Epiphany 3A Matthew 4:12-23, The call of the fishermen
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, January 22, 2023
God calls us, you and me, to St. Mark’s today to hear a fishing story.1 Four men leave their family fishing business to become disciples of a new traveling rabbi/with no credentials. It is 5:30 pm, and all national news stations have this as their human interest story: Today, four well-known fishermen in Capernaum on the northwest coast of the Sea of Galilee drop their nets and follow an unknown preacher. Lester Holt with NBC Nightly News introduces Richard Engel, Chief Foreign Correspondent, sitting on the shore with a distraught Zebedee, the father of James and John. “Well, we are still adjusting to the shock. I was standing in one of our boats/ with my two sons/ and our hired hands mending our nets from last night’s fishing, and suddenly/ this man called Jesus walks by and says, ‘Follow me.’ My hired hands and I shrug our shoulders and roll our eyes,/ but my two sons look right into those big dark brown eyes and literally drop their nets and follow him. I was furious. I yelled as they took off after him. I said a few things I cannot repeat. You know, fishermen are known for our colorful language./ Later in the afternoon, James and John do send a message that they will return/ soon.”
On PBS evening news, Judy Woodruff, on special assignment, is at the modest home of the wife of Simon Peter, another man who walked away from his fishing boat today.2 “Yes, I am Simon’s wife. I only have a few minutes to talk. My husband not only left all these fish in his boat,/ but this man called Jesus changed my husband’s name to Peter. And to add to my distress, my mother is sick with a high fever./ But later Simon, or Peter as he now calls himself, sends back word, /‘get the fish,/ don’t “salt” them down,/ clean and prepare them,/ call in the neighbors/ and we will have a big fish fry at our house tonight,/ and Jesus will cure your mother, and she can help serve.’” /////
This morning, as we hear the stories about these four fishermen, we must ponder what all this means for us.
So, first, let’s first think about how we got here this morning? I don’t mean did we come in a Chevy pickup or an SUV! What brought us here? Do you realize that Matthew’s gospel today is telling our story?/ Do you hear it?/ Jesus is walking along the Sea of Galilee and calls four disciples,/ but whether we realize it or not, Jesus also calls us here, at this place, this morning. Perhaps you think we are here because your roots or your family or friends are here,/ or you like the sermons,/ or you like the mystical feeling when you enter this beautiful building,/ or maybe you are transformed by the liturgy,/ the music,/ the candles,/ or you want your children to experience something you vaguely remember from your childhood that you cannot explain. That is how my husband and I were called back to church almost fifty years ago. We wanted our children exposed to what we experienced growing up in a Christian community, even though we doubted we still needed it/. Do not ever be embarrassed by your motives. God will use every possible means, even and probably especially our children, to call us back to him, for God loves us and them so dearly./
Jesus begins his ministry by calling extremely ordinary people. They are un/com/pre/hen/ding of Jesus and his mission, but for some reason, Jesus chooses not to do his ministry without them. Time and again, they will disappoint him. Yet he will stick with them like glue, give them all he has, and lead them into the kingdom.
William Willimon3 says, “if you are a God, why do you need a bunch of amateurs to work with you?”
But Jesus does not work alone, but joins hands with ordinary people to do extraordinary things. Jesus recruits people who have made awful life choices. Jesus invades the most hapless lives and fills them with light. He sneaks up on people who are thinking not about God but lunch,/ smacks them upside the head/ with love, and says, “I’m going to change the world,/ transform the future,/ radically rearrange the present,/ and guess who is going to help me?” It’s a strange way to run a railroad, but this is the way God gets the job done. “Follow me!”
God has plans for us. God has a ministry for us./ Realize this is good news,/ for the saddest of all sad things is an uncalled, unclaimed life./
Listen again to this morning’s story. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for PEOPLE.” We start to worry about having the “right stuff” even to consider being a disciple. Would Jesus ever choose us? And if by chance he does, will he make us leave home, our job, and go to Africa or South America?/ The answer is in the rest of Matthew. Read on. Note that the disciples stay near their homes for quite some time. They remain in Galilee for the next eighteen chapters of Matthew, and then they return there after the resurrection./
Do you have other concerns about this call?
Barbara Brown Taylor believes the most powerful part of Jesus’ call to his disciples is not that the disciples decide something on their own. Something happens to them, something almost beyond their control. To stress the decision-making of the disciples is putting the accent on the wrong syllable. In that God-drenched moment of their turning to follow,/ the miracle occurs: their lives flow in the same direction as God’s. There is an openness to a connection present since birth, /since conception. /
This story of the call is not a hero story, but a miracle story, as miraculous as the feeding of the five thousand or the raising of the dead.4 This is not a story about the power of human beings to change their lives. This is a story about the power of God to walk right up to a quartet of fishermen.. and to us… and work a miracle, creating disciples where there were none, just moments before./
Remember, this is our story of being open,/ and swept into the flow and passionate vision of God’s will as we turn ourselves over to God’s call.
It will be a different story for each of us at our particular stage of life. This call comes not just once, but constantly, as Jesus seeks us out to go farther and deeper,/ open to new possibilities.5 / Sometimes, following Jesus may mean staying home.4 At other times, it may mean letting the hired servants go and taking care of Zebedee when he gets too old to fish. Sometimes following may mean casting the same old nets in a new way, or for new reasons. Sometimes the call is doing something different with the fish we catch, or spending the money we bring at market in a different way. It may mean reorganizing the whole fishing business so that the jobless down at the pier have work to do, and everyone receives a decent wage./ It may mean doing less every day, not more,/ so there is time to watch the sunlight changing on the water, and how the fish leap out of the water at dusk, celebrating outsmarting us one more time.//
Are you old enough to remember a nature program, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which aired on Sunday night television?6 One memorable program focuses on a mother elephant seal in Argentina and her newborn pup. The mother, now famished, leaves her pup on the shore to find food. She returns to a different part of the beach and calls for her baby. Other mothers return, also calling their pups, producing a wild cacophony. The camera stays with this single mother as she calls her pup and listens for the response. Following each other’s voices and scents, the mother and pup are reunited. The host, Marlin Perkins, explains that from birth, the sound and scent of the pup are imprinted in the mother’s memory, and the sound and the scent of the mother are imprinted in the pup’s memory. A friend watching with us turns around and says,/ “we are imprinted with the memory of God,/ and God is imprinted with a memory of us,/// and even if it takes a lifetime,/ when we hear God’s call/ smell God’s scent,/ we acknowledge and honor God’s imprint deep inside of us,///and God slowly walks toward us,/ makes direct eye contact/ and once again calls out,/ “Follow me.”
1Kenneth Gibble, “Discipleship, a Fishing Story, Matthew 4:12-23,” Preaching.com/sermons/11563998.
2Iona Community, “The Calling of Peter,” Present on Earth, p. 114-116.
3 William Willimon, “Revolution,” Pulpit Resource, vol. 34, #1, 2006, pp.9-12.
4Barbara Brown Taylor, “Miracle on the Beach,” Home By Another Way, pp. 37-41.
5 Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, year B, vol. 1, pp. 78-79.
6Rodger Nishioka, Feasting on the Word, year A, Vol 1, pp. 284-285.
Joanna Seibert https://www.joannaseibert.com/