In
the church, everyone talks about being called to do this, or called to do that,
and that’s as it should be: call is an integral theological construct,
especially in our theological tradition called “Reformed.” We are called into singing in the choir, say,
or, called to give so much per month—or week or year—to the church or called to
ordained ministry, as pastor or elder.
It is an article of the Reformed faith that all Christians are called by God; it doesn’t matter if you’re
doctor or janitor, teacher or social worker, train conductor or even
priest. Our theology of call says that
we, as members of the body of Christ, are called by God to that service.
Notice
I said “that service:” we Presbyterians believe that our calling by God extends
not just into the churchy stuff, like being called to clean up the
fellowship hall or called to lead a Bible study, but our mundane, everyday
occupations. This flows out of several
theological streams, but most notably, I think, in the doctrine of providence,
where God cares and nurtures God’s good creation. That doctrine says that we cooperate in that
effort, that in essence we are co-authors with God of God’s providential consideration,
participants in taking care of the world.
As I sometimes put it, as the body of Christ, we are Christ’s hands and
feet and legs in the world.
And
that certainly is the sense of the disciples’ call in today’s passage, isn't
it? They are called to follow him, to
traipse around with him all over the Middle East, but not just as fellow
travelers. “Follow me,” Jesus tells
them, “and I will make you fish for people.”
They are to do God’s work, fishing for people, whatever that means.
Well,
what does it mean? People are pictured as being hooked, brought
into the Christian boat. And indeed,
Christianity has been pictured as a boat, a ship, carrying Christians safely
over the stormy waters of life, which is why so many sanctuaries are built like
inverted vessels, including this one. . . although I’m not sure that the image
of bring folks into a capsized boat
is all that comforting.
Anyway,
we have a word for bringing folks into the boat . . . It's evangelism, or
e-word to us mainline Christians, and it’s telling that he commands them to do
it here at the beginning of his ministry and also at the end: after his
resurrection, in the very last scene he tells them to “Go therefore and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit.” In Matthew,
evangelism is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.
And
that's why the last verse of our reading is so important: in it, Matthew
defines what this means, as usual by pointing to Jesus as example. He “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.”
Seems this fishing for people is more than bringing people to Christ, or
getting them to join a church. Being in
the Christian boat means being cared for in life as well.
And
it fits with Matthew’s terse summation of Jesus ministry, doesn't it? He says that he “began to proclaim, ‘Repent,
for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
The Kingdom of heaven—as Luke puts it, the Kingdom of God. A reign, or state of being, a way of life,
that’s been compared to a mustard seed, where the lion lies down with the lamb,
where there’ll be no sickness, toil or danger, and where we’ll practice war no
more.
So
there’s another thing that the boat we land the fish in symbolizes, and that's
the kingdom of heaven, or the kingdom of God, and certainly the church has been
called a provisional representation
of that. This ol’ inverted hull is to
provide not only shelter from the weather but from sickness and hunger and want
as well.
But there's another thing about the
kingdom of heaven, and that is that it’s not in heaven, not in the sky by and by. It's among us, right here on earth. Jesus
even says elsewhere that it's within us,
but wherever it is, whatever it is,
it’s the major thrust of Jesus’ teaching here in Matthew. As biblical scholar N.T. Wright notes, Jesus’
teachings here are not about how to
go to heaven. They are not about “our escape from this world into another one,
but to God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’”
And
our call is to cooperate with God, to
be a motive force with God in both
the proclamation and bringing to fulfillment of that sovereign rule, that
Kingdom of Heaven. Wherever we’re called
to be, whether butcher, baker or candlestick maker, whether doctor, lawyer,
chemist or cop, our calling is to proclaim the Gospel in thought, word and deed, wherever we practice
our vocation.
Many
in this room are retired from full-time employment. You’ve run your race, and expect to be able
to lay back and relax, enjoy yourself, maybe travel a little, and that's a good
thing, that we rest from our labors, but it doesn't let us off the hook from discipleship,
from our calling from God. Wherever we
are, whatever we're doing, we are disciples of Christ, and our calling is to be
fishers of people.
Author
and Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner writes that “there are all
different kinds of voices calling [us] to all different kinds of work, and the
problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say,
or the superego, or self interest.”
Outside voices compete with the still, small one of the divine for our
attention every day. And lest you think
it merely metaphor, let me assure you that “voice” is a perfect way to put it: the
word vocation comes from the Latin vocare,
to call, which of course is where we get the word “voice.” Vocation means the work you are called to by
God, the work you are uniquely suited for at any given time, place and stage of life.
In
our passage today, those first disciples didn't seem to agonize over their call,
and their story is quite simple. Jesus is walking by the Galilee, and he spies
Simon—called Peter—and his brother Andrew, fishing. And he says “Follow me, and I will make you
fish for people.” And immediately, they
left their nets and followed him. And he
spies the two Zebedee brothers, James and John, and he calls them, and once again Matthew says they immediately followed him. Immediately.
And
a lot of preachers over a lot of years have made hay out of that word. They say “be like Simon, like Andrew and
James and John and answer that call immediately.” But I’ll bet there’s not many today to
whom Jesus has walked up and said “follow me.” Anybody here had that
experience? No? Well, then, we have to hear those voices that
Buechner talked about, and we have to winnow out the voice of God from amongst
them. The way Paul put it is, we have to
test the spirits, to distinguish God’s true voice amid all the noise.
That
process is called discernment, folks,
a word that we've heard a lot of over the past few years. Because, faith communities are called as well
as individuals, called to discern God's voice among the babble of the
world. And that’s what we've been doing
what with Transformation 2.0 and reading of the Paul Nixon material, we've been
discerning the will of God.
But
communities are made of people, committed people, who must discern for
themselves what God’s will for them in their lives might be. So listen
for the still, small voice of God, wherever it may be, whether from the
spirit within or without. We're never too old, never too young, to
prayerfully discern our call. Amen.
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