"Called to Mission," Matthew 4:12-25, Andrew Evans

And good morning and welcome to Church of the Resurrection.

On this snowy morning, it is great to see all of you here.

We were guessing how many people would show up, and I was

massively underestimating all of you.

So I praise the Lord for you. I'm so glad that you're here.

I'm also, frankly, grateful for the technology that allows us to

live stream so that the many people at our church who are

elsewhere in Virginia or in Maryland are able to hunker down

at home and stay safe. So welcome if you're on the live

stream, welcome. I suspect my parents are

watching. Hi, Mom.

Hi, Dad. How often can you do that,

right? I do pray that we all stay safe

and that we're able to to care for ourselves, care for those

around us well. So I encourage you to do that.

Let me invite you this morning to turn in your Bibles to our

gospel lesson. That's Matthew chapter 4

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

starting in verse 12 in the Pew Bibles that begins on page

believe it's 750-9759. We'll be looking at this passage

together. And before we get started, let

me pray. Father, you are the God who

speaks words of life. So I pray, I beg you that you

would speak to us today through your word.

By your Spirit would you breathe life and strength into us for

all that you were calling us to. I pray this in the powerful name

of Jesus. Amen.

Now, as many of you know, Rez, right now, we are engaged in a

strategic planning process. Some of you might have allergic

reactions to that. Some of you are like, yeah,

finally we're doing it. We've, you know, we have new

resources. We've been in this building for

five years now. We are, we are experiencing

growth. We're also experiencing sensing

our limits as as a church and, and we're sensing the need to

pick a direction to pick, pick what we're going to focus on, to

make choices about what we do, what we don't do.

And the goal of this plan is to set a direction for the church

to answer the question, where are we going?

Where are we going? That's the question we we want

to answer. And the question that we as a

church are striving to answer is also a relevant question for us

as individuals, isn't it? Where are you going in your

life? What is your personal mission in

life? Now, for some of you, the answer

to that is probably quite easy. You know exactly what you're

striving to do, you know exactly how you're trying to do it, and

you are moving toward it with decision and focus.

For more of you, I suspect the answer is somewhat fuzzy.

If you still have a kind of direction to it, you know,

generally sort of the direction you're trying to go, you may not

know exactly how different things fit into that, but you

have a sort of general direction and trying to figure out some of

the details. And, and for others of you, the

answer is just not there. Is it?

You don't know what you're doing.

Maybe you just feel adrift, or maybe it's actually that the

challenges and the impossibilities of this city

have worn you down and left you feeling sort of stalled out and

cynical. Where are you going?

Where are we going? However you answer that

question, however we as a church answer that question.

Our gospel lesson this morning meets us with that question.

It invites us to ask the question, but almost immediately

it challenges the question itself and it pushes you to ask

an even better question. I think the most memorable part

of this passage perhaps is it it comes right in the middle where

Jesus calls his first disciples. He calls Andrew and Peter,

they're brothers, and then James and John to follow him.

And he calls them to become fishers of men, fishers of men.

This language about fishers of men is, it's such a, a great

example of Jesus's rhetorical genius, isn't it?

He's, he's talking to these fishermen.

He takes a part of their life, a part of their work, and he and

he turns it into this really rich and provocative metaphor to

invite them into his ministry. It's powerful, it's provocative.

It's something that we can sort of Mull over for a long time,

right? What does it mean exactly to be

a Fisher of men? How do we catch people for God's

Kingdom now? It is so tempting for us to stop

here and to consider this to be Jesus's call to us.

Go out, go be a Fisher of men. Draw people into the Kingdom of

God through word and deed. Proclaim the good news, win

hearts, win lives to Christ. We can view this as our mission,

right? As giving a kind of direction to

our lives. This is the where we're going.

And in a real sense, actually, that's true, right?

That's exactly what he's inviting his new disciples to

do. In my extension, he's inviting

us to do that as well. But that's not where Jesus

starts. He doesn't start with, guys, get

your Nets ready, your metaphorical Nets.

Let's go fishing. Jesus starts with something much

simpler. Follow me, follow me.

And here we see how Jesus is actually undercutting this

question that we start with. We might ask ourselves, where am

I going? But Jesus, he doesn't seek to

align himself with the sort of pre-existing direction of Peter

and Andrew and James and John. He's not looking for sort of

synergy and shared goals. He's not looking to get aligned.

That's sort of been the the trend word of our strategic

planning process. We need to be aligned.

Jesus isn't looking for alignment.

He isn't asking where you're going and how can I join you on

that mission. He says very simply, follow me.

Come and see where I'm going, go where I go.

Join me on my journey. Jesus wants us to be going

somewhere, but he doesn't want us to ask where am I going?

He wants us to ask where is he going.

This is such a a difficult and important question.

And the example of the disciples here is actually shows us both

the challenges and the barriers that we can face when Christ

calls us to follow him. When Jesus first encounters

Peter and Andrew, what are they doing?

They're working. Jesus calls them to follow him

and they must leave behind their work in order to follow him.

And it doesn't take a lot of self reflection to realize,

right, that one of the great barriers to following Jesus can

be our work. When we work, we are exercising

our agency to shape our world. It can be really fun and as a

result, work very easily can become a place of our primary

allegiance. We feel tied to our jobs, and

our work can start to organize not only our time, but our

priorities. Our work can start to define us.

And Jesus here is challenging exactly that approach to work.

Following Jesus means that work does not control and define us.

Jesus does. And when we submit to Jesus in

this way, we are giving up control in a sense.

It's scary. It's scary now and it was scary

then. This doesn't mean stopping

working, exactly, but it does mean refusing to let work set

our priorities and define our value.

And most pointedly, it means being willing to walk away from

our work in order to follow Jesus faithfully.

This is hard, but it's part of what it means to follow Jesus.

Now, that's the first barrier that we can see here, and the

second is perhaps even harder to reckon with in some ways.

When Jesus encounters James and John, they are working just like

Peter and Andrew, but they're working with their father.

And Matthew sort of goes out of his way to note that they leave

both their boat and their father in order to follow Jesus.

They left their family. Now, in a sense, this is a cost

that many of us don't feel. But in other parts of the world,

our brothers and sisters in Christ can and do feel this

acutely. Nabil Qureshi was a Christian

evangelist apologist. He converted from Islam to

Christianity while in college. And in his book Seeking Allah,

Finding Jesus, it's a great book, he talks about the

tremendous personal cost of leaving Islam in order to follow

Christ. The result is, at best, strained

relationships with your family. And he lived in America.

In other parts of the world, Christian converts are

completely ostracized and sometimes even killed for their

faith by their families. Family is so important.

Family should provide a place of peace and belonging.

But following Jesus can sometimes mean that you lose

even that now. For us as as Americans right

now, that that might mean taking little stands that alienate us

from the rest of our family. That maybe that means a level of

generosity to the church that your family finds to be

irresponsible. Maybe it means upsetting the

peace at the dinner table by defending the dignity of certain

people others want to vilify, or refusing to acquiesce to the

demands of someone's personal identity that they want to

impose. Maybe it means continuing to

love and pursue your spouse even when all of your friends and

your family tell you that there is no hope.

In all of these ways, we are choosing to follow Jesus rather

than bend to the demands of our family.

And in this, we are willing to sacrifice the security and peace

of our family in order to follow Jesus faithfully.

Now, to be clear here, the disciples don't totally give up

their families or their work. We know that it's important to

see that these brothers came to Jesus together.

They weren't following Jesus alone, and neither should we.

They also continue to work. They sort of have a connection

to their work. But work and family note are no

longer the organizing and defining features of their

lives. That was Jesus and following

him. They gave up the control that

they had over their lives in order to follow Jesus wherever

he went. It can be so tempting when

thinking about mission to jump over this part of following

Jesus and to think only about the the fishing for men, which

is very important. But my friends, there is no

mission apart from following Jesus.

We must go where he is going. And that's exactly what this

passage presents to us here. It shows us where Jesus is

going. I think it's so telling that

this, this story of the calling of the disciples is actually

framed by these descriptions of Jesus's ministry.

The disciples are not the start of Jesus's ministry, as though

Jesus somehow has to have them to get started.

They're not the end of Jesus's ministry, as though everything

sort of culminates in the disciples.

They're right there in the middle.

He's, he's calling them to join him on this mission, on this

ministry, on this journey that he's already on.

And the same is true for us. We must go where Jesus is

already going. And what we see from the start

of our passage is that Jesus is going into places of deep

darkness in order to bring light and life to the lost and to the

hurting. Now look with me at verse 12, if

you would. We learn here that Jesus

withdraws into Galilee and that implies that he's been down

South in the region around Jerusalem, in Judea.

Now he relocates into this northern area, we're told after

after John has been arrested. And Matthew tells us that this

move fulfills with the prophet Isaiah said about this northern

area. This northern place, far from

the center of Israel, is a place of darkness, but light is

dawning there now. It wasn't just a place of

darkness in Isaiah's time either, though.

During Jesus time it was a place of mixed religion where people

from different areas converged and brought their different

faiths. There were some Jews Jesus is

teaching in synagogues, but there were lots of other kinds

of people as well. There were many Gentiles living

in this area. This is the place that is far

from the religious and the Cultural Center of Jerusalem.

It's a place where many, many people are far from God, you

could say both, both spiritually and physically.

It's a place with connections to many other people who are far

from God. And it's here and precisely here

that Jesus starts his ministry. See Jerusalem and most

specifically the temple, or the place where God's light was

supposed to shine. It was where people went for

healing, for forgiveness, for reconciliation.

It's where they went to meet with God.

That's what you did at the temple.

But by starting his ministry outside of Jerusalem, in this

mixed and diverse land of darkness, Jesus is demonstrating

that he is in fact, the new temple.

By bringing God's light to this far-flung place, Jesus is

showing that he himself is God's light.

Jesus is on a mission to bring light to dark places, and He

does that by going there himself.

This is where Jesus is going, and this last part of our

passage from verses 23 on tells us how he does that.

In verse 23, we learned that he's travelling around Galilee

doing three things. He's teaching and proclaiming

and healing. He's revealing the truth, He's

calling people to believe the truth and he's transforming

their lives in all these ways. He's bringing the light of God

and he's bringing it to everybody there.

He's bringing it to the marginalized, so those who like

agency to the oppressed, and he's bringing it to both Jews

and non Jews. Verse 24 is so striking to me.

We learned there that his fame spread not through all of

Israel, but through all of Syria.

Syria was a much larger and it was a predominantly Gentile

Roman province. And it was these Gentiles that

brought their sick and lame and oppressed to Jesus, and Jesus

healed them. Jesus is on a mission, and this

mission is we're seeing here to everybody.

Everybody needs to come to Jesus to find the light.

Everybody can come to Jesus to receive his light.

Now, by attending to this description of where Jesus is

going, we start to get a picture of what it means to be a Fisher

of men. By himself going into these

places, Jesus is bringing light and life and hope and

restoration to people who need it.

And so for us to be fishers of men, we must do the same thing.

We must bring people not to ourselves, but to Jesus, to the

light itself. Only he has the light.

Only he has the power. We must bring people to Jesus

and the only way that we can do that is by following Jesus.

Now look with me again at verse 19 and see how Jesus phrases

this call. It's it's very careful what he's

doing here and it's phrasing. He says follow me and I will

make you fishers of men. Jesus doesn't actually command

us to be fishers of men. That's not a command He commands

us to follow. And then He promises that He

will mold us to be able to reach people.

Everything starts with following Jesus.

We want to be a people on a mission, don't we?

We want to be active. We want to change the world.

Jesus, even in the next chapter, will say that we are the light

of the world. Yes, Amen.

But Jesus challenges us here to start by following Him, and that

means knowing Him, spending time with Him, slowing down your life

to walk with Him. And when you do that, He will

shape you. He will mold your heart and your

life to make you effective for the Kingdom.

My friends, are you doing that? Are you spending time with Jesus

daily, or are you just so active that you don't have time?

Maybe you've thought about doing the Christian formation cohort

that we're going to be doing during Lent, but then you

figured, I don't really have time for that.

It's too much. These disciplines are too much.

Have you thought that are you so intent on fulfilling the mission

in your life that there is no space to spend time with Jesus?

Friends, we must be careful here.

Walking with Jesus is essential if we are to be effective for

His Kingdom. Whether in our homes, with our

families, or at our work or in our neighborhoods, we must be

spending time with Christ. We must actively be following

Him. In a word, we must worship him

every day. Call of action and personal

mission can be so strong. Perhaps, in a sense, now more

than ever. The events of the last week and

even the last 24 hours in our country have been jarring.

Regardless of your political stance, we live in a city that

wants to act, and we are in a time that feels like it's just

calling out for action. But before we act, we must

remember our first call. Your first call is not to change

the world. Your first call isn't to reach

the World. Your first call, the call that

must come before everything else, is to follow Jesus.

It is to walk with Him, to get to know Him, to sit with him, to

learn from him, to worship him. That's why we've been so

insistent on having church today.

There is nothing more important than spending time with Jesus,

and worship is the primary way that we do that.

In this worship, this following Jesus first sets the pattern and

even the rhythm for the rest of our lives.

Christians are to be active. We are to be on a mission to the

world to proclaim Christ, but we are to be constantly returning

back to the well of Christ, to be drinking deeply of his waters

and to be refreshed. There's this pulsating quality

you could even say to the Christian life, like the rhythm,

almost like the rhythm of breathing.

We inhale by coming to Christ, finding life and joy and hope in

him. And then we exhale by going out

into the world, calling people to him.

Inhale, Exhale time with Jesus mission into the world.

Inhale, Exhale Jesus mission. Jesus mission, my friends, if

you stop inhaling, if you stop coming back to Jesus and

following him, there is no exhaling, there is no mission.

You stop breathing, you die. Let me close by inviting you to

consider how this rhythm shapes us more and more deeply, and how

it shapes our lives and and by extension, the people around us.

What if we were shaped and defined primarily not by our

work or our family or our tribe, but by Christ?

What if Christ were the organizing and animating

principle in our lives more and more and more, and the city were

filled with Christians more and more who were constantly

returning to Him to be refreshed and revived?

Now this rhythm, it shapes us and shapes us in a particular

way. It makes us both less anxious

and more principled because we are following Jesus.

We aren't overwhelmed by the latest outrage, no matter how

outrageous it is. When we watch the headlines on

the New York Times or The Washington Post, as many of us

have been doing, we are driven to prayer, and most obviously,

the prayer of the Psalms, not the explosive outrage that we

see everywhere around us. We aren't swinging from cause to

cause. Instead, we're marked by peace

and grace and patience and frankly, level headedness, even

when everything around us seems to be spinning out of control.

We grieve injustice. We must grieve injustice without

being devastated by it. Because no matter what is

happening, King Jesus is still on his throne and we are still

following him. So we aren't overwhelmed, we can

be less anxious, but at the same time, we are principled and even

more principled. We don't have to hold on to jobs

that violate what Christ calls us to or that compromise our

mission. We are able to stand up and say

with a resolute calmness, this is wrong.

Even if it means that we lose friends, connections, or

opportunities. We work diligently at our work

so long as the Lord has us do it.

But knowing that the Lord calls us not to follow our work

wherever it leads, He called us to follow His Son.

We can hold on to our networks, our friends, our family, and the

city more loosely, precisely because we are holding on to

Christ more tightly. My friends, just imagine.

Just imagine what would happen if our city and our country were

filled with more and more people like this.

Principled and yet patient, calm and yet certain of what is true

and good, level headed while simultaneously longing for

justice to run down like water. Imagine how our rhetoric would

change. Imagine how our policies would

change. Imagine how neighborhoods and

workplaces and our families and our homes would change.

My friends, this is what can happen when people follow Jesus.

Jesus has been transforming lives for 2000 years and he's

calling every single one of you to go out and to help reach

people for him. But my friends, we cannot offer

what we do not have. We must remember our first

calling. We must follow Christ ourselves

first. My friends, let's be a people

who do that. In the name of the Father and

the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.