Lay Reading
26th January 2020 – Third Sunday after Epiphany
Text: Matthew
4:12-23 – New beginnings
Today is
January 26th and we are just over three weeks into 2020.
Did you
make any resolutions this year? If you did, how are they holding up?
New Year’s
resolutions can be big or small. Do any of these sound familiar?
This year,
I will eat less, drink less, exercise more.
This year,
I will put down my phone and pay more attention to the people around me.
This year,
I will find a place to volunteer and make a difference in the world.
Making a
New Year’s resolution can be similar to expressing repentance. We make New
Year’s resolutions because we recognize our ongoing need for making a changing in
our life.
Repentance
is acknowledging we need to make a change in our life for God’s Kingdom.
We know
that we aren’t living up to the full potential God is calling us to.
We are
sorry for falling short, and we promise to do better in the future.
New Year’s
Resolution – Repentance – very similar.
Now that
three weeks have passed, we may already have to repent for not living up to the
resolutions we made. But that’s okay: God always accepts our repentance. And
that’s why we continue to turn toward God. God will always be there to welcome
us back.
There’s
more to repentance than personal conversion, however. Being sorry and promising
to be better is part of it, but it isn’t the whole picture. In fact, the “being
sorry” part of repentance really isn’t going to help you change your ways until
you get an idea of what that the bigger picture is.
Repentance
is about a new beginning.
The Bible
is full of beginnings; in fact it is how the Bible begins – in the beginning
God created.
Thus the human race begins with Adam and Eve,
and begins again after the flood with Noah and his family. In old age, Abraham
answers the invitation of God to go away from home and begin anew.
The Bible
presents us with beginnings over and over again, until at the end a holy city
comes down from heaven to earth, and its name is not Jerusalem, but New
Jerusalem, for it is a place to begin anew, the start of what will be forever
new so there will be no more “beginnings”.
Some of the
beginnings in the Bible are known as call stories. A call story recounts how
somebody was invited by God to begin something new and unexpected.
One day
Andrew and Simon, James and John get up to start the beginning of their work
day. They walk down to the sea, and cast nets into the water, anticipating a
catch of fish. It is a day like so many other days. Nothing special. These men
have engaged in this same beginning of the day hundreds of times before. This
is what they do, for they are fishermen.
Amid
familiar water and nets and fresh fish, rough wood of boats, rhythmic motion of
waves, in the midst of this familiarity, for these four men, a beginning takes
place.
Jesus turns
up at the waterside. Have they met him before, heard about him? It does not
matter. Today, as he calls them, a beginning takes place. He glances at these
working men with their nets and their hard-won catch, and announces a new
beginning for them:
"Follow
me, and I will make you fish for people." The four hear this and follow.
Like every
other call story in the Bible, this one is an adventure. Other rabbis and
teachers wait for disciples to come to them. This Rabbi Jesus goes out and
finds his own. He looks, not among the likely candidates, the best and the
brightest, but down at the docks, where he interrupts fishermen at their work.
An
adventure is something that comes to us, that chooses us. Discipleship is the
great adventure, for the one who comes to us and chooses us is great beyond all
measure. We are taken away from predictable lives, plunged into adventure.
Are these
four men - Andrew, Simon, James, and John - ready and equipped for the adventure that
comes to them, that chooses them for a new beginning, this adventure of a new
beginning in discipleship?
Jesus at
the waterside does not collect resumes; he does not check references. The
personal histories of these four do not determine their futures. Christ's call
means a new beginning. He takes a wide-open risk by inviting them. They do the
same in their response.
Subsequent
events do not demonstrate that they are particularly fit for their call. Simon,
who will come to be known as Peter, betrays Jesus in an even more boldfaced way
than all the rest. James and John, nicknamed the Sons of Thunder, not the most
agreeable pair to have around, indulge in dreams about their own glory
wondering who will sit at his right and on his left, missing the point
completely when Jesus announces that being least is the path to greatness in his
kingdom.
Andrew
rarely appears again on the radar. Maybe his flaw is playing it safe. Yet Jesus
never withdraws his invitation to any of them to share in his adventure, and to
be partners with Jesus in what they finally become.
In the call
to discipleship of these four fishermen they leave behind their familiar world.
The
beginning of their discipleship with
Jesus is the end of their former safety.
They leave
behind old securities: the waterside, the boat, the nets, those days of fishing
that gave them their identity.
And even
old Zebedee, the father of James and John, stands astonished in the boat as his
two sons suddenly walk away. The new beginning requires that they must walk
away into the new future.
They may be
afraid, but not so afraid that their faith does not lead them forward.
The Bible
tells us of this beginning for the four fishermen. They are called out from
their occupation about which they know a great deal, in order to fish for
people, about which they claim no knowledge. It truly is a new beginning.
In the same
way, our discipleship means a new beginning, one that appears before us again
and again. We keep experiencing the end of safety so that we may participate in
a new world. We find ourselves engaged in an adventure, for however strangely,
however unfamiliar, Christ comes to us and chooses us, and sends us out to be
the next new beginning in the world.
In our
Gospel today, Jesus announces the new beginning of his ministry with the words,
“Repent! For the Kingdom of heaven has come near.”
And Jesus
is calling us to join in this work of new beginnings. His invitation today is:
Follow me. It is up to us to build God’s Kingdom and bring a new beginning into
this world. It is an adventure because a new beginning means we don’t always
know what happens next. But we know that as disciples of Jesus that he leads
the way – we follow him – and he promises “I am with you always till the end of
the age”.
The peace
of God that surpasses all our understanding keep your hearts and minds forever
in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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