Matthew 4: 12-23

Tossing in the Line

January 23, 2005

Elizabeth Macaulay

In this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus begins his public ministry. He has experienced baptism and the wrench of the desert time, and now he is ready to be about the business of sharing the news that God is calling each and every one of us into holy relationship.

Jesus makes no tentative statement to those he is seeking to reach.

Jesus begins his teaching with this so-clear statement: we are, each one of us, to repent. To turn toward God. To be willing to be open to the power of the holy holding and challenging and leading us each. To soften our hearts and let down our guards and allow God to love us into the power that we are.

By calling us to repent, Jesus is talking about transformation. About God laying claim on our hearts and never letting go.

And It’s about each of us making a crucial first decision. Will we turn toward God?

The ground of the twelve step movement is based upon this teaching. In order for our lives to be transformed. In order for us to be fully alive and whole in our skins, we are called to turn toward a power greater than ourselves and acknowledge that we just can’t walk this life alone.

We need to turn to God. We don’t have to BE God. We need to turn to God.

And, we need to turn to each other.

Jesus preaches and teaches a turn to God and in the same breath teaches that our walk with God is not only a gift to our own souls. It is also meant to be a gift to this world in which we live.

Why? Because as disciples. As fishers of people, we are called to join the power we experience through transformation. We are to share our zap and together create the kingdom of God. A way of living together as community in which people are less interested in power over each other and more interested in living into the healing of power with each other.

Combining individual power with the justice vision of God as taught time after time after time in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Kingdom of God is born in the now of our human interactions, not in some sweet by-and-by in the sky.

Living the way of Jesus is not a private sort of celebration of a good time with God. Living the way of Jesus is a public sort of celebration of bringing to life the vision of God.

And what would that vision have us to do, as disciples? Well, this morning’s gospel leads us to that answer, too.

Jesus calls us to turn to God. Jesus calls us to follow and learn the way of God. And then he goes about showing us what the work is. It is teaching, telling, and healing.

It is gift to us that on this morning, when we gather for our annual meeting, we have this text to remind us what it is this being church is to be about.

There are important numbers to consider: budget, worship attendance, membership. They are numbers that we tend and watch and keep track of.

But sometimes we forget that those numbers are not the sum total of what being church is about. Those numbers are simply tools meant to bear witness to a larger testimony:

Are lives being transformed here at Richfield United Methodist?

Are we seeking to follow the teachings of Jesus?

Are we so moved by our walk with God that we invite others to join us?

And, are we doing the work of our faith: teaching, learning, telling and healing?

During this past week I have been awash in numbers and in reflecting upon the ministry of this church. Preparing for the Annual Report does that. Behind every number is a story. Given this morning’s text and this morning’s meeting, I want to share one. It is a story about one of the 20 lives we celebrated through gathering for a funeral here at church.

This story is the life of a man who called this church home. For some fifty years he graced this place. He went to Bible study Wednesday mornings faithfully. He was a grounded and wise participant on many committees. His heart held this church in his prayers and in his sense of gratitude. I came to know him as the man who set up shop every morning in the mid to late summer with a table of produce to sell. He and his wife, Mary, ran a farmer’s market where members could bring the gifts of their gardens and sell them at church in order to raise money to feed the homeless in downtown Minneapolis.

When I think about the work of the church. When I think about the invitation of Jesus to turn toward God and walk with God and live in the ways of God, the face and being of Bob Schmitt is there as testimony.

Bob died this last year. But his vision of ministry lives on – in his friends and family, in his church, in his pastor.

Because Bob knew the power of turning toward God. He had experienced transformation and knew it to be so powerful that he had to share the news with his world. And he did. Bob was one of the most humble and glorious disciples of Jesus I have encountered.

He knew the way of living a life grounded in the way of God. He took what he had – a penchant for tinkering and a heart huge enough for two people – and he was intentional about the hard work of living his faith.

And, he went about the work of his faith: telling others about it, through his words and so powerfully through his actions. Learning every chance he got, seeking every chance he got. Sharing every chance he got.

And healing this world he felt called to tend through doing what he could so that even in his eighties, he was working to feed the hungry.

Why are we church?

It’s not to heat this building. It is not to support a pastor and a staff. It is not to look good.

We are church because we know in the honesty of our hearts that we are often times lonely and afraid and sure that there is more to this thing we call life than earning a paycheck.

We are church because we want to be a part of something bigger than our fear.

We are church because we want to be part of a movement. A justice movement. A transformation movement. A healing movement. A Jesus movement.

We will risk vulnerability and we will risk sharing our hopes and we will risk taking action.

Thanks be to God.

Amen