Sermons
Sunday 26th January 2014, Epiphany 2, morning
Matthew 4:12-23
by Revd Kate Tuckett
When I am not working, one of the things I like to do to relax is to take my bike on the train and to go for a cycle ride. As I have an extremely poor sense of direction I will always take a map and a compass with me, and these things give me a sense of reassurance, that I know what to do if I get lost, I’ll always know where I am. Recently I left my compass somewhere and had to buy a new one. Included on the packaging was a disclaimer, saying that some things may get in the way of the compass reading, that if it’s too close to metal or another magnetic device the reading with be distorted. Of course a compass points to an approximation of north, to the magnetic north. And if it’s out by just a few degrees, it will lead us on the wrong course altogether.
Today’s reading seems to be all about throwing the maps of our lives in the air. We’ve moved from the birth of Jesus to Jesus as a grown man. This passage follows on the heels of Jesus baptism, and while we don’t know how much time has passed between these events, we discover that Jesus’ public ministry begins with the arrest of John the Baptist. And with this, Jesus moves in a new direction, moves back to Galilee, to a new town Capernaum, and preaches the same message as John the Baptist: ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ To repent in Greek means to change one’s mind. It’s not so much about sorrow or remorse, but about a change of direction in one’s life.
Peter, Andrew, James and John are getting on with lives, doing what they do, minding their own business, maybe stuck in a bit of a rut, probably not too concerned about it, when along comes this charismatic leader with a drawing power that they found irresistible. Until that moment they probably saw their identity as being defined by family relationships, the village they came from, their role in the family business as fishermen. And Jesus asks them to leave this all behind. And, it seems, they do.
And so I suppose one reading of text could say that we’re meant to take this as some kind of model. Look how obedient they were. Look how they loved God so much more than we do. No objections, no stalling, no complaints. No concern for any of our other responsibilities, or research, or questions, or talking to other people, or discernment. God calls, we go. Except that in almost every case, I cannot imagine that that would be the right thing to do, or an appropriate thing to do, or a responsible thing to do.
Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. I wonder what happened in the moment when Jesus called these men. Whether it was an immediate conversion that enabled these men to commit their lives to him, and crucially to go out and encourage other people to do the same. Or indeed whether the call to follow and to mission happened in sequence at all, and what happened in that gap between the two.
Some of us here may have had dramatic conversion experiences. This is something that has never happened to me, and if you have, I envy you. My own experience of trying to follow Jesus, in my own cranky and clumsy way, is that it is an ongoing experience, not a decision or commitment I made in the past, but one that permanently involves falling over, turning backwards, getting cold feet, following lots of different and more exciting paths, having to hear over and over again the invitation to ‘follow me’. And it’s an invitation that calls for me to be transformed, as well as for me to transform other people. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. Jesus doesn’t say 'Follow me and you will become fishers of people' but I will make you, form you, fashion you into fishers of people. I have to undergo a process before this can happen. Something has to happen to me before I can do this. Follow me.
Spiritual writer Richard Rohr says that Christians are usually sincere and well intentioned people unless you get to any real issues of ego, control, power, money, pleasure or security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We are often given a bogus version of the gospel, some fast-food religion, without any deep transformation of the self, and the result has been the spiritual disaster of Christian countries that tend to be as consumer-oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious and addictive as everyone else, and often more so.
This is challenging stuff, but I think we cannot ignore the fact that the legacy of our faith is not always a glorious one. Some others of may have seen 12 Years A Slave, a film focusing on a particularly appalling part of white colonial history in the form of slavery, of which of course the church was implicit. It is a film that shows abhorrent physical and psychological cruelty. What is perhaps most sickening is the use of Christian faith on the part of the white slave owners to further beat down and manipulate their slaves. The slave owner who we see who owns a cotton plantation quotes a verse from Luke (12.47) to his slaves – ‘And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.’ He then shuts the Bible and says, ‘That’s scripture’ and brutally whips the slaves who pick the least amount of cotton each day. And we know this is not an isolated instance. In the name of Jesus the church has performed inquisitions. In the name of Jesus witches have been burned at the stake. In the name of Jesus religious men have silenced women for centuries. In the name of Jesus apartheid was justified. In the name of Jesus the southern states of American still practice the death penalty. In the name of Jesus the church has done and continues to do abominable things.
So where does the Christian history with some of its appalling abuses of power leave us with this verse that seems fairly uncompromising in what we are called to do? Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.
Well I suggest that part of the answer to this might lie in the gap that I mentioned earlier, in the moment after we encounter Jesus and in taking seriously and prayerfully the question of who and what we follow. I started with the image of a compass and the interference that can throw its direction off-course. When we try to navigate life with the equivalent of a compass – when we use our rational minds and our egos – we find ourselves subject to interference. Even if it points us in roughly the right direction, to magnetic north, the signal is frequently scrambled.
The commentary in our head, the inner monologue of our brittle egos, skews our sense of direction with all the fear, guilt, insecurity, and false expectations that we all carry. And the consumerist world of more and bigger and faster compounds this interference. It tells us that life is a competition and dares us to enter. It claims that the more we have, the better we are – and the better we are the more we should have. It says it wouldn’t seen dead with that old phone, so upgrade it now. It says get the biggest mortgage you can, stretch yourself to the limit and maximise your returns. It says look busy, lunch is for wimps, get ahead of the pack.
And between the ego and the world the compass of our minds twitches and jags and we are drawn off course, away from the life of Jesus. But here’s the good news. The compass is not the only way to navigate the world. Follow me.
If we are open to following Jesus, and committing ourselves to asking what it is we really follow, I suggest that we have to be open to a deep transformation of our hearts and minds. Those first disciples would have been waiting for a saviour of imperial majesty, a saviour who can redeem the nation of Israel to glory and power. And translated today, this image of worldly power may be not so far from what we want. A saviour who is more judgmental towards those we find hard to forgive. A gentle saviour, meek and mild. A saviour who will rule to the popular vote. A saviour who might not always and unfalteringly choose the path of relentless love, even when it leads to a dreadful end.
We are still in the season of Christmas. I always find participating in the Eucharist at Midnight Mass a deeply poignant moment. Even as we celebrate Christ’s birth, we are reminded of his death, and soon we will be entering into Lent with the inexorable march towards Jerusalem and all the violence and cruelty that will meet us there. But if we can somehow enter into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus if we can truly follow him, we will be transformed.
If we can stop clinging to our own little stories and enter into God’s bigger story, if we can enter into this movement from death to resurrection, if we are willing to enter the tomb and die to ourselves, then we might find that not only can be we can be transformed, but that we can transform other people. If we aren’t, I suspect that we will always be clinging on to what we have and transmitting not the love of God but our own insecurities and need for power and status.
This is absolutely not to say that as Christian people we should not be engaging in mission and evangelism, because this is the call of us. Nor is it to say that we should be waiting until we are perfect people until we take God’s word outwards, because we will not be fully resurrected people until we die: our own transformation is a life’s work and God has work for us all to do in the here and now. But it is to say that the cycle of call and following and being sent out involves transformation of ourselves as well as other people. And I believe there are some things we can do to help this transformation.
The rhythm and the cycle of the Christian year helps us make sense of our own stories and place them in the bigger story of suffering and death, as well as of birth and joy. Spending time with God, listening to God, placing our own wounds and brokenness as well as our joys and celebrations in the gaze of God’s love help us to live larger, less fearful lives. Talking to and being accountable to fellow Christians, friends here, perhaps a spiritual director or prayer partner, committing ourselves to knowing what we follow. Participating in the Eucharist, connecting us in some deep and symbolic way that perhaps we shall never quite understand to the risen life of God in Jesus.
To be willing to follow Jesus , to enter into his death and resurrection, may mean that we need to throw away the maps and the compasses of our own lives, some of the things that make us feel secure and know where we are. These will be different things for all of us. But if we can enter into the life and death of Jesus, and as resurrected people stand with the risen Jesus who is the icon of the pledge of what God will do with all our crucifixions, then it seems that we can meaningfully live with hope, and offer that hope to the world.
Notes
This sermon uses material from the following resources:
Draper, B. (2012), Less is More, Oxford: Lion
Rohr, R. (2011), Breathing Under Water, Cincinnati: St Anthony Messenger Press
