Barb was our guest preacher on 1-26-14.
Isaiah
9:1-4; Ps. 27:1, 5-13; 1 Cor. 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23
Resistance
to the Light? Do we really do that? Of course, the answer is yes. Sometimes we
get used to walking around in the dark. Maybe it’s because there are things in our
hearts we don’t want dragged into the light, our pettiness, our lack of
forgiveness, our fears. Maybe it’s because sometimes things can get so bad we
believe the darkness is all there is…until we see the Light.
John
the Baptizer joined a long line of prophets who told people "Change your life,
God’s Kingdom is NEAR!" Unlike other prophets who believed the Messiah would
come along in some distant time, John had the advantage of knowing Jesus was
‘’on the ground" NOW. John’s preaching was so powerful; people began to ask if
he was the Messiah. The Gospel of John tells it like this: "There once was a
man, his name was John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light.
..John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light."
That’s
our job too. To point the way to the Christ.
In
our Gospel today, John has been thrown in jail because his simple message of
repentance bothered the powerful, who weren’t thrilled with their flaws being
pointed out in public. When he finds out about John’s arrest, Jesus moves from
Nazareth to Capernaum. At first it seems
like he may be avoiding the authorities. Yet, instead of lying low, Jesus picks
up where John left off, preaching, "Change your life. God’s kingdom is HERE!"
One day, while Jesus is walking down the beach, he sees some ordinary fishermen
doing their regular work. It wasn’t an easy job. Biblical scholar Sarah Dylan
Breuer tells us, "fishing wasn't an escape from work for folks like Simon
Peter and Andrew and James and John. It was work. Fishing was a major industry in the Galilee, and fishers like the two
pairs of brothers we encounter in this Sunday's gospel were very small cogs in
the whole works…fishers of fish, even those who owned their own boats, weren't
their own bosses; they were cogs in a machine…"
"Come with me," calls Jesus. "I’ll teach
you to be fishers of people."
The Rev. Dr. Janet H. Hunt, pastor of First Lutheran
in DeKalb, Illinois says, "I imagine that those disciples who Jesus called had grown accustomed to
walking around in the dark. Now it could be that their lives were pretty
good ones…probably they had families to go home to and a community where they
were held in high regard. Even so, we also know that they lived in a
country that was occupied by the army of another. That they paid taxes to a
ruler who was not their own…more than that, we can also be certain, because
they are human, that they had felt the inevitable pain of living with what may
have been unspeakable losses. Indeed, there must have lived in them some
longing for light, else they would not have abandoned all that had been so
quickly to follow this one who promised them something more. Maybe they
thought they had grown accustomed to the darkness. Perhaps they had
finally given up hope for any kind of meaningful change. And maybe in
Jesus' voice they saw the promise of light in their darkness. And so
when Jesus walks by and calls their names and the light shines on them, they
go. They just drop their nets and go."
The
Light of the World walks up and calls them to join him and they do! On the spur
of the moment! They are the ancestors of our faith, the ones who left the
ordinary in hopes of finding something extraordinary.
Jesus
doesn’t call them to further his political machine, to tell him he’s terrific,
or to tell them that they are. He’s not there to bully people into believing in
him or to head "Occupy Jerusalem." Jesus
calls the disciples into a relationship with him, so that through knowing and
loving him, they could know and love God, our Father, who created us, loves us
and who fills each of us with the light of his presence. And as Shane Claiborne
reminds us, we have family across the globe and "we must connect our prayers
to the rest of God’s children throughout the world and through all time and
space, people who are reading the same Scriptures, singing the same songs,
praying the same prayers, and grafting their lines into the same old story"
[how I love to tell that Story] "of a God who is forming a people who are set
apart to be God’s light and to show the world what a society of love looks
like."
Paul
gives us the manual for a society of love in 1 Corinthians: "Love never gives
up, cares more for others than for self, doesn’t want what it doesn’t have,
doesn’t strut, have a swelled head, force itself on others, isn’t always 'me
first,' doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of other people’s sins,
doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
puts up with anything, trust God always, always looks for the best, never looks
back but keeps going till the end."
Rob
Bell says, "Love is what God is,
Love
is why Jesus came,
And
love is why he continues to come,
Year
after year to person after person."
Jean
Vanier, founder of the L’Arche communities wrote "to love someone is not first
of all to do things for them, but reveal to them their beauty and value, to say
to them through our attitude: ‘You are beautiful. You are important. I trust
you. You can trust yourself. We all know well that we can do things for others
and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of
doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their
capacities for life, [for] the light that is shining in them."
If
we each treated all in that way, how much light would that bring to this world
where so many people walk in darkness?
That
would indeed be God’s Kingdom come.
We
are God’s light to the world in this age. For God’s kingdom to come; our lives
must bear witness to His Light. That’s our job. Our calling. The same calling
Jesus issued to Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John, is ours. That call,
according to David Lose, Preaching Chair at Luther Seminary is "to be in
genuine and real relationships with the people around us, and to be in those
relationships the way Jesus was and is in relationship with his disciples and
with us: bearing each other's burdens, caring for each other and especially the
vulnerable, holding onto each other through thick and thin, always with the
hope and promise of God’s abundant grace."
Today,
may you know how beautiful and important you are in the eyes of God and in the
eyes of this parish. May you spread the love and Light Christ has kindled in
you, to all you meet. And may your little light, bolstered by the Light of
Christ, shine with all the power it has, in all the dark places where you must
go.
Amen
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