Epiphany 3

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: Epiphany 3
PROPER: A
PLACE: St. John's Parish, Kingsville
DATE: January 24, 1999

TEXT: Matthew 4:12-25 - And he (Jesus) said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. . . . . Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

It is suggest that the passage be extended from 4:12-23 to 4:12-25 to heighten the dawning of the new age of hope as a result of Jesus' growing dynamic ministry.)

ISSUE: Matthew tells how Jesus picks up on the ministry that is cut short by John Baptist's emprisonment and execution. Matthew tells, as usual, how what Jesus begins to do is a fulfillment of scripture quoting Isaiah 9:1f. He is the dawning of the new age slowly but assuredly selecting followers to help him usher in the Kingdom of God with a mission to catch, or to reach, people for God, and incorporate them into his love. The church today is also the continuing extention of that community of believers who immediately (obediently) in response as a caring community reach for the lost and broken in the world. Hopefully we see what we do and believe as a partnership in the dawning of God's age.
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We are now well into the season of Epiphany. Havi8ng left behind the cherished nativity stories, Jesus now is seen in the Gospel account of Matthew as beginning his ministry. The savior of the world is being made manifest to the world which the word "epiphany" means. I am reminded again of Howard Thurman's poem;
When the Song of the angel is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone
When the kings and princes are home
When the shepherds are back with their flock
The work of christmas begins:
to find the lost . . . tho heal the broken
To feed the hungry . . . to release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations. . . to bring peace among brothers
To make music in the heart.

Matthew relates in today's passage how Jesus begins his ministry. As always, Matthew cannot also relates how the beginning of Jesus' ministry is related to the Old Testament. It is as if he is pulling out a scroll and saying, "See here in Isaiah 9:1 f - "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordon, Galilee of the Gentiles, - the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." Jesus has moved now from his hometown of Nazareth to the seaside town of Capernaum, a significantly larger town and his ministry of enlightenment and hope begins.
This ministry begins, according to Matthew, when Jesus hears that John the Baptist has been put in prison by Herod Antipas. Jesus, who many scholars believe had probably been a disciple of John the Baptist now begins to strike out on his own. In the beginning, Jesus' ministry sounds a lot like John's. Jesus proclaims like John: "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come." Jesus begins to collect to himself a following of disciples. In these days very little could be accomplished on your own. You needed a support community. To leave behind you own family without the development of some kind of support system your life and your mission was doomed. Jesus calls to himself first a group of fishermen, beginning with Simon Peter and Andrew, who were casting their nets on the sea. Jesus says to them: "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." (Incidentally the real translation means fish for men and women, or people, not just men.) We are told they follow him immediately.
Jesus then moves on to the sons of Zebedee, James and John, and calls them to fish for people. They follow him immediately. It is believed that these men who followed him werer not scatter brained men who simply drop nets and follow blindly. These are likely men who had heard Jesus speak in their synagogues and in the community. While fishing was not terribly lucrative because of heavy taxation, it was nontheless a big industry in which the Peter, Andrew, James, and John would have had a lot invested along with the rest of their families and partners. Yet to follow Jesus in their new venture was the result of real commitment, and a new partnership in something they themselves must have felt to be genuinely needed and important. They followed him immediately may mean more literally that they were obedient to Jesus as their leader.
Jesus and the new disciples begin the process of teaching in the local synagogues, which incidentally met throughout the week. They were like community centers. They were not open on the Sabbath for worship, because the Jewish law would have considered that as work. The sabbath was for rest not worship. It is only after the Christians began to worship on the Sabbath that it then became a custom to worship on the sabbath in the synagogues. But you have the Jesus, the disciples calling for change in people's lives, i.e. repentance, and teaching them, and healing and curing them of many of their diseases and infirmities. The fame of the movement began to grow significantly and with apparently great fervor, so far as Matthew is concerned. Their fame spreads throughout Galilee of all places, and on to Syria for both Jews and Gentiles. Epileptics, demoniacs, paralytics are all being brought to him, and in this time very limited technology and medicine there were significant amounts of dis-eased people. The follow is growing significantly.
What Matthew seems to be stressing is that as this small community embraced Jesus, and remained obedient to him, you have a dawning. It is as if the sun is coming up on a whole new day. This is the dawning of the new age of hope, of a new age of appreciation of the presence of God being with his people. It is the new age of healing and hope. God's kingdom is coming upon his people. This message is the message of Matthew for the people of this time. The passage is also followed by the Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, where poor people learn that they are the honored and blessed of God. This is the beginning of people learning that they are the salt of the earth, and the light for the world. This is when people learn to let go of the eye for and eye and tooth for a tooth mentality, and to turn the cheek, walk the extra mile, to loan and to give. Its a new age of proclamation when even simple fishermen are empowered to reach out to people with the love, forgiveness, and convey the hope and love of God.
For the early church, this hope that God had come for those who trusted and were loyal to Jesus was seen the coming of the Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven. It was like the sun coming up in the morning, and rays of hope for a new day abounded. People who were the outcasts, the sick, diseased, and broken were being touched and acknowledged. God through Christ, through Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John and a growing host of others was reaching out to people with new hope, caring, with a message that God had not abandoned his world. That God is with his people in their misery, and in the oppression that had been brought down on them by evil foreign powers. Heavily tax burdened fishermen were ready to obediently join the movement. The early church must really have been such an enthusiastic community of hope.
The early church must have been something like what often happens with children. Do you remember when you were a child, and somebody would come up with an idea as to what to play on summer afternoon. On our block, when I was a child, someone would say let's play circus. Alberta Fleischman would run and get her baby carriage to be a circus wagon. Billy Moran would get his dog to be the lion and volunteer to be the lion-tamer. Patsy Hand would get trash can lids for musical instruments. Bobby Booth hooked his tricycle to his wagon and became the circus train. There would be an ethusiastic excitement to be a community of kids pulling together to carry out a plan and an afternoon of fun that could occupy us for hours. We'd often end up with a block full of neighborhood kids all participating in the activity.
From a different point of view I've had people remark here at the church how special some of our holiday services are when the larger community is gathered at Christmas Eve, singing and participating with a spirited energy in the worship. Others have remarked as to how special our baptismal services are when you have gathered together a larger group, a gathering of the greater community to witness and participate in the renewal of faith and the welcoming of new children and families into the community. There is the emerging of more vitality and spiritedness on these occasion that have a way of proclaming our faith and witness to the importance of God in our lives. A community, a significant gathereing of the faithful raises the human spirit and gives us a sense of purpose and meaning.
Our world today is plagued with vicious wars. Terrorism. There are severe problems of addictions mostly to alcohol, probably much more than hard illegaldrugs. There is brokeness in families, and considerable abusiveness among adults and among and with children. There are people who are elderly, lonely, people who are depressed. Alone we may feel helpless to do much about the problems of the world. We may ourselves feel sometimes very alone with our own problems. Of course as American we are very individualistic. We think of ourselves as self-made and able to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. (Just try doing that sometime; it doesn't work.) We find it often hard to participate in groups, in community with one another. We feel we have to meet our own needs first. We have to respond first to the busyness of our own personal lives before we and immediately, spontaneously, obediently let go with Jesus Christ. Yet it is in Christian community that we are more likely to be inspired, touched, welcomed, liberated, and nurtured to join with Christ and to be assimilated into his body of fellowship.
The early church was a group of people strongly related to and obedient to the ways and teaching of Jesus. Some were profoundly repentant in terms of the changes they made in lives leaving old work behind, taking on a whole new attitude, and following Christ into a dawning future of hope. They saw themselves as essential parts of the movement, a community bound together in Christ. May God's Spirit direct us to continue to receive Christ, to dutifully follow and embrace our membership in the fellowship and work together in compassion for one another and aim for a unified mission in the brokeness of our world. May God's Spirit direct us to step into his Kingdom and his mission that the world may know its healing and hope.