Isaiah 9:1-4
Psalm 27:1, 4-9
1 Corinthians 1:10-18
Matthew 4:12-23
There’s a story in “a book
by Jack Kornfield [that] tells that a young man who had lost a leg came to a Buddhist
monastery. Extremely angry at life, he drew pictures of cracked vases and
damaged things. He found inner peace and changed his outlook, but still drew
broken vases. One day his “master” asked: "Why do you still draw a crack
in the vases, are you not whole?” The young man replied, “Yes, and so are the
vases. The crack is how the light gets in.” ” (Seasons of the Spirit January 26
2014)
Leonard
Cohen, a brilliant songwriter and poet wrote a song that is likely based on
this story.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in
Last week's sermon spoke of how
we often come to times of decision when we know it’s time to choose one way or
another. And once we make those decisions—the big ones and the small ones—the
changes we experience cause stress. Stress isn’t always negative. Stress is
just another influence on change and change can be positive or negative.
Stressing a flowering plant in a particular way can cause flowers to bloom. Stressors
like temperature changes can cause some species of turtles’ eggs to hatch one
gender of offspring or another. Stress is necessary for most living things. The
stress of hunger makes the predator hunt and the grazer forage. The stress of
being tired causes us to seek out sleep, necessary to live.
And biblically, there are
several places and times when the stress of loss and change introduces a cycle
of life within the relationship between God and God’s people. Sometimes the
pain and loss are credited to God unfairly, more often the kinds of losses and
changes I’m talking about are about great cultural shifts or violent actions
taken by some individual or nation. When Moses died, for example, the Hebrew
people were just about to enter into the land of God’s promise. Moses had been
a particular kind of leader as the people journeyed through the wilderness—as
they were transformed by God from slaves to people with common laws and ethics
who could become a nation together. As they prepared to cross the Jordan River
into what would become Israel, Moses died and Joshua rose up as the leader of
the people. He inherited Moses mantle of leadership, so to speak. The people
mourned Moses’s death and slowly but surely followed Joshua across the Jordan
when it was time.
I’m sure many hearts were
broken that day when they understood that Moses wouldn’t lead them anymore. But
one leader’s time ended as another one began.
But biblical changes aren’t
always about the death or loss of one leader for another. In Isaiah’s prophetic
word from chapter 9, we read about how when the time came a leader would free
the people from the oppression of their exile in Babylon. This early in the
prophecy, Judah was still free and yet Isaiah’s words (The words of God given
through Isaiah) were given to comfort the people. Yes, their lives would be
torn from their homeland. Yes, the wealthiest among them and their leaders had
committed great sins that would tear apart their culture. Yes, the majority of
them would be taken into exile. And yes, in that time of darkness, after a
journey that felt like death, light would come. Hearts would be broken—the
heart of the nation would be broken by their oppressors—and their oppressors
would on be defeated some unspecified day in the future and songs of
celebration and rejoicing would come to them again.
Stress, pain and heartbreak
would be followed by God’s presence and God’s purpose.
Several of these things are
going on in today’s gospel lesson. These verses are the story of the beginning
of Jesus’ public ministry—and it begins when he returned from his trial in the
wilderness to hear that John, who baptized him, had been arrested. When he
heard it, Matthew writes that Jesus withdrew to Galilee. According to what we
know, he had grown up in Nazareth and at this time he moved to Capernaum which
is on the lake at Galilee. This move connected him to the ancient land called
Zebulun and Naphtali in Isaiah’s prophecy. It also connected him to the place
and time where he would find his first disciples.
The story began with the
arrest of John, which we know is the end of his ministry. Eventually, we also
know, he will be killed. His mantle of active ministry was tragically cast
away. Jesus’ times and mantle of active ministry and work was taken up. Into
that darkness, Jesus brought light. Jesus began to preach repentance plus,
“Turn your lives around and head toward the realm and house that God is
building for God’s people.”
John understood that
confession, repentance was the first step. Jesus brought the realization of
God’s kingdom, household, or family being created out of the whole world
beginning with the laborers and the common people living in the region of
Galilee. Jesus’ hope and joyful good news consisted of calling common people
like fisherfolk to the work and message of God’s salvation.
And as he called the first
disciples to him, can you imagine the stress they felt upon that call. In the
scripture, we don’t hear about a struggle within Simon Peter, Andrew, James and
John as they left their nets to follow him—the stress of change wasn’t described
in this text. But can you imagine the pain, the stress, the challenge of his
words upon their lives? When you understand that you are being called to change
your life in some way—and I believe that all of us have experience that urge to
change—what kind of stress does that bring to you?
• What questions or hesitations would arise for you if you
were one of the fishers in this
scene?
The people who were fishing,
Peter, Andrew, James, and John had families. Peter was married, I don’t know
about the others, but they had fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and
families worked together them. I would question my responsibilities to them if
I was faced with this call. And I have questioned what my responsibilities are
to my family at times when I’ve been discerning my call.
First I wondered about my
parents and their response to my decision and I believe, my call, to attend
seminary and enter some kind of ministry then undetermined.
I won’t go into more detail,
but each change that this calling has placed before me, I questioned what it
would do to the people I love. It wasn’t until after my mother died that I left
Oklahoma. I don’t know what would have happened otherwise.
I honestly can’t imagine
that they didn’t take a few moments and have a few discussions with family
members—in the middle of this decision to follow Jesus.
We will always stop and
think before we decide to follow Jesus. We do consider the effect our choices
make on those we are connected to.
• What do you prioritize when making a decision?
I do believe that we have to
protect the most vulnerable among us when we make decisions. I doubt that Peter
walked out on his family and left them to fend for themselves. (He’s the one I
know had a wife and likely children, though he probably wasn’t the only one.)
Jesus doesn’t call us to be irresponsible, but Jesus doesn’t make it easy
either.
Being faithful to the
mission of Jesus Christ isn’t convenient and it usually doesn’t pay very well.
Being faithful to that mission costs us everything that we can afford to give,
not a moment or a dollar les. It always will cost more than I realize and the
benefit to God’s purpose always outweighs the cost—though I may not ever know
or understand that benefit.
• What was the challenge of Jesus’ call?
Jesus challenged the
disciples to leave behind the most familiar life style they had ever known to
become scholars of his teachings. He challenged them to be followers of the way
that he was living, imitators of his acts of mercy, healing, compassion,
justice, and kindness. He challenged the people he called to prioritize the
ideals of God’s kingdom in their own lives, in the lives of their families and
in the way that society and culture itself was put together. He challenged them
as time went on to question the teachings about the Messiah. He challenged them
to question the leaders of the temple and to speak for the poor instead of the rich.
He challenged the notion that wealth was a reward for faithfulness and to open
their eyes to see that material gain could also be a distraction from the real
purposes that God had for them.
• What was the gift in Jesus’ call?
The disciples were well
aware of the ways in which the people of Israel, God’s chosen ones, the
children of Abraham were in need of the Messiah and the hope that God promised
them. They needed the light of life that God had promised and given, again and again.
And they saw in Jesus and heard in his message this light and this hope, this
life—they at least heard the beginnings of the hope and the life. They heard
that God continued to build and build the home they were promised.
The gift of the call of Jesus
upon their lives and upon the lives of all who are called to be Jesus’
disciples is the chance to participate over and over and forever in the
salvation of the whole world. The gift we are given is the hope that Jesus
offered in every word that he spoke and every work that he did and still does
in this world—through our hands and feet and voices and hearts and minds.
It is through the
discipleship and apostleship of those Jesus’ called—and so many others—that our
lives have been changed, challenged and gifted for the work of purpose that
Jesus gives. And it is through our discipleship as a community within the body
of Christ that the work of the kingdom continues to grow.
We may cry out in sorrow and
despair at the transition and change that we experience—and God pours the light
of love and hope and purpose and life into the cracks of our broken hearts and
lives. When God calls us in the voice of Jesus, our hearts cry out to our minds
to seek the way that God wants us to live. And I promise it will be inconvenient,
difficult, costly, and people won’t like it. And I also promise our choice to
live in Jesus’ way will help to build the kingdom of God, right now and
forever.
The disciples who were
casting those nets that day in Capernaum had no vision of what God would have
built more than 2,000 years down the road, but because of their willingness to
follow, we know this story. They broke open the familiar and comfortable fishing
life they’d always know to let in something new. We know that Jesus called to
them and to us teaching us to love our neighbors, to love our enemies and those
that persecute us. We are learning about the challenge of being a disciple of
Christ and we are learning, like they did, that in that challenge was the
ultimate gift.
To the glory of God. Amen.
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