We Belong To The Light

Ann Beaty
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

January 23, 2011

Matthew 4:12-23

Last week we read Matthew’s version of Jesus baptism in preparation for his public ministry.  For Jesus, baptism was about acknowledging that he “belonged” to God and being anointed by the Holy Spirit to serve as God’s son on earth.

In baptism, we too, find our belonging in the family of Christianity, and we are anointed by the Holy Spirit for service as disciples. 

Today our scripture describes the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry as he moves out among the people, and that ministry, in Matthew, begins by calling others to follow him.

Matthew describes Jesus walking by the Sea of Galillee and calling the first four of the disciples to follow him.  All four of them were fishermen.  Matthew says that they “immediately” left what they were doing and followed Jesus.

I must say that every time I read this, I am struck by the word “immediately”.  I have this image that they were compelled to follow Jesus, as if they had been waiting all their lives to hear his voice, to be issued with this call, so that when it came, they dropped what they were doing and followed him.

On the surface it also looks like they made a snap decision and we can’t imagine that same scenario in our lives today.  In each of the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) we see a different theme in Jesus’ discipleship.  In John it means to believe. In Luke, to be a disciple means to have compassion on the poor and the sick.  In Mark, it means to be willing to sacrifice something.  And in Matthew, being a disciple of Jesus means being willing to follow his teaching and doing God's will as we discern it for our lives.

But, the common denominator in all 4 of the gospels is that in each case, it looks like the disciples made a “snap decision” to become disciples of Jesus.

But under the surface things look a little different when we look at their decisions in the flow of that particular gospel's story.

Then it looks like the snap decision may have been one step in an ongoing process.  It seems likely to me that the disciples had been thinking about Jesus for a while and about what the impact of following him might be.

We are in the season of the church year that we call “ordinary time”.  Ordinary time is “ordinary” in part because of what it is NOT – it is not Advent or Christmas or Lent or Easter.  It is NOT, therefore, the time during which the church is engaged in preparation for, or celebration of, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Ordinary Time is also ordinary because of what it IS:  it is the church season that makes up most of our time in the year – 34 out of 52 weeks fall in “ordinary” time.

It is the time when we are called, like Peter and Andrew in this passage from Matthew, to follow Jesus…not because of the star that announced his birth, not, yet, because of the journey to Jerusalem, but simply because he has said, “Follow me.”

The reality is, we live most of our lives in “ordinary” time trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus.  We certainly have our times of highs and lows in life, but we mostly live from day to day in ordinary time.  We come to church on Sunday’s to the place where we “belong” as Christians to strengthen our faith in community and to learn more about how we can be disciples in our families, our work, our friends, our community projects and all our other busy-ness from Monday through Saturday.

For us there are typically no bright stars and no earthquakes.  Just a voice that beckons us to follow.

Matthew reminds us that Jesus came so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:16the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” 17From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

We start our journey of discipleship right where Jesus starts.  Jesus begins his ministry by proclaiming good news.  His good news is “that the kingdom of God is near and don’t you want to be a part of that?!”

Repent – turn away from whatever keeps you separated from God and draw near to receive this good news!!  These are not references about “how to go to heaven”.  They are not about escaping from one world to the next, but are to proclaim God’s sovereign rule coming ‘on earth as it is in heaven’.  Living in that good news, we too are called to respond with a sense of urgency and immediacy in our discipleship as followers of Jesus.  

Matthew tells us that Jesus came to bring light into the darkness of the world. And so, it seems to me, that as disciples, we are called to carry on in bringing that light to places of darkness in our world.  First – we must trust that Jesus came to bring to dispel OUR darkness.  We carry darkness of many kinds with us.  Sometimes we carry the darkness of guilt or regret.  Sometimes we carry the darkness of resentment and anger or the darkness of broken relationships.  Sometimes we live with the darkness of fear, anxiety, and worry.  We go through times of darkness as we walk through grief and loss, and we sometimes live with the darkness of boredom and complacency.

I think it’s pretty clear that God is interested in reaching ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill, average, regular people!

Had Jesus recruited only the most religious, holy, pious people of his time -- most of us would be left out.  If Jesus came to dispel darkness and he can use a fisherman, he can use me and he can use you and we can continue to bring light to the dark corners we encounter in our everyday living.

The point is that we were meant to become a part of the tremendous divine plan to bring light to a dark world right wherever we happen to be.  The fisherman fishers for people.  The carpenter's invitation might read: "Follow me and I will make you build people."  The accountant will hear it as, "Follow me and I will make you help people know they count."  The physician will hear, "Follow me and I will make you a healer of people's souls."  A mom and a dad hear, "Follow me and I will make you a builder of children."  Any one of us can hear the call to be a good friend or neighbor at work or school.

We were all meant to be a part of God's divine plan to bring light, hope and meaning to a dark world.   And we can do this wherever we are – in the ordinariness of a normal day.  Somewhere, someday, you will encounter that person that no one else in all of God's creation could reach with the light of God.  And you may not even know you were the one who touched them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian imprisoned in Nazi Germany wrote this:  “The call to “follow me” from Jesus was a call to absolute discipleship, and it is only in surrendering ourselves to Jesus’ command to follow that we can know our greatest joy.”

We follow Jesus because we are loved.  We follow Jesus because we belong to God and the community of faith.  We follow Jesus because it is in being loved and serving others that we know our deepest joy.

Resources:  The Text This Week (Epiphany 3/2011)