The Rev. Michael P. Thomas, OSLC

3rd Sunday after Epiphany, January 22, 2012

Mark 1:14-20

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “Now the time is fulfilled, and the reign of God has come near; turn from false ways of living, and believe in the good news.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea–for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Prayer –

Almost four years ago, Susan and I received an email from someone in the Anthropology Department at Dartmouth. That individual, a woman, wrote to ask what exactly does a pastor do, besides preach on Sunday? She contacted us because she sensed that God was calling her to consider leaving teaching and research as an anthropologist and, instead, to go to seminary, to become a pastor. Even though she had attended church much of her life, and, in fact, had also done research on religious themes in Native Christian communities in the Arctic, she felt as if she had no real idea what pastors “do.”

I am speaking, of course, of Anja Stuckenberger, a member of OSLC who did go on to seminary and is now awaiting call to a congregation in the Northeast. So soon she’ll have ample time to figure out on her own what it is that pastors do. I am not sure that she ever felt completely satisfied with our explanation. Perhaps you’ve wondered, too…. Just as the narrator in the Gospel felt an explanation was necessary about what it means to have someone cast a net into the sea — “For they were fisherman,” perhaps we need someone off-stage ready to clue in the congregation when we cast wide the net of God’s call — “For they are pastors.”

What pastors do, though, is not the topic of this sermon. But it’s worth noting that the language of “being called” is still routinely used when talking about being a pastor, whereas seldom used when referring to other vocations. You may have noticed that I mentioned that Anja is now “awaiting call” to a congregation. We’ve retained a sense in our language that the religious life is one to which one is called, as Jesus called his disciples.

Now, ancient church commentators were less struck by the idea of Jesus calling disciples to follow him than they were struck–and stuck–by the kind of people he called. It struck them as exceedingly odd that he summoned apparently unlettered folk. One of my favorite hymns (449) from the old Green hymnal sings of these “happy, simple fisher folk, before the Lord came down.”

Wondering at this was a consistent theme in ancient Christian reflection on this passage. The early church wondered why Jesus would choose the uneducated and lowly to be Jesus’ first disciples…. “Maybe God just wanted to work in the most unlikely way…. When he had thus called them as his followers, he breathed into them his divine power, and filled them with strength and courage.” Eusebius — Proof of the Gospel. Jesus evidently had not attended Tuck School of Business where you learn to choose the smartest people in the room for a startup.

What I really want to lift up about this passage today is this question: Why did Jesus decide that he couldn’t do it alone? Why did he need disciples at all? What made him decide that his mission wasn’t a solo gig? It strikes me as terribly significant that, right from the very beginning, this whole story of God’s mercy and provision incorporated not just a few, namely the powerful, but rather a whole people. For example, in the story of Jesus’ birth we have a cast of characters (otherwise how could we have Christmas plays!), ranging from shepherds, the Magi from the East, a menagerie of creatures, a whole town, an exceedingly jealous king, an immense star, and, of course, an old man, a young woman, and this baby, Jesus. So, perhaps, it’s almost, like, “Of course, he would be calling, inviting, summoning others to this special work with him. There’s always been a crowd around him even when he sought to be alone.

If you were at the Epiphany Visioning Retreat last Saturday you may recall the quote we included in the retreat’s description. “Christianity that does not begin with the individual does not begin, but Christianity that ends with the individual ends.” [REPEAT] [E. Stanley Jones, Methodist missionary] Putting aside whether Jesus intended to create a “religion,” there is a certain truth that the Jesus movement began with individuals passing on what they had heard and experienced and said to one another. Jesus began by calling particular individuals to follow him, to collaborate in, to incorporate, if you will, this holy business of proclaiming the good news that in Christ, God is incarnate, that the reign of God has come near.

I wonder if those first fisherman, Simon, Andrew, James and John, hearing and heeding Jesus’ call to them didn’t intuit somewhere hidden in their souls the deep longing they had to be called to be “God’s hands,” to share the good news of God, and to invite others to be part of this inclusive itinerant movement. Their articles of incorporation were baptismal water, a broken loaf of bread and a cup of wine shared. Perhaps until we hear the invitation for ourselves we won’t realize a similar longing on our part…

But the good thing is that we don’t have to be searching along the shores of our own lives for the invitation to follow Jesus. For we have already been called through our baptismal plunge. You and I in our baptism have been, first of all, named as a “child of God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”

We have heard and received these words as individuals, but we are no joined, incorporated into the Body of Christ, and called to bear “God’s creative and redeeming word to all the world.” To use the word “incorporate” here when to our calling into the Body of Christ is so appropriate, because that word means being brought into one body. The root word is “corpus”, body. Incorporated. The implication is that acting as one body, something more is possible than individually. “Christianity that does not begin with the individual does not begin, but Christianity that ends with the individual ends.” In the Affirmation of Baptism we profess, just like the first followers of Jesus, “to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed….”

In our Hymn of the Day, You Have Come down to the Lakeshore [Hymn 817], we sing of the ordinary and common people who tell of extraordinary grace by the water’s edge. We sing of a God who knows who we are, of a God who needs our hands–and hearts and minds, and who has come to call us by name.

Those words in the hymn express images not so different from what happens in our baptism.

And how does this call to change how we’re living, to believe God’s good news, and to share good news fit in with what we do on Sunday morning, what we’re doing right now, and what we will shortly do in Cana Hall as we gather for our annual meeting?

Incorporated as we are into the Body of Christ, how then do we follow — not only as individuals, but as the body of Christ? How do we do this corporately? If it’s not a solo act for Jesus, it’s certainly not one for us. If it’s true that the movement following Jesus began with one individual passing on to another the proclamation of good news that we’ve been talking about, it’s also true that it cannot end with individual needs and wants and interests.

We come together, following Christ together, to serve together. God’s Work requires all of our hands, each of our hearts, and our collective wisdom as we seek together to discern how and in what direction we go. While what I’m about to say may surprise some of you, Annual Meetings–believe it or not–are one of the ways that we do this discernment together! We talk, reflect, decide what are the various challenges or questions facing us as a community. As boring perhaps as mending a net, but as crucial to our corporate livelihood!

Each one of us is called, as Jesus called each of his disciples, and then we move on and out corporately. Together we do this work that we’ve talked about, the work of transformation. Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer even argues that this obedience to the Good News that Christ brings comes prior to a collected “rational” decision to believe. First follow Christ and faith will come, he says. Don’t sit around awaiting faith. Do something!

So let me turn back to Anja’s question, but with a slight shift, not asking what a pastor does, but what does a disciple called by Christ do? To what is a Christian called?

A Christian seeks to follow Christ and invites others to follow as well. A Christian is someone who has been called into Christ’s body and calls others to a similar transformation. The Gospel comes to us on its way to enfleshment in someone else.

As you come forward soon to be sacramentally re-incorporated into Christ’s Body here at the table of manna and mercy, may you hear again the call to discipleship that Jesu extended to you by name at your baptism. And be filled with the longing to enflesh this call in your life individually and in our life together here at Our Savior and in the world around us as the Body of Christ. Amen.