

The calling, Jesus crying out for those fisherman to follow him on this journey he was to take.

They are unlikely candidates, by the way. I mean, think about it, why did Jesus call these folks? Why fisherman when he could have called orators, or politicians, or Jewish priests, or philosophers, or book keepers. Why did he choose, as his first disciples, to call fisherman?

I don’t think it was because of the great analogy between snagging fish with a hook and snagging God’s people with the gospel. After all, there’s no indication that any of these guys are any good at speaking. In fact, as we get to know Peter more and more, it turns out that he’s a rather brash guy who seems to annoy people more than attract them.

So why fisherman? Why them as the first; why them as the inner-circle?

I think I know. I think I know because, well, I spent a lot of time in a boat fishing when I was younger.

When I was a little boy living in Toledo, my father would wake me and my brothers up early on some summer mornings. We’re talking early early. For young boys, waking up at 4:30 is not something to be proud of or lauded over. But my father would wake us up and say, “Let’s go get the big one”

And we knew we were fishing. We’d don our old jeans and ratty sweatshirts. We’d grab our little reels from the garage, my younger brother had a reel with Snoopy on it, and we’d pile in the Chevette toward the lake.

My father would stop by the bait shack off the road and buy a bucket of dirt. My brothers and I would sit in the car and wipe sleep from our eyes. Then we’d all pile out, get into the tin row boat that was barely big enough for the four of us, and he’d paddle us out into the lake.

And we’d sit.

We’d sit with our lures in the water, secretly hoping we’d catch a big one. And we’d talk. Dad would tell us stories. We’d tell him about school, or karate, or what we wanted to do on vacation.

And we’d sit.

We’d sit until four in the afternoon, until our little bodies could no longer take the sun, until the crusts that we’d throw to the fish ran out, and we’d just sit. We never caught the big one. Sure, we caught little Sunny’s, blue-gills, occasional small mouth bass. But we never caught the big one.

But what we did catch was the stories. What we did catch was the time spent together. What we did catch was the experience of knowing, first hand, that our father loved us and wanted to spend time with us. What we caught was love.

But we would have missed it had we not stuck with the fishing. If we would have gotten frustrated with the time of day, frustrated that the fish weren’t biting, if we had grumbled about the stories, if we would have let our own agendas get in the way, we would have missed out on that time.

But people who fish know that we aren’t working in a normal time frame. It takes patience, it takes a hearty resolve, it takes conversation, and it takes a willing heart to do that work. And even though we didn’t catch the big one, we caught something much more precious. We caught love.

I think Jesus called these fishermen, the first people called, because he knew that it would take a fisherman’s attitude to walk that walk with him. It would take time, and at times it would seem pointless. It would take conversation, even though the stories wouldn’t always make sense right away. And it would take a willing heart, willing to stick with it, knowing that, at the end of the day, it would be worth it.

That is the call that Peter and Andrew, James and John answered. Jesus needed those who would stick through it to the end.

Jesus needed to call people who would last through thick and thin, who would survive the storm of the raging waters of Galilee. Who would survive being touched by lepers, who wouldn’t feel shame in hanging around with prostitutes and tax collectors, people that others thought were shameful and dirty. God needed those first disciples to be people who could stand in the shadow of the cross, see their rabbi, their mentor, their God crucified, and still come back to grace the door of the empty tomb.

God needed disciples who would stick with it and people who fish stick with it.

That is why we have to hear this call again today, this story in today’s gospel to wake us up in the early hours of this Sunday morning to come and sit here with each other. To come here to experience the love of God again because we know that when we get out of this pew here today, when we step back on shore from this boat right here that we’re in, the story continues, the call hasn’t stopped.

Are you fishers? No, let me rephrase that. You, Edgebrook Lutheran Church, ARE fishers. How do I know? Because you’ve been called. You’ve been called at your baptism. You’ve been called here today in this gospel lesson. You’ve been called through that nagging movement in your guts that tells you that poverty, homelessness, that violence, and war, that loneliness and despair are not the way that God wants us to be in this world!

And here you experience the opposite of those things! Here you experience a place where people greet each other. Here you experience a world where everyone has enough food at this table, where we sing songs instead of fight wars, where no one is alone because we’re all in this boat together. That is, by the way, why we celebrate the cycles of the church year. You know, starting with Advent and the birth, moving straight through Epiphany to Lent with the death, and then to glorious Easter with the rising. And then we spend a long six months in Pentecost, that time where the disciples told others about the birth, the death, and the rising.

Here you hear the call, and here you catch a glimpse of that story that God has in store for all of us. And that’s the good news about being fishers: God is calling you, wanting you, talking to you. You have a relationship with a God who loves you and wants you to be that person to share that love, in actions and words, with others.

But we must stick with it. We must be the fisher disciples, who despite the ups and downs of life, despite the ups and downs of even church life, can stay through the storm to tell others of the cross and the empty tomb, those symbols of hope that tell us that God has another way for us to be and live for each other. Those things that show us how God loves us, even past death into new life.

Today we have the congregational meeting, an important meeting where we decide, once again this year, to sit with Jesus in the boat, listening to this story of love, knowing that we must go and share that story, sit in other boats and tell the story to others.

Dear people, God is calling to you again today. Follow Jesus to the cross, to the tomb, and back again, both as a people and as a church. God has called you to show others that there is a different way of living with one another, a salvation that, as Jesus reminds us, is close at hand!

Oh, and don’t worry if you “don’t catch the big one.” If you don’t eradicate poverty in one swift stroke, if you don’t get a million people to come to church to hear God’s story. We’re not on a time crunch here; we’re fishing. Stick with it and, if nothing else, you’ll be caught in God’s love.

But I look out there and think: If God in Jesus has called us, if we are fishers as God has named us, God’s going to do a lot more through us. More than we can ever imagine.

So come, God’s calling out, the Good News must be spread. Let’s go fishing.

Amen.