SPEAKER_00: The second lesson I'll read in front of me.
SPEAKER_00: This to you, I write hoping to come to you soon.
SPEAKER_00: But I am writing these instructions to you so that if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to conduct oneself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
SPEAKER_00: Without any doubt, the mystery of our religion is great.
SPEAKER_00: One who was made known in the flesh, vindicated in spirit, seen by angels, preached among Gentiles, believed in throughout the world, and taken up in the glory.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, so I can't play it.
SPEAKER_01: I may not even be able to play this one very well, but uh, as a sequence hymn, I'm gonna invite us to our blue hymnal, hymn 488.
SPEAKER_01: Be thou my vision.
SPEAKER_02: Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, not be all else to me save out thou thou my best old py home waking for speaking thou present.
SPEAKER_02: Thou my true I wish I wish me for thou my great father be dwelling and victories one may I teach heaven choice bright heaven my whole heart would ever be for This is the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to Matthew.
SPEAKER_03: As Jesus walked 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 fisher folk.
SPEAKER_03: And he said to them, Follow me, and I will make you fish for people, women, children, and men.
SPEAKER_03: At once they left their nets and followed him.
SPEAKER_03: As Jesus went from there, he saw two other brothers, James, son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.
SPEAKER_03: And he called them.
SPEAKER_03: At once they left the boat and their father and followed him.
SPEAKER_03: Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the reign of God, and curing every disease and every malady among the people, women, men, and children.
SPEAKER_03: So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases, and tormented by pain, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them.
SPEAKER_03: And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
SPEAKER_03: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_03: Praise to you, Lord Christ.
SPEAKER_03: Name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
SPEAKER_03: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_03: The faithful who braved the 37-degree weather.
SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
SPEAKER_03: Almost freezing weather.
SPEAKER_03: Now, this might come as a shock to you, because some of you know I was born on Valentine's Day.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, I was.
SPEAKER_03: But I am not a romantic.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm just not.
SPEAKER_03: I say things to my wife, like, sure, we're married, but I could have married a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, statistically, there's like three and a half billion women out there.
SPEAKER_03: You think you're the only one that I was gonna build a life with?
SPEAKER_03: There's no such thing as soulmates.
SPEAKER_03: That's ridiculous! I say things like that, y'all.
SPEAKER_03: I am not a romantic.
SPEAKER_03: And yet, I still have been affected by what is called romanticism.
SPEAKER_03: So at the end of the 19th century, early of the 20th century, there was this sort of big movement philosophically called romanticism, where people really wanted to talk about the power of your own story and being the main character, the hero of your own story, marked by lots of emotion and holding up emotion, and beauty, and magnificence, and seeing it everywhere.
SPEAKER_03: And I like that.
SPEAKER_03: Like I do.
SPEAKER_03: I like the reality of beauty.
SPEAKER_03: Um I like to think that there are, you know, these big, huge moments in life where we get to make decisions.
SPEAKER_03: Um I like to think um about a god who is is active and in magnificent and supernatural ways.
SPEAKER_03: Um, who doesn't like a hero?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, heroes are really the way we do it about romanticism, right?
SPEAKER_03: They're very romantic stories, right?
SPEAKER_03: Um and so when I read scripture and uh I'm thinking about the sermon and stuff, I catch myself and I think, oh my gosh, I have such a romantic understanding of this.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and so I don't know about you, but in my own like cinema of the brain, I imagine this call story with Andrew and Simon and James and John, like Jesus is kind of like Fabio walking down the beach with his hair flowing and all this miraculous, you know, things are happening swirling, and he looks at Simon and Andrew and he's like, you, you, follow me, I will make you a fissure of men.
SPEAKER_03: And then he walks back down to the road and he says, James and John, follow me.
SPEAKER_03: And like, oh like I have this whole like miraculous, amazing romantic story in my head that this must be how it happened.
SPEAKER_03: And it's not.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not.
SPEAKER_03: So then my brain went to, well, it clearly wasn't that.
SPEAKER_03: So maybe like it was Jesus kind of like a carnival marker just walking.
SPEAKER_03: You know, he's you know, okay, so I went to Monkey Python, like, okay, I'm jumping a shark here.
SPEAKER_03: But you know, like the whole bring out your dead, bring out your dead, like Jesus like ringing a bell down the street, like, anybody want to follow me?
SPEAKER_03: Anybody?
SPEAKER_03: I don't care.
SPEAKER_03: Any of you, would any of you like to come follow me?
SPEAKER_03: It's probably not that either, Jim.
SPEAKER_03: It's probably not that.
SPEAKER_03: It's probably something like in between.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I think that Jesus was inviting a ton of people.
SPEAKER_03: Like, he didn't just specifically pick romantically the heroes of the story.
SPEAKER_03: I think he was just going about life, being a rabbi, being a teacher.
SPEAKER_03: And he was down at the beach where everybody went ashore, where they were catching fish because people had to eat.
SPEAKER_03: And everybody was just in the kind of mundane reality of their life.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus was teaching and talking to people, and he was inviting anybody who wanted to come.
SPEAKER_03: He was just casting out invitations to people.
SPEAKER_03: And so that's like the first thing that I want you to just to think about is that these aren't miraculous call stories where the heavens had to come in like a thunderbolt, and this was just every day.
SPEAKER_03: It was just every day.
SPEAKER_03: And Jesus was inviting everybody to be a part of the work he was doing.
SPEAKER_03: So if that's the case, right, then my next thought was well then why did some people say yes and most people say no?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_03: And started thinking, I was talking to Mike, and you know, we decided that the the primary reason that people probably followed was because they were young and dumb.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, truly, they were probably, these these men were probably like, you know, and women were probably like 17, 18 years old, and who knows, James and John were probably like the sixth and seventh sons, right?
SPEAKER_03: And their older brother was gonna inherit most of the business anyway.
SPEAKER_03: So they just wanted to have some adventure.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's probably it, but we're not gonna think about that.
SPEAKER_03: I started thinking, like, maybe it's because they were really good people.
SPEAKER_03: They were like really faithful, good Jews, and they really understood Jesus.
SPEAKER_03: Like they were listening to the message and they really got it.
SPEAKER_03: The problem with that is the whole rest of the gospels.
SPEAKER_03: Because Peter is like constantly screwing up.
SPEAKER_03: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the sons of thunder, with their temper, right, were like, hey, Jesus, let's cast fire down upon this town because they didn't like us.
SPEAKER_03: Let's just destroy it all.
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's literally what they say later on.
SPEAKER_03: And then James and John's mom come up to Jesus in one gospel and the two of them in the other, and they're like, hey, we really want to be powerful and important in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_03: Can we make that happen?
SPEAKER_03: Like, these are not people who are really understanding what Jesus is up to.
SPEAKER_03: So I thought, well, the reason they said yes isn't because they had some profound faithfulness or piety.
SPEAKER_03: So then I thought, well, maybe it's because they they like the idea of baiting people into something and then hooking them so that they can be consumed and eaten later on.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, who's been to a church like that?
SPEAKER_03: Put some bait on the hook, get you in so that Jesus can clean you up.
SPEAKER_03: But then I thought, oh Sean, they didn't fish like that.
SPEAKER_03: They didn't fish like that.
SPEAKER_03: See, the word fish, the fisherman, the fisherperson, um uh Diyala in the Aramaic, it really meant a gatherer.
SPEAKER_03: Like a gatherer, because that's what people did to fish.
SPEAKER_03: Right?
SPEAKER_03: They gathered together fish in a net, right?
SPEAKER_03: They were gatherers.
SPEAKER_03: Uh and then I thought, well, maybe that was maybe that was it.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it was people who saw that the work that Jesus was about was gathering people in.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe the net isn't so much a net to trap you.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe the net is more like a safety net.
SPEAKER_03: Because there can be nets out there that are comforting.
SPEAKER_03: And then I thought, maybe it's because the work they were interested in doing was perhaps not necessarily catching the fish as much as it was mending the nets.
SPEAKER_03: And then I thought, man, maybe I'm on to something here.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe in this really boring, mundane story of Jesus walking down the beach and inviting everybody in their daily life to the work of being part of the mission, that when we hear clearly that the work we're being invited into is mending the nets in our own lives and in our communities, that there's something inspiring about that.
SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking that maybe this is good work for us to think about doing in our own life and in our community.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, how many of you have been a part of a family or a community in the church?
SPEAKER_03: And there seems to be a whole lot of holes in the nets.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, Jesus kind of gets at this.
SPEAKER_03: He seems later on to be pretty critical about the word hypocrite.
SPEAKER_03: Stay with me.
SPEAKER_03: Hypocrite from the Greek usually just means actor.
SPEAKER_03: Just means actor.
SPEAKER_03: It means somebody that is on the stage.
SPEAKER_03: So a hypocrite stands on the stage.
SPEAKER_03: It's an actor in a play.
SPEAKER_03: And I and I think the reason Jesus seems to be the most critical about that is because, you know, have you ever walked into a church or you've been a part of somebody and you're listening to what they're saying and they're saying a whole bunch of stuff, but then you're like, there's a whole lot of holes in these nets?
SPEAKER_03: Like, I'm not entirely sure y'all are mending your own nets here.
SPEAKER_03: I hear what you're saying, but this doesn't feel like a community of inclusion, of safety, where we we we support and catch each other.
SPEAKER_03: Like, and and so I wonder like, is the work that James and John signed up for, is the work that they heard very similar to um what they were doing on the beach?
SPEAKER_03: They were just mending the nets.
SPEAKER_03: And what does that look like for us in our own life?
SPEAKER_03: You know, for me it probably means taking some time to think about the relationships and the connections that I have in my family and how am I about the work of repair when it's broken?
SPEAKER_03: How am I about the work of honesty and repentance?
SPEAKER_03: Am I looking at the way that I am in the world?
SPEAKER_03: Am I looking at the family and the system?
SPEAKER_03: And how are the relationships in the family and the system?
SPEAKER_03: And where does repair need to happen?
SPEAKER_03: And is it a place that is catching everybody and healing?
SPEAKER_03: And I wonder about the church.
SPEAKER_03: Like, are we a community that is about the work of mending the nets and attending to the relationships?
SPEAKER_03: Do we leave here and have parking lot conversations and power issues and complaints and triangulation?
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I don't think we do, but I think it's worth thinking about.
SPEAKER_03: Like, are we a community when somebody comes in here?
SPEAKER_03: They experience like more of the gathering in.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, y'all, Mike was telling me that's what the word synagogue means.
SPEAKER_03: It's really what the word ecclesia, church means.
SPEAKER_03: Misa comes from dismissal in Latin, but it's also the gathering, the mass.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, the work of the church has always been about gathering together and tending to the holes that are allowing people to slip through.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, y'all, I gotta be honest.
SPEAKER_03: Uh I am currently overwhelmed by the amount of pain and hurt and sadness and violence in the world.
SPEAKER_03: And maybe it's always been like this.
SPEAKER_03: The problem is, is that because of communication and media, I now have access, you have access to it all of the time.
SPEAKER_03: And I'm not entirely sure our brains have adapted and evolved to be able to care about seven billion people and all of their problems.
SPEAKER_03: When I see on Facebook a friend of mine from high school is now dying of cancer, and I can't do anything about it because they're states away, and I haven't talked to him.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I my brain isn't able to care for that.
SPEAKER_03: I am confronted with my own like impotence, my own inability to affect any change or make a difference in the world that seems so completely overwhelming, so violent, so destructive, so hellbent on power games.
SPEAKER_03: And then I think, well, what I can do is work on mending my own net.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I can do that.
SPEAKER_03: I can attend to my behaviors, and you know what I can do?
SPEAKER_03: I can attend to this place.
SPEAKER_03: I can ask hard questions, and I can be about the work of reconciliation, be about the work of inclusion, be about the work of healing, be about answering the call to be a part of the building of the church, the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_03: And so, you know, I, in summary, y'all, this isn't miraculous.
SPEAKER_03: Like what this is, is people in their everyday, boring, mundane life, hearing the invitation that is for everybody to be a part of the work of building the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_03: And that work is not out, you know, barkering and manipulating and convincing.
SPEAKER_03: The work is mending the nets.
SPEAKER_03: In our own life, in our community.
SPEAKER_03: And so I wonder, what does that look like for you today as you go back to your mundane life and you hear the invitation?
SPEAKER_03: I wonder.