Epiphany 3 , 01/26/2020

Sermon on Matthew 4:12-25, by Hubert Beck

Now when he heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,

the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles –

the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light,

and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death,

on them a light has dawned.”

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee and Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version,

THE END SECRETED IN THE BEGINNING

Although the future is always veiled in the present, it nevertheless lies secreted in the present! We humans cannot see it, to be sure, for our vista is always limited to that which takes place, becomes visible, and is heard in the framework of our immediate surroundings. In God’s panoramic sight and imagery, however, the present is only a framework within which he is working out a will and a way that is far beyond our imagination and / or our human limitations.

This means, essentially, that we, in our trust in God’s actions and procedures, must always be ready for any and everything that may take place in the passages of time. Sometimes those possibilities are or become rather apparent in the ongoing course of our lives as events unfold around us in what seem to be some form of logical progression, but as often as that takes place – and perhaps even more often than that takes place – the resulting and surrounding likelihoods take us by surprise. What we expect doesn’t happen while things that seem highly UNlikely take place instead.

THE FUTURE IS ALWAYS IN GOD’S HANDS

In short, the future is always highly open-ended from our human point of view while, from God’s perspective, what is taking place around us is carrying possibilities we can neither anticipate nor even hope for. The whole of scripture is directed to that future of God’s making once all the aches and pains, troubles and tribulations of the present age comes to completion. While recognizing the chaotic reorganization of the original creation that took place when the original Eden was infected by sin, God never lets his people forget that it is he, himself, who will restore that disordered earth to what it was meant to be under his care and jurisdiction.

JESUS POINTS TOWARD THAT END TO WHICH GOD IS DIRECTING EARTHLY EVENTS

Long after the time when Jesus’ ministry had come to an end the Holy Spirit spoke to the disciple John concerning the end-point of all creation, instructing him to write about a “new heaven and a new earth” in which “the dwelling place of God [will be] with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” He declares furthermore that “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3, 4) The citizens in that dwelling place “shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore . . . and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:16, 17)

Who can possibly wish for, look for, hope for anything more than that? It is God’s promise of what it will be like when he ends the earth as it is now and reveals what life in its fullest form will be like in that “new heaven and the new earth.”

It is toward that end-to-which-time God is directing all history that Jesus turned the eyes of those around him from the very beginning of his public ministry. His words, echoing those of John the Baptizer by whom Jesus had been baptized only a short time before the events recorded in our text, were resolute as they became a refrain to be rehearsed time after time throughout his ministry: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” I.e., “turn away from the world you know and experience around you today and see ‘the kingdom of heaven’ being revealed to you on this very day through my presence among you.”

All this took place, in fact, in a very unlikely place – in “the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali” – two border towns between the Holy Land and gentile country – an area that, historically, had been a place where Gentile and Jewish blood was regularly mixed because of the vacillating powers ruling it at various times in the past. It was not, therefore, by any means a center of Jewish interests or religious zeal such as Jerusalem might have been.

Yet that was where Jesus’ initial entry upon his public ministry took place. And because of that, one might even wonder to what extent the four men called to follow him were immersed in any significant ways into Jewish hopes and aspirations. They were not without such hopes and aspirations, to be sure, but they may have been far more open to the message and mission of Jesus than a person in the heart of Judaism may have been.

JESUS CALLS FOUR UNLIKELY MEN TO FOLLOW HIM ON A SPECIAL MISSION

Little did the four called to become “fishers of men” in our text have any idea of what it meant to be “fishers of men” much less what it would entail if they “followed him.” It is all too easy for us to become embroiled in controversy over how Jesus knew them well enough to call them to this task (did he know them beforehand or was this simply a sudden impulsive act on the parts of either Jesus or the four whom he called, etc.?); or whether they had any idea of what Jesus had set out to do much less what he was proclaiming before he called them (i.e., what did it mean to be “fishers of men” when they followed him?); or how their father was to continue his business without their help (a good question all its own).

None of that is either mentioned or considered in our text. All we know is that Jesus “saw two brothers . . . and he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men’ . . . and going on from there he saw two other brothers . . . and he called them. And immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” The account is very sparing in any details, but intensely urgent in what transpired between or among them as a result of his calling them to “follow him.”

THEN WHAT?

Even for us who know “the rest of the story” that need to get on with what all that would lead to seems almost bizarre. Just think about what happened up to this point: a seemingly almost unknown man has impulsively summoned four people who outwardly are very unlikely candidates for doing anything special to do unspecified things of significant import in behalf of “the kingdom of heaven.” That is what we have been told and it simply seems weird to say the least. The weirdness continues, in fact, when we are told that they impulsively drop

everything related to their sphere of occupation to follow him on the spur of the moment without hesitation. Things become even more disconcerting the more we read!

There is simply no “sense” to the account.

A SMALL HINT TOWARD RESOLVING THE ISSUE

The problem, however, is that we tend to focus on the occupation of these men, on their sense of responsibility to family, on their seemingly forsaking everything outwardly necessary for their welfare and future. None of that was really at issue, however – either with them or with what we, given our limited exposure to what was really happening in this text, hear or understand to be taking place. The central thrust of this text has nothing to do with work or business, family or emotion – not even with religious impulses or spiritual objectives.

It rather has everything to do with the one who calls them to “follow him,” going with him as he “went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.” He called them to catch a vision of that which was secreted in the man whom they followed as they saw unfolding before their very own eyes visual images of what the end of all things would be when the one they followed would come into the fullest measure of who he was and what he was doing in these veiled forms of “healing every disease and every affliction.”

THE “INSIDE STORY” OF WHAT THIS BEGINNING WOULD END UP BEING

In and through that which he was doing he was establishing early beginning images of what “the kingdom of heaven” is really like in a very limited form. It is a setting in which there is no more hunger when thousands are fed from a few loaves of bread and some small fishes; it is a setting in which diseases of every kind must give way to health and vigor because the Lord of Life is present; it is a setting where demons are cast out, forced to release their victims so that they can return to a normality of a life they had once enjoyed; it is a setting where there is no more deafness or blindness because of the healing presence of the Word made flesh; it is a setting where death is overcome in the form of the daughter of a ruler returned to life and a widow’s son is restored to her and the resurrection of this man whom they followed through death into Life Everlasting. Through forms such as these the end of all things – no, far more than that, even though that is enough – the beginnings of a “NEW heaven and a NEW earth” were briefly but really seen through this one whom they were following.

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he said. Turn away from your earth-bound futures to the new possibilities that lie as closely at hand as my very presence in which “the kingdom of heaven” is secreted for all who have eyes to truly see.

THE CALL TO “BECOME FISHERS OF MEN” BECOMES CLEAR

This “kingdom of heaven” was seen then by those who followed him, which is, in fact, how he is still seen today by those who follow him. For there in that final setting to which “the Leader” is leading his “followers” one will see him who will stand as the author of the final restoration of all creation. He was already dimly revealed there in Naphtali and Zebulun as he is also revealed now in the secret fullness of the body of the man who called these four and others who would follow them in the future to come and follow him. Putting lives into his care and keeping is to see and experience the future already in and through this one who called / calls them to “follow him” precisely because he, himself, IS the one who IS the future!!!

After all, he it is who promised to raise to the abundant life all who are buried with him in baptism and raised out of that death to an existence beyond all human imagination. He it is who comes in the forms of bread and wine to all who participate in that “foretaste of the feast to come,” enlivening flagging spirits and troubled lives to a hope that extends far beyond the bounds of our human existence. It is he who speaks to all who are mending nets and sharpening tools and sitting at work benches and punching keys and working at all the enterprises and ventures drummed up in the minds and hearts of humans everywhere, saying to them / us, “Follow me.”

To all who do follow him without any real awareness of where the one who leads them may take them – some to long lives of service to the afflicted and troubled of the earth, others to a martyr’s death, and still others to a relatively quiet but faithful daily exercise of a quiet earthly vocation of some sort. One thing only is certain, though. Wherever he leads those who faithfully “follow him,” they will be made into “fishers of men,” for by their devoted lives they will be extending the shadow of him who first called them out of darkness to live in a divine light – the One whose life was foreshadowed in all its parts by these beginning hours and days and weeks of caring for and embracing those afflicted ”with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, healing them all” in a kind of “foretaste of the kingdom of heaven.”

The one whom they followed led them to Calvary, to watch his dying and then, in turn, to rejoice in his rising again, seeing him disappear in a cloud that took him to the place from which he had originally come – the place in which he lives and reigns to this day and the place where he will receive all who follow him into eternal jubilation.

It is worth everything you leave behind when you maintain the vision of all that is secreted in that which is begun when you simply follow him to wherever he may lead. When you know the end to which the one calling you to follow is to make leaving everything you leave behind well worth the following!

In fact, it is the beginning of new lives for those who follow him! That is what will be celebrated by all who followed him then, follow him now, or will follow him anytime in the future as a “community of followers” in that place where illnesses and diseases are no more; where hunger and thirst is only a thing of the past; where “the dwelling place of God is with man . . . and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 21:1-4)

Indeed! Our end is secreted in him who leads us from the beginning of our life’s journey just as the end to which Jesus’ life was secreted in those early weeks of his public ministry for all who had eyes to see.

Follow him! Do not ask where or how or anything like that. Just follow him and trust that his leadership is all that is necessary for us to get to where we want to go – even if he leads you to a cross because we know that resurrection lies beyond even that!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

an ordained but retired Lutheran Minister of the Gospel Hubert Beck

E-Mail: hbeck@austin.rr.com

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