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Since the sermon is an oral event, this text, which was the preacher's working manuscript, may not be exactly what was preached. This text is offered for further study and reflection.
January 22, 2017
Building the team
Hello my sisters and brothers, one in Christ Jesus, not followers of this one, or that one, not followers of Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas, but of only one God. Hear, O Israel, we sang at the beginning of the service, Sh’ma Yisrael, the Lord our God is One God. We shall remember this Oneness as we move forward into the future in a world that feels divided by worldview. Every four years in the United States in January, we get a transition to deal with at the national level, and it brings jubilation for some, depression for others, and fear and trepidation for yet others.
Government transition is not an easy time, ever. Some of you will claim that this is the hardest one in your lifetime. Part of that is because of what this new President has said in campaign speeches and his twitter feed. Many of you tell me this inauguration is different this time because, whatever the motivation he had for saying them, Donald Trump’s words over and over have been hurtful to people we love.
One of you said to me, Let’s wait and see. Trump hasn’t done anything yet. But for many weeks now, Trump has been building his cabinet. He’s been calling together his team. While many of them still await congressional confirmation, the men (and a few women) Trump’s been picking have been on public display for us. Who the President picks for his team does show something of his plans and priorities.
In the Lectionary cycle of readings in church, during Epiphany, this season after Christmas, it’s all about new beginnings, the start of Jesus’ earthly ministry. After Jesus baptism during this season, the first part of the church year is about Jesus picking his team, calling his cabinet so to speak, about Jesus getting together the people who are going to help him do the work.
Last week, we read from the Gospel of John, and as Jesus was looking around, he asked the people who were setting out to follow him, “What are you looking for?” This week we are in the Gospel of Matthew, and the question is not so much Jesus asking them what they’re looking for, but instead us asking, as Jesus picks his team, “What is Jesus looking for?”
What kind of people? And for what?
Entrepreneur magazine recently published an article in it with ideas for how to hire people into a Start-Up company. There were some handy tips, most of which pointed out the contrast between who you need for an old established company versus who you need for a start-up. But the main gist of building a start-up company staff was this: You have to hire people who are comfortable without a set job description. People in a start-up need to be willing to do anything it takes to get the job done.
Jesus was, after all, starting up something. There’s evidence in this passage from Matthew that Jesus began on the tails of John the Baptist. John Baptist’s arrest by Herod has taken him out of the picture and left Jesus alone to carry on. Jesus starts with the Baptist’s message and “product” that is – repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
But then Jesus takes his “start up” in a new direction. We Christians who come to church regularly know a lot about the new direction: sacrifice for others, putting the first last and the last first, and the radical welcome to those who are left behind or despised, even prostitutes and tax collectors, even foreign migrants and useless children. For those of you who are less familiar with the Christian stories, you probably have some sense that Jesus’ message was about love of the stranger, which is after all, the Jewish mandate.
What kind of people do you need for a team for that? Much has been said and studied about how and why Jesus called fishers, mostly fishers, to his team, with a few exceptions. Jesus talked and talked about shepherds and farmers, and he himself was probably a carpenter, but most of Jesus’ team were commercial fishers.
This is not a sport angler with a really tricked-out fishing pole. This isn’t a fly fisher in a mountain stream. These guys were on a boat, working with nets on teams, usually all night. They knew ropes and knots, sails and wind. They knew teamwork and first aid. They knew fish species and the markets. They cooperated in groups needing high levels of trust.
What was Jesus looking for? Work ethic. And that thing from Entrepreneur magazine, “willingness to do whatever task comes up.”
A little symbolism can’t hurt either. Matthew’s central image of the kingdom of God is a great net. We’ll hear that story come summer, when it’s time to tell that story.
But the image is straightforward: fishing for people entails not a hook on a line, but instead a great, inclusive, and indiscriminately net pulled dripping and heavy out of the chaos and into the boat. Matthew’s central metaphor for God’s kingdom involves including fish of all kinds who will die in order to feed others.
At the end of today’s gospel passage, after Andrew and Peter and James and John have gotten up immediately and said yes to Jesus, we do get to hear what it is Jesus and his team are going to do, what they start to do, what this is going to be all about. It says:
They left their boat and their father, and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
The work is going to be ONE proclaiming good news and TWO healing the people. Providing relief to the sick and sharing good news with the downtrodden is the work. Not so easy is it? How do you even start? But if you’re going to start, having the can-do, canny, and cooperative Zebedee and Jonah brothers and their fisher friends on your team are a good bet.
Many of us are in sore, sore need of some Good News this morning, me among you. And here is some good news: We are on the Jesus team! We have been picked and confirmed. For whatever reason, we are here this morning in this place to be sent out to do the work we have been given to do: to proclaim good news and bring relief to the suffering. We are here because there is something in us that is needed on the team.
What that is may or may not be clear to us. We may not have a well-defined and spelled-out-in-detail job description for this. More and more it is becoming clear that the churches are in more of a start-up mode than they were 50 years ago when I was born. Now is a time when, it’s becoming clear, we are here because we are willing to be part of a start-up team, willing to do whatever is needed to get the job done – the job of bringing good news to a disillusioned world. The job of loving people who have been left out. The job of listening to stories we’d rather not hear and sharing pain with the hurting.
We need people who can read the winds, and someone who can mend the fraying nets, and someone who understands the fish, and someone who can see the lighthouse on the shore, and someone who can steer the boat, and we need one another in trust and cooperation, because this work is fun and exhilarating and not for the faint of heart.
Arise, shine, Jesus Team, for your light has come!