CALLED TO FOLLOW
A Sermon Preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Text: Matthew 4:12-23
As the season of Epiphany ends, with Lent just around the corner, the lectionary gives us for consideration Matthew’s version of the calling of Jesus’ first disciples. For reasons not entirely clear to me, last week we had John’s version which, on the surface, is considerably different from Matthew’s. As you may recall from last week, Jesus’ first followers were disciples of John the Baptist who followed after Jesus on John’s suggestion. Andrew and the other follower of the Baptist attach themselves to Jesus as an alternative to John; then they themselves go out to recruit others such as Andrew’s brother, Peter. This all takes place in Judea, near the Jordan River, east of Jerusalem in John’s gospel. We speculated that these Galileans had already left their homes, families and livelihoods behind, seeking God’s way through the work of John the Baptist.
Every gospel tells of Jesus’ baptism by John, with the implication that Jesus himself was a follower of John. In the course of Matthew’s account, he has gone directly from his baptism into the wilderness where he is tempted. So it seems that it is only on his return from his time alone in the desert that he hears of John’s arrest. By the standards of the times, Jesus is not necessarily a young man as he comes to consider his life and ministry and God’s will for him. His time with John, his baptism, his wilderness experience seem to be a time of growing into an ever-deepening understanding of what God wants of him.
At 30 years of age Jesus himself is being called to follow, to follow God’s will for his life, and that calling creates radical change for him. Those who have experienced their own “mid-life calling” to something new and exciting and challenging may understand. He himself must leave family, home and livelihood in order to fulfill his role as God’s Son. Remember earlier we wondered how one, whom so many have come to see as the sinless Son of God, would have needed John’s baptism so clearly focused on repentance? And we posited the notion that Jesus was not turning from any sin, was not renouncing any guiltiness, but was letting go of home, was turning away from whatever comfort and security was offered by his humble home in Galilee in order to follow the way God was laying out for him. We said that in the strong sense that repentance is a turning around of one’s life and heading in another direction, Jesus’ baptism can be seen as symbolic of his leaving his past behind and taking up the ministry to which God was calling him. I reemphasize this thought as we, who are ourselves not all so young, consider again what it means to be called to follow. It may be that in some ways our experience is not so foreign from that of Jesus himself.
Emerging from his wilderness experience, Jesus finds himself at a crossroads. Does he pick up John’s mantle and mobilize John’s movement? Does he return to the wilds in search of an ascetic cave-dwelling community in which he can live as a faithful monk? Does he join a revolutionary band like the Zealots? Does he do what some of the others have done and go home? Matthew says this is exactly what he does. He flees Judea for Galilee. His time has not yet come. There is further consideration of his ministry to be done. He must discern how his ministry is to be different than John’s. He cannot do this work if he is in prison with John.
The writer of Matthew says he went home to Nazareth, presumably settled his affairs there and moved onto Capernaum, where Matthew also tells us he had a house in which he lived the rest of his time in Galilee. Why would he flee to Galilee? It was familiar territory for him; it represented a home base; it was a fertile and, therefore, well populated part of Palestine; and it had a highly diverse population, as major roads leading north and south and east and west criss-crossed it. Because of its cultural diversity, there was an openness among its people to religious teaching and movements not found in the more uptight region around Jerusalem. Beginning his ministry here allowed him to work from a known base, with familiar folk, who might be open to hearing what he had to say.
So we find him walking by the Galilean lake where he encounters the fishermen Simon Peter and Andrew, casting a net into the water. This would make them a poorer class of fishermen who were forced to do their fishing by casting nets from the shoreline where the catch would be limited. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” he says. And they do. A little farther along he encounters James and John who are sitting in a boat mending nets with their father. A boat meant that they were better off than the first two. They could fish from deep water where the catch was more plentiful. They receive the same invitation, “Come, follow me.” They, too, leave their father and their work to go with him.
This makes a lovely and dramatic story. It speaks to the presumed authority in Jesus’ presence, the passion in his eyes, the power in his voice – and perhaps it was so. But it does not diminish the story to think that these men had already been in intense conversation about the will and work of God – either in John the Baptist’s encampment by the Jordan, or around a fire on the lakeshore, or gathered in Jesus’ courtyard in Capernaum. This new movement did not spring full blown from nowhere. It was the growing movement of a community of people – both men and women - who were hungry for the holy, who wanted something different in their lives, who were looking for God, who wanted to find and walk God’s way. Jesus’ calling was a culmination of their conversations and a catalyst to a new movement, as he became clear about his own calling.
The message is plain, simple: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Wait a minute! Haven’t we heard this word before? Where was it? Oh, yes. Isn’t this the same word that John the Baptist was preaching? Indeed, the words are the same, but now they ring with new meaning from the lips of the Son of God. John had been warning people of the impending disaster if people didn’t get themselves right with God. The judgment would be harsh and the consequences worse if people did not get on the right track. John was prophesying a train wreck. Though Jesus’ message is in no way free of such judgment, it is always tempered by the compassion of One, of God almighty, who comes looking for the lost to bring them back into right relationship through the living experience of the holy, the Word made flesh, dwelling among them, full of grace and truth.
This word of repentance is not necessarily a word urging one to feel sorry for the bad things one has done and thought and felt, though there is a dimension of remorse in the Jewish concept of repentance. In Jesus’ message, it is much more a word about turning your life around to walk God’s way. It is a word about letting go of whatever binds you and keeps you from living out God’s will for you. It is a word about leaving the past behind and living into the future that God has laid out for those who love God. It’s about those ensconced in darkness and living in the shadow of death encountering the very light of life.
Now we need to be clear that when Jesus speaks of the kingdom of heaven, he is not talking about “pie in the sky by and by.” He is talking about the kingdom of God. Matthew uses the term heaven because of the Jewish reticence to speak the name of God, but he is not writing about some beautiful place we go to after we die. The kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is about the sovereignty of God, about God’s reign over the universe. In fact, Tom Wright says that “…any first century Jew, hearing someone talk about God’s kingdom, or the kingdom of heaven, would know. This meant revolution” (Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone, p. 29.)
And so it seems that some might have decided to follow Jesus in the hope that he was the revolutionary who would drive out the hated Roman oppressors and restore the glory of the Jewish people. But Wright goes on to argue that “Jesus could see that the standard kind of revolution, fighting and killing in order to put an end to…fighting and killing was a nonsense. Doing it in God’s name was a blasphemous nonsense…His message of repentance was not, therefore that they should feel sorry for personal and private sins (though he of course would want that as well), but that as a nation they should stop rushing towards the cliff edge of violent revolution, and instead go the other way, towards God’s kingdom of light and peace and healing and forgiveness, for themselves and for the world” (Wright, p. 30.) As some of his followers came to understand the radically different revolution Jesus was proclaiming they surely abandoned him in frustration and disgust, believing there was no substance or future for his word.
When Jesus calls Peter and Andrew and James and John and you and me to follow, he is calling us both to encounter and to build up the kingdom of heaven, that is, God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. It is not a reign of power and might. It is not a reign of domination by some and oppression for others. It is not s reign of haves and have-nots. It is not a reign of death and destruction. In God’s reign, “the people who [sit] in darkness [will] see a great light, and…those who [sit] in the region and shadow of death [will have the] light [dawn on them].” In God’s reign good news will be proclaimed, and every disease and sickness cured. In God’s reign peace and justice, compassion and love will be the core values. And God’s reign will come when we disciples of God’s anointed one, followers of God’s way, light-bearers learn work together to make it so.
Wright again adjures that “If the light-bearers insist on darkness, darkness they shall have. If the peace-people insist on war, war they shall have. If the people called to bring God’s love and forgiveness into the world insist on hating everyone else, hatred and all that it brings will come crashing around their ears. This won’t be an arbitrary judgment or punishment; it will be what they themselves have been calling for” (Wright, p. 30.) As Jesus’ disciples what we are called to matters and how we respond matters, too. It is not enough to read the ancient texts and study contemporary theology and put on our Sunday best and go to church. When we are called to follow, we do not know all the consequences of saying “yes” anymore than Peter and Andrew or James and John did. But because they said “yes,” the good news of the kingdom of heaven, the reign of God has come down to us today. So we have some sense of what it means to be light-bearers and peace-people and people called to bring God’s love and forgiveness to a needy world. When we are called to follow and we say “yes,” we commit ourselves to repentance that leaves the past behind and lives lived towards God’s future. We covenant with God to walk a way that brings light and peace, love and forgiveness, hope and joy, compassion and wholeness to a needy, broken creation. It is hard work. It is challenging work. It is fulfilling work. It is joyful work. It is God’s work. It is the work of all who are called to follow. Amen.