Fishing for people; sharing light
Matthew 4:12-23
The Rev. Sara Fischer
Last week, I spoke about how “where” questions in scripture are loaded questions. Geography is also loaded, especially in the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew, who loves to quote the Bible, includes these words from the prophet Isaiah: Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali…Galilee of the Gentiles….Matthew announces right away that Jesus’ mission is to all people; God’s plan is to include in the message of salvation people who are foreigners and outsiders, and call them to follow Jesus as well.
When Isaiah first wrote the words that Matthew quotes, Galilee was occupied territory, taken over by the Syrians in 733 BCE. Isaiah is promising hope. A great light. Matthew is big on Jesus as the fulfillment of prophecy and when Jesus gets to Galilee, the region is again occupied territory, this time by the Romans. Jesus comes to Galilee and even settles there, to share light in an unlikely place among those who are poor and oppressed.
Jesus does not want to do this light-sharing alone and so calls disciples to follow him, as we are called. At the beginning of our service this morning we prayed Give us grace, O God, to answer readily the call of Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation. And many others would add, when necessary, use words. The good news is about what we say and also about what we do.
By placing Jesus in Galilee of the Gentiles among people who are desperately in need of light and hope, Matthew paints a picture of the outward-facing nature of Jesus’ ministry.
When Jesus calls Andrew and Simon to follow him, Jesus is not saying: become part of this special group and gather each week for a complicated and expensive ritual (as lovely as it might be). He says: join me in inviting everyone into God’s embrace. This is the church turned inside out, which is what Archbishop William Temple, whom I quoted last week at the Annual Meeting, was talking about when he said “The church is the only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of those who are not its members.” This is what I mean and what our Bishop means when we talk about the church being outward-facing.
Jesus and his new disciples walking along the beach on the shores of Galilee can be our guide. Nourished by what happens in this this place, what we do together at this table, we can then turn the church inside out. For many decades—but not always—we have said that the center of the church is the Holy Eucharist. I have said it hundreds of times. But I think what Jesus would say—and it’s a good thing none of you have any eggs or rotten tomatoes to throw at me—is that I think Jesus would say that the center of the gospel is the work of our hands and feet and hearts as we care for those outside our walls.
As I said last week at the Annual Meeting, we Episcopalians excel at keeping our light under a bushel, even though Jesus repeatedly calls us to let our light shine. If nothing else, this is the Epiphany theme. Letting our light shine is not about evangelism as we think of it (another dubious gift of the Enlightment), cornering people to persuade them to believe in the afterlife. Evangelism is about seeking out the last, the least, and the lost and letting them know they are loved.
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Okay, here’s a really obscure question, but some of you might raise your hand. Anyone remember the discoveries announced several years ago about Roman concrete? Scientists have been challenged for years—millennia, actually—to figure out the secret to the durability of Roman construction. Concrete buildings built by the Romans over 2000 years ago are still standing, and until recently no one was able to figure out how. Apparently, the Romans had a grasp of particular chemical compounds to help the raw materials bind together. Our modern scientific community with all of its advances is only just figuring this out.
I love this story because it reminds us that we are always becoming, and that sometimes what we need to become most faithful and at our best is something in the past. When I say “the past” I’m not talking about becoming the church of the 1960s or 1980s. I’m suggesting that in the Enlightenment era of progress that led to the modern era, we might have lost something. We might have lost a lot.
To fish for people in Jesus’ time was to seek out the lost and shed light on the darkness of the Roman occupation. In our time, we might be called to shed light on the darkness of poverty, racism, or xenophobia.
Perhaps the reason many of you are so wonderfully supportive of the diocese’s Hope & Bread Mission is that it is ministry that is so reflective of the earliest church. That’s certainly what we hear from many of our guests: this is like what it was when Jesus was around, they say. It is possible that some things were better in the scrappy impoverished community of Jesus followers that begins with Simon, Andrew, James, and John dropping their nets and following him God knows where.
It is possible that patriarchy, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, materialism—all the isms!—got in the way of Jesus’ simple and compelling call to proclaim good news of the kingdom. In fact—and this is a much longer reflection not necessarily in a sermon on today’s gospels—it may be that all those isms in fact brought many small parishes like ours to the place where we are, struggling for make ends meet, not knowing what the future holds, and looking for new-old ways to be church.
I do believe that as long as we stay close to Jesus’ original call to bring the love and goodness of God to the last, the least, and the lost, our future will be amazing. And, our future is now. Let us rejoice that the Kingdom of God has come near.
