Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on January 26, 2014 (a revamp of a sermon first preached at St. John’s Lutheran, Davis, WV on Jan 23, 2011)

Scripture text: Matthew 4:12-23

Familiar stories like the one we have as our Gospel lesson today can be among the hardest texts for preachers like myself to work with. Familiarity can be a drawback. We've all heard the story of Jesus calling the first disciples to become, in the words of the old translations, "fishers of men." This is the introduction of Peter and Andrew, James and John into the story line, the four most famous and probably most important of the Twelve. This is old hat, nothing to see here.

Or is there? One drawback to the "format" of preaching is its narrow focus. We hone in on a single passage in a single book of the Bible, dissecting it, interpreting it, analyzing it until we think we know what it means, what it has to say to us. I was talking with Pr. Schneider at New Freedom a week or so ago about our favorite Gospels and our struggles with the ones that aren’t our favorites. I mentioned that Mark does sit on my list of not-favorites-to-preach-on precisely because the whole Gospel is meant to be told as a single story; chopping it up like we all these Scripture texts for our Sunday worship doesn’t work very well with it.

There is another approach however. Many years ago, back when I first started as a pastor, Dr. Scott Gufstason was invited to hold a Bible study for myself and other new pastors at our First Call Continuing Education event outside Ligonier, PA. At the time, Scott was a professor at Gettysburg Seminary and when he got up in front of us, he held up a Bible and said to the crowd "This is what we're going to study today. Not Matthew or Isaiah or Revelation or any one single book or chapter. We're going to talk about the whole thing." It was a different approach. Not narrow, but broad. Wide. Big picture. What's the whole story here?

I'd like to take a similar approach to the events we read about today. Partly because (let’s be honest) I already talked to some degree last Sunday (and even the Sunday before) about the calling of the first disciples in terms of who and what they are. Today I’d like to look at their call in a larger context. To understand why Jesus does this. What does it all mean?

In some ways, the text invites us to do just that. It begins with a grim pronouncement. "After John had been arrested..." Who's John? Well, we know that's John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, his herald, his ally. Already, the story begins grimly. Jesus begins his ministry alone and unaided.

This shouldn't be any surprise to anyone. After all, what we know about Jesus' life prior to this point fits this grim tone. The visitors at his birth are shepherds, people barely one step above slaves in the social order, and foreign-born diviners, astrologers whose dabbling in often forbidden arts made them feared pariahs at times. He was forced to flee as a toddler from the wrath of a psychotic king who sought to murder him. And now as an adult, he comes into his ministry by closely aligning with a wild nomad in the wilderness, the aforementioned John the Baptist, an ally who now finds himself on the wrong side of the law.

And Jesus responds to all this by embracing a group of fishermen to be his first disciples. His choice in allies is an odd one, doubly so when you consider the threats he has already faced. He doesn't seek out the powerful, the strong, the well-connected, people who can fend off potential threats. He embraces instead four nobodies.

But that's also precisely the point.

Jesus doesn't come into his ministry looking for power. He's not after influence. He's not after strength. He's not after safety. He's not looking for any of these things. What Jesus wants is a connection with the weak, the vulnerable, and the powerless. He wants to connect with the nobodies.

He's not looking to be on top of the pile. He's looking to be on the bottom. And that's all part of the plan.

First off, Jesus has come to show people a new way, a way different than the way it's always been done before. The old way is through strength, through violence, through power. Strength built the Roman Empire, as well as every other empire before and after it. But the kingdom Jesus brings is built on love. And if you want to show how that works, you can't start with the strong. You have to start with the weak. Only then can you show that love is greater than violence. Mercy greater than hate.

Secondly, the kingdom Jesus brings is for all people. Realms built on strength and power aid only the few, the elite, the wealthy and well-connected. Only those handful reap the benefits of the land's prosperity, while all others are left the scraps. Not so in the kingdom of heaven. All benefit. The proof of that is that humble fishermen and other nobodies become the first introduced to it. Jesus does not go to preach to the mighty; he goes instead to the masses.

But the great and the mighty are not rejected from this kingdom. Sometimes, for people like me, this is the hardest piece to grasp. Most of you know my political leanings and also know the suspicion of wealth and power within me that gives birth to them. If it were up to me, I’d keep the Jamie Dimons, the Warren Buffets, the Koch brothers, the Wal-mart family, and all their like out of the kingdom. But it’s not up to me. It’s up to Jesus and because of that, they're there too, intermixed among all the others. All people together, regardless of class or status. No division. No separation, but rather unity.

All this culminates in the greatest act Jesus performs in his earthly ministry. For we all know where this story goes. His new way is too threatening, too dangerous, too scandalous for people to endure. So they kill him and they do it in a particularly gruesome and degrading manner. No clean death here, not like John the Baptist. Beheading may seem gruesome to us, but it's quick and largely painless. Not so crucifixion. It's the slaves' death, reserved for the lowest of the low.

And Jesus wouldn't have had it any other way. It's what he wants. It's what he needs to do.

The visitors at his birth are slaves and outcasts. His disciples are peasants and nobodies. He hangs on the cross to receive the death given to slaves. All this he does to put proof to what he told us. "The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

Jesus came to save us all. Jesus came to inaugurate a kingdom that would benefit all people. He can only do this by becoming the lowest of the low. The weakest of the weak. The very bottom of the pile.

For only then, only then can he lift all of us up. Only then can there be no exceptions to the salvation he offers. It's for everyone high and low, great and small, strong and weak.

This is how he did it. The Son of God came down to Earth to be incarnate as one of us, but not someone great or powerful, but someone simple and humble. He turned the whole world on its head, humbled the strong, took away the dividing lines we create for ourselves, and opened a kingdom where all could enter. And we see him work towards this throughout his entire earthly ministry. We see this in who he calls to be his followers. We see it in who he teaches and who he heals.

And it didn't stop with his death and resurrection. Who are we? Not the famous. Not the powerful. And yet we are a part of that kingdom. He lifts up each one of us as well. He came to serve us. He came to die for us. And he came to make a kingdom for us. Amen.