Answering the call

I like to preach from the lectionary. I like it for a number of reasons. Over the course of its three year cycle the lectionary covers most of the important parts of the bible, certainly of the New Testament. If nothing else, preaching from the lectionary stops me from preaching on my hobby horse topics.

Preaching from the lectionary can be fun too. As a preacher, you sometimes get given one of those hard passages which presents God, or Jesus, in a way in which we find disturbing, and we have to wrestle with ourselves over whether to risk tackling it or to preach from something else. Somewhere easier. It’s often tempting to preach from easier passages, but its invariably more rewarding to tackle the tricky ones.

And sometimes the lectionary gives us a passage that that we simply can’t avoid preaching from, because the passage itself seems so relevant. I think todays gospel reading is like that. It’s about call. It’s about Jesus calling the first disciples. And of course, that’s part of why I’m here today, because I’m exploring a call, or more accurately we are here exploring my call together, my possible call to be your minister, so it seems appropriate to explore this passage in a little more depth.

The reading comes right at the beginning of Matthew’s account of Jesus ministry. In fact, everything that comes before it is a kind of prologue. The reading comes immediately after Matthew has told us of Jesus baptism and temptation in the wilderness. So, this really is the beginning of Jesus public ministry; everything else has been preparation.

In this reading Jesus makes two statements. We are told that Jesus began to preach, saying “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (v17) The word ‘preach’ can be a bit of a problem because preaching has sometimes had negative associations. We associate it with someone standing up and giving a talk, which you struggle to stay awake through but aren’t allowed to interrupt or walk out of.

This isn’t what Jesus was doing here though. Jesus wasn’t preaching sermons. Other translations use the word ‘proclaim’ which is better, but what Jesus was actually doing was acting like a herald. What’s the distinction? Well heralds speak with authority and clarity on behalf of someone else, someone important, such as a king or an emperor. As in “Hark, the herald angels sing”, which isn’t a song about an angel called Harold as I thought as a child.

Jesus message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”, is a message for everyone. It’s a general call for people to ‘change their minds’, to ‘reconsider’, to ‘turn to God’ because God was coming by, because God was doing a new thing. Matthew uses the term ‘kingdom of heaven’ as a euphemism for the ‘kingdom of God’ because he’s a good Jewish boy and he doesn’t like to use the word ‘God’, but that’s what he means. “Repent, turn, for the kingdom of God is near”

Jesus first statement, his call for repentance, is to everyone, but his second is very specifically aimed at four men, two sets of brothers, Simon Peter and Andrew, and their fellow fishermen James and John, the sons of Zebedee; the first four disciples. “Follow me,” Jesus says, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” (v19) At once, we are told, they left their nets, and their boats, and their families, and followed Jesus.

Given that these four are the first four members of the Christian church and that we are Christ’s church today, I think it would be worthwhile looking at what this story might say to us today; and not just today in a general sense, but, given that we are all exploring a call, today specifically. And it gives me an opportunity to say something about what I think is important in a church, and what I would try to develop as a church minister.

So, I want to make three points. The first is that the brothers followed Jesus without really knowing where they were going. That might seem an odd point for a perspective minister to make. What I mean is that they had no guarantees of where they would end up and actually misunderstood an awful lot of what God was doing around them.

Stepping out in faith like this took real courage. I think it’s naïve to think otherwise. This reading begins with Jesus hearing of John the Baptist’s arrest. John will never be released; we hear later in the gospel that John was executed. Jesus knows the risk of proclaiming the kingdom of God, and the brothers, his new disciples, surely knew it too.

I think it’s worth remembering that preaching the gospel carries risks and requires courage today too, though usually not as high a one, at least not here in the UK. I think it’s one thing to show God’s love in practical ways, and don’t get me wrong I’m absolutely in favour of showing God’s love to the world in practical ways. But it is quite another thing to stand up and challenge the authorities and the prejudices of the world, yet when we proclaim God’s kingdom, that’s exactly what we do.

Yesterday I had the privilege of meeting many of you and talking with you about Emmanuel and what it’s doing and where its going. You are doing some amazing things here, both inside the building and outside. You are a lovely welcoming church. And this is really important, but it’s important to remember our first responsibility is to love the lord our God; it’s to proclaim God’s kingdom to a world that doesn’t want to hear it, but a world that is also desperately hurting and desperately needs to hear of the love of God. That’s risky and it requires courage. It did two thousand years ago, and it does today.

If the disciples had any assumptions about where Jesus was going when they followed him, they were undoubtably wrong. They certainly misunderstood the nature of the kingdom. James and John argued over who was going to sit next to Jesus when he came into his kingdom. Jesus had to tell them that they didn’t understand what this meant, and that it meant their deaths (), and they still didn’t understand.

They had to be rebuked by Jesus for calling for the pouring down of fire on a Samaritan village that rejected Jesus () and Peter was accused of being like Satan, and was told to get behind Jesus when he suggested resisting the arrest that Jesus knew was coming. ().

Perhaps most striking about this story is the realisation that all of them would suffer greatly for their following Jesus. Did Peter and Andrew have any inkling that both of them would end up being crucified, as Jesus would be? Did James have the slightest idea that within a few years he would be dead, killed on the orders of Herod? I don’t think so.

So that’s my first point; that the disciples followed Jesus without really knowing where they were going, but trusting Jesus anyway. The second point is that the disciples weren’t called individually, they were called together.

I think it’s significant that Jesus never had one disciple. There was never one, lonely, disciple who had to do everything by himself. Peter and Andrew were the first disciples and were called together. James and John, whom Peter and Andrew undoubtedly knew, were called immediately afterwards. Right from the beginning there was a group of followers to look after each other, to support each other, to care for each other and to pray for each other, and after the death and resurrection of Jesus to discern the will of God together.

Sometimes you hear people say; “You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian.” And of course, this is true, sort of. You’re certainly not a Christian just because you do go to church. There are many Christians who don’t go to church, but there’s a wealth of difference between choosing not to go to church because you can’t find one you like, or because you’ve fallen out with one, or been badly treated at one, and not being able to go to church.

As our congregations get older, as our members go into care homes, there are more and more people who feel isolated from our church communities. Pastoral care of those of us who can no longer worship with the body of the church is vital.

But it’s also vital that those of us who are able to ‘get to church’ function as a church when they get there. Being church involves spending times together, partly in social activity and social activity is important, but also in spiritual activity; in worshipping together, in praying to God together, in studying the bible together and in listening for God together.

There is a reason the Bible warns us not to give up the habit of meeting together as some of the early Christians had begun to do. (). We are called to be in community with each other. Jesus says, “By this shall everyone know that you are my disciples, that you love one another” ().

Not that you’ll all agree on every doctrine, but that you, that we, will love each other, and that the world will see that we do. That’s what being Jesus followers means. The degree to which we manage to love each other is the degree to which we are truly following Jesus.

So, my first point is that when God calls us, we go not knowing where we will end up. The second is that we are called into a community that travels together. My third is that we are called to follow Jesus. We are called to follow Jesus.

Now this might seem an obvious point, so I want to explain what I mean. Jesus said to the brothers; “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” (). Jesus called the first disciples to follow him. That’s the command, that’s the call. If they followed Jesus, his promise was that he would make them fish for people, but their call was to Jesus.

Why is that important? Well, we’re not all called to be fisherman. Telling people that you are going to make them fishers of people is a play on words that only really works if it’s said to fishermen. We all have something to contribute to the kingdom, though, but only if what motivates us is following Jesus.

The key thing is that we follow Jesus, not that we do anything, and that applies to us as church communities as much as it does to us as individuals. We follow Jesus, together, not really knowing where following Jesus will lead, but trusting him anyway. We follow Jesus, because there is nowhere that he will lead us that he hasn’t gone already, that he isn’t present already before we get there.

And that I think is at the heart of what a church is and does. Churches need to be focused on Jesus before they are focused on what Jesus wants them to do. That means a healthy corporate prayer life, in which we pray for each other and with each other, in which we pray for the damaged hurting world around us. It means we seek God in prayer not just the Good things he gives us. It means reading about God in scripture, as a church, and reflecting both on God and on what the scriptures are saying to us today.

It’s about trusting the Holy Spirit to speak to us and it’s about trusting God to guide us when we are confused. It means recognising that times may be hard, but that God, that Jesus, will not abandon us. It means recognising that God is made strong in our weakness, and that the strength of God is sufficient for anything that he might call us to do.

Brothers and sisters, being a Christian can be tremendously exciting if we let it, so let’s let it. Let’s resolve to know Jesus more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly, each and every day.