We Are Ready

Gospel Reflection Matthew 4:12-23

What a week, y’all!  As I look west to Minneapolis I’m reminded of two things. First of all, I need some good news. I need something that I can stick my teeth into and move from despair to hope. I need to be reminded every day that God is God and I am not. Secondly, I felt fear yesterday. I felt fear because our world, the chaos, and our place in it is so very precarious right now and I am finding that overwhelming. 

I name this because I want to lay it out there. Fear is not an end though. Like anger or grief it’s an emotion, one that asks us sit up and to pay attention. And I’m quite sure I’m not the only one who is feeling a whole lot right now. 

And so, when I was meditating (or thinking with curiosity) about our passage this week one thing kept coming up. In our text we see Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John leave their jobs, their work, their families, and immediately run after Jesus, following him. This is my question: Were those first disciples ever sorry they left everything and followed Jesus? 

For sure! I’ll bet there were moments, especially in the in the middle of the night, camping out with the disciples and even though it was beautiful, even though just the night before they’d had a great conversation, I’ll bet they yearned for their bed at home, for being fed by their wife or mother, for the comforts of home. It could have been that the day before they saw a great miracle, the feeding of the 5000 or even a healing, and still, this ambivalence. Still the uncertainty. Still questions. Still fear of the unknown. 

And yet, when it was all said and done, when they considered their decisions in the cold light of day, they did not change their mind. Even Jesus did not change his mind, looking death in the face.

And so then, what made them stay? What made them stay with Jesus until his death? What gave them the strength to become the “rock on which I will build the church”? How did this decision, made from the heart and not from the head, stick? 

To answer that question, we have to go back a little further, to that day that Jesus found out his cousin had died.  

Something happened to Jesus that day. It was a moment of, dare I say, conversion for Jesus, the death of his cousin. It was a terrible moment, a moment of grief and fear. Withdrawal was a coping mechanism, but there he found strength, courage. It lit the fire underneath him, and the story that the world was waiting came into being. It was time to fish, and not cut bait, to jump and not wait. If John could die, so he could he, and it was time to make his way. 

Yet even so, the groundwork was ready, the garden already seeded, the heart already prepared. Jesus already knew who he was; he’d been educated like a young Jewish boy in his place and time. He knew how to read, how to interpret texts. He’d been raised by Mary his mother, who I’m quite sure, taught him how to love and how to see people. He’d learned carpentry from his father Joseph, so he had a way to provide for himself. He had the basics, he just needed to begin. 

He also knew and loved God. God was his father, but he was also the beloved one, God’s favorite, like we heard in his baptismal story. He talked with God; immediately after he heard about John he withdrew. That’s just code for connecting with God. God was giving him strength and courage, God was giving him the gifts he needed to proclaim, to heal, to call. And so, when it was time, Jesus was prepared. 

He was ready. He was ready to answer with his heart and to teach others to be that soft. He was ready to call his own disciples and to let them learn from him, and to learn from them. Because immediately — and just look at how many “immediatelys” there are in this text, he leaves Nazareth, preaches the good news, proclaiming that finally the kindom of heaven is here! 

Repent! Get ready! Do your work! Figure it out! 

And that message called out to our very own Andrew and his brother Simon, for James and John. Jesus’ words fell on that fertile soil, that already prepared garden where the seeds were just waiting for the right combination of water and warmth, of disciples who wanted something more. They wanted something other than the death, tyranny and violence of the state. They were tired of the the bondage of debt and ready for changed. They wanted justice, kindness, and jubilee. They wanted repentance and light. They wanted something different. They wanted Jesus. 

This is why it was so easy to say yes, so leave their nets and immediately follow him. 

God calls those who are ready. And before we all make excuses, before we say “that can’t be us,” I want to remind us that we’re ready too. 

We’re ready to hear the call of God, to drop our nets and immediately follow. We’re ready to repent, to have our minds be blown away with the beauty of the kindom of heaven is unfolding among us. We’re ready to repent from the hatred and dehumanization of those whom we call our enemies. We’re ready to repent and to move towards the good, to choose love instead of violence, to get wrapped up in justice, kindness, and jubilee instead of death and tyranny. 

We’re ready. These seeds have already been planted and watered. 

And when we’re called, when it’s time to jump, to leave our nets and boats and the Sea of Galilee, we might, every now and again, like I imagined the disciples did, to have second thoughts. We might want the leeks and onions of Egypt and we might think sometimes that we don’t have what we need. We might even be afraid. 

But that doesn’t mean we turn around. That doesn’t mean that we make our way home with our tails between our legs. Because y’all. God will be with us. Sure, it won’t be easy, it will stretch us, but when God calls, we’ve been prepared. We’ve been baptized. We will know that we’re beloved. We will be empowered by Spirit. We will be in community with one another so we won’t be alone.  

And so. These weeks. These difficult and heartbreaking weeks, and our precarious place in it? Yes. This is our world. And still. God is in our midst. 

Just a few miles from Sewanee, TN where I went to seminary, is a grave of a man  probably never heard of. Myles Horton was an activist who had big ideas about how to change the world. Born in Tennessee to a Presbyterian family, he ended up going to seminary at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, where he was influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr. Afterwards, Horton and his friends travelled to Denmark to study their folk schools, where adults could learn and communities could be empowered. Along with two of his friends, Horton founded the Highlander Folk School, to “educate and empower adults for social change.” Martin Luther King went to the Highlander 0School, as did Rosa Parks, who went to the school before her act of resistance on the bus that day. 

The Montgomery bus boycott didn’t happen in a moment. The groundwork had been laid. People were ready. It just took the right action in the right place and time. Everyone was ready to live out God’s vision of justice and mercy, of love and jubilee. Just like us.