Homily for Sunday Ordinary Time 3 A

All four of these disciples leave their fishing nets, but they do not stop fishing. They are now, in the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, fishers for people. Their past has not been wiped out; it has been transformed by Jesus' call to follow. 

I have Mass on Sunday, January 25 at St. Isidore @ 9:30/11:30 am

frjoedailey@gmail.com

Transcript

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and went to live in Capernaum by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali, that what had been said through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled. "Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light. On those dwelling in a land overshadowed by death, light has arisen." 

From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea. They were fishermen. He said to them, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men." At once they left their nets and followed him. He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him. 

He went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people. 

The Gospel of the Lord. 

We return to the Gospel of Matthew as Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee. Jesus walked out among ordinary working people and chose them, without a single question, to be his friends. But that's not the strangest thing. The strangest thing is that they went along with him. Not one of them or two of them, but all of them. He called, and they followed, for which we tend to give them all the credit. What faith those four must have had to do what they did, sacrificing everything to go after Jesus. 

There's a similar line in John's Gospel. "I have called you friends," chapter 15, verse 15. And then, verse 16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you." I can still remember exactly where I was when I first heard that line. I was at the wedding of the sister of one of my classmates. When the priest read that line in the gospel, "You did not choose me, but I chose you," I remember thinking, was that line always in there? Because up until that moment, I had thought that I was the one who had chosen to follow Jesus. I hadn't realized I was responding to God's invitation. It was not my desire for God, but God's desire for me. 

"Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men." Jesus promises to "make us." It's not a threat to sever us from all we love. It's a promise that when we dare to let go, the things we give up might be returned to us more alive than we could ever have imagined on our own. Most importantly, it's a promise from God to us and not from us to God. As Barbara Brown Taylor so aptly puts it, "the story of the gospel is a miracle story. They immediately follow Jesus because Jesus makes it possible for them to do so. This is not a story about us," Taylor writes. "It's a story about God and about God's ability not only to call us, but also to create us as people who are able to follow. Able to follow because we cannot take our eyes off the one who calls us. because he interests us more than anything else in our lives, and because he seems to know what we hunger for."

In the stories of the calling of the disciples then, Jesus disrupts family structures and disturbs patterns of working and living not to destroy, but to renew. Peter and Andrew do not cease being brothers. They are now brothers who do the will of God. James and John do not stop being sons. They are now not only the children of Zebedee, but also the children of God. All four of these disciples leave their fishing nets, but they do not stop fishing. They are now, in the nearness of the kingdom of heaven, fishers for people. Their past has not been wiped out. It has been transformed by Jesus' call to follow. 

The fishermen have entered a school of discipleship. They are following Jesus and learning from him. We could call this sideways learning. "He went around all of Galilee teaching in their synagogues." So Jesus is giving us a lens for how we can read and interpret the scripture. He was "proclaiming the good news of the kingdom." We're learning from Jesus where to find good news in our lives and in our world. "And curing every disease and illness among the people." Illness isolates and cuts us off from community. In making them whole again, Jesus restores them to community. 

The fishermen are learning what God has in store for them. Their minds were not on what they were leaving, but on what they were joining. Barbara Brown Taylor says, "their lives flowed in the same direction as God's life. their wills were not two, three, or four but one will. Time was fulfilled. The kingdom came and the kingdom comes every time our own lives are brought into the same flow, so that we too allow ourselves to fall in love, follow God, and can do no other.

From this time on we only see Jesus in the company of disciples. His ministry is always the work of calling people together. This calling together is never easy. As Paul reminds us there were divisions within the church from the very beginning. In appealing to the church in Corinth to "be united in mind and judgment," Paul uses a word that means "knit together for proper use." Matthew uses the same word to describe James and John mending their nets. Christians are literally woven together. Discerning and living into our proper use together is a lifelong endeavor that we call discipleship. It's most certainly a challenge that calls us to practice the communal discipline of net mending when our communities unravel in the corners or rip down the middle. 

By God's grace, Jesus invites us, along with James, John, Andrew, and Simon Peter, to follow and learn from him. After all, it was in Christ's name they were fishing, not their own.