Dropping the Nets

A Sunday sermon on going for something bigger than normal

This message was delivered today at St. James United in Goodwood and Trinity United Church in Timberlea, Nova Scotia. The Gospel text is Matthew 4:12-23.

To watch a video recording of this, click here!

How many of you have ever had to leave home unexpectedly?

You’re going about life, doing your daily routine, and living in a sort of locked groove, when something out of the blue shows up and completely disrupts everything?

That’s especially the case when something tragic happens. A family member has been in an accident, or a close friend has died, or you’ve had a crisis at work that makes you need to hop on a plane later in the day. Those are the type of moments where it often doesn’t matter what you planned to do the rest of the day or week. Or even long-term. How many Canadians are here because something in their lives rapidly changed, and this is where they ended up?

These are questions we can take with us as we look at today’s Gospel reading. This will be the first part of a two-part sermon on Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Matthew; we are going a bit out of order, and I will focus on the first part of the chapter next month before the beginning of Lent.

The first action that you can see in the Gospel was that Jesus heard, and that Jesus withdrew. John the Baptist had been arrested, and Christ had to make a decision: to withdraw. He was in Nazareth, and could have continued to be at home, in a familiar place, working in carpentry and carrying about his business.

But something happened, and Jesus responded.

This was a decision that had been talked about, not necessarily by Jesus- we don’t know for sure- but by the prophets. Jesus went to Galilee- the land of Naphtali and of the Gentiles- and Isaiah had stated that they lived in darkness before Christ came to bring them light.

But who were these people that lived in darkness? Historically speaking, the term has most commonly been used to refer to someone who is not Jewish. In the Hebrew Bible, this could been one of many groups of people, including invaders, Samaritans, or anyone that simply does not want to convert to Judaism. Regardless of this, it is clear that this is a land that is less favored than other parts of Israel, and a space where its residents are not people of the highest regard in the land.

I want you to picture a place in your mind that you’ve either been to, or heard of, that you might not hold in the highest regard. It could be here in Halifax Regional, or in the Maritimes, or somewhere in this country or another.

I want you to think about why this place is often thought of as less than other places, and why people might have that attitude. How are people from there treated in comparison to others? Do you think people from that area may be fairly cared for? Pause for a few seconds and think about that with your eyes closed.

Now I want you to think, in your mind, of Jesus walking there. Whether he is walking on the streets alongside someone, helping someone fix a broken wheel, or digging up a garden patch someone’s tending to just to survive. These are the types of places that Jesus tended to first in his ministry. As we will see later in Lent, he saved Jerusalem for last. He went to the place where people lived as, and with, the least.

And this is the place where he called his first disciples. They were not religious studies majors at the local university. They were not the children of nobility, or even any people of privilege. They were fisherfolk, working on a giant freshwater lake to get by, using the most basic of equipment to do their job. No trawlers, flash-freeze technology or even a decent cooler. And if you think about it, they were very vulnerable, to weather, to bad catches, to spending their days with no harvest.

Christ saw them first. And he called them first.

If they had not left, they would have likely remained fisherfolk until they died. But Christ gave them a hope that they carried with them all the way into martyrdom. And in verse 20 of chapter 4, it says how quickly they did so- does anyone remember?

Immediately. No question. That, my friends, is the kind of faith Christ was looking for in his disciples. And it wasn’t just these two brothers, but two more in James and John, the sons of Zebedee. These brothers were literally in their boat, mending their nets with their father, when they were called.

If you were Zebedee, and some stranger called your kids to follow them, how do you think you might react? You might have just a little bit of worry, especially because your sons followed a stranger and you just lost two of your best helpers in fishing. Not after a week, but immediately- just like Simon Peter and Andrew. All of them could have stayed and kept going with their routine.

But they were called to something more pressing, and something beyond the familiar.

Matthew’s gospel shows us that getting away from the unfamiliar has the power to work wonders. For some of us, routine does help. Routine activities like volunteering, serving in outreach or singing in the choir every Sunday provide a presence for others that our world desperately needs. But how many of you who have been called to serve had never done anything with it before getting started?

Quite often, we’re not just volunteered, but we’re “voluntold” to help. But it takes risk. The first four disciples could have come along with Christ and later bailed. They could have followed for a few days and changed their mind, and gone back to fishing. But they didn’t, just as Christ went somewhere new, and somewhere he was needed.

Right now, my friends, our world is witnessing a lot of routine actions- and not in a Christlike way. Routine violence in places like Gaza, Ukraine and Yemen, and now in spaces like Iran. My own homeland has become a space of routine policing and disorder- the whole reason that I am here with you in Halifax- and we routinely witness injustices like perpetual cycles of poverty and hunger. When Kevin talked about the fear of poverty last week in his sermon, that is a routine cycle too: we fear, we struggle, we try to avoid, and we often repeat.

In this Gospel, Jesus is reassuring to his new disciples. He does not guarantee that it will be easy; there is nothing in the Gospel that says that being a disciple of Christ is a piece of cake. Christ, in Chapter 4, verse 17, is literally telling people to stop what they’re doing and turn their life around. Six verses later, in verse 23, he is bringing good news to people who need it, and curing people of their diseases. There is space, in Christ’s love, to call out what’s not okay, and to help others feel okay for once. But it takes getting out of our comfort zones.

How do we do that, though?

As Kevin pointed out in last week’s sermon, there is already so much struggle, that the idea of doing yet another thing might be absolutely devastating to someone’s mental load. Imagine being told by a stranger to repent when you’ve just had to stand in line at the food bank for four hours. Imagine being told that you’re poor because of the bad choices you made when you were younger. Imagine- as Kevin also mentioned- being cut off before you can properly cry for help.

That’s not the message that Christ brought to the people in Galilee, or to the rest of the lands. And it’s not the kind of message of Christ that we should be bringing to the people around us.

Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John followed Christ because of his presence, and his reassurance. Christ didn’t tell them “Stop doing x, or y, or z,” but just said “follow me.” No idea what would happen next. No guarantees. Just a loving, reassuring presence for people who have been sitting in darkness.

Every one of the single parents we help here in our charge could be a wonderworker for others. Every bowl of soup we serve could transform the life of a lonely person. And every friend we invite to sit with us on a quiet, tech-free Sunday morning in a cozy wooden church...could be someone who drops their net and walks along with us.

Let’s follow Christ to Galilee, and be a great light for a dark space.

Life, as we know it, could change in an instant, and be filled with glory.

Amen.