January 22, 2023
Matthew 4: 12-23
@ Trinity Annan

God’s peace and grace to you and blessings from the congregation at Lutheran Church of Our Saviour. Thank you for the privilege of joining you in worship this morning.

I’ve been at LCOS for more than seven years and its pastor for more than five years. Before I entered the Lutheran seminary in 2012, I had been a print journalist for more than 30 years … the final 20 of them as an editor at a daily newspaper in Sudbury. As well, there were stints as a journalism, public relations and communications professor.

I occasionally get asked how I went from working the night desk to standing behind a pulpit on a Sunday morning. For some, it seems like a big change … but it really isn’t.

Well, I became a journalist to help people … to change their lives … to help them be heard in the world … to have injustices brought to light. But it became clear that after so long in front of a computer and spending a few years wondering if the newspaper would even survive … that hadn’t been the case in a long, long time.

There were a lot of late-night moments of reflection about life’s direction.

One night, I got into a short discussion with another editor about the value. 

At the time, one of the reporters had spent a night with some of the local homeless to experience what they go through. It’s nothing that hadn’t been done at other newspapers from time to time.

My argument was that the reporter knew that at the end of the night, he would be tucked into a warm bed after a nice meal at home. So, he didn’t really experience homelessness, there was no sense of fear or uncertainty … he just played dress-up and observed what the other persons’ lives on the streets. 

The other editor argued that the story was important because it showed readers what homelessness was like and that it would raise awareness of the issue.

I didn’t win argument and … as I am sure you can guess … there’s still homelessness in that city and elsewhere. 

The story didn’t change anything in the city … but it did set me on a different path … one I still travel as a disciple … it’s one that led me here this morning.

It’s clear that … looking back to that night … that the discussion triggered something within me … it sparked a change in me and through my ministry in others.

This morning, we heard about Jesus’ trigger.

By this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been baptized by John in the Jordan. The Spirit led him out into the wilderness where temptations to use his authority and power were laid before him … and he rejected them all.

Now, after his sojourn in the wilderness, Jesus hears that John has been arrested. John had been criticizing Herod’s immoral life and it cost him. The news sends Jesus farther out into the Galilee … to the town of Capernaum on the northeastern coast of the Sea of Galilee. Perhaps, he is afraid for his own life.

The town is in the territory controlled by the violent and brutal Herod. It’s a land filled with danger and death, where somewhere around eighty per cent of the people live in poverty. It’s here that  Jesus begins to preach and proclaim the coming kingdom.

This … Matthew points out … fulfills Isaiah’s prophesy of a light coming into the darkness that shrouds the people’s lives in the region.

The word about John can be seen as a trigger … something that sets Jesus off on his ministry in the world. 

The news of the Roman tyrant crossing the line by arresting John shows that things for the oppressed and victimized people aren’t going to get any better on their own.

After he hears the news, Jesus begins preaching for people to repent … to prepare their hearts for the coming Kingdom. Repentance is a call to follow God’s law and the promises that God has made to the people. 

Jesus’ message is one that disrupts the life of the world … or as one scholar puts it … Jesus starts to stir things up. 

This message and the invitation to embrace the change that Jesus embodies attracts followers … in today’s passage, fishermen leave their nets to walk with Jesus. 

As dramatic as their actions were they were also pretty radical steps.

The call to follow takes priority over family connections … at a time when a person’s family was the source of identity. Now, the men’s identities will be anchored in being a follower of Jesus.

During Jesus’ time, fishermen were usually under contract to Roman authorities. Rome had laid claim to people’s lives, labour and land.

The family … or a co-operative … would buy a lease that would allow them to fish and that would obligate them to provide a certain amount of fish to the Roman agent … which, of course, would go to Romans in the area … or … after a sizeable and profitable markup … sold to city residents.

Leaving their nets meant these obligations to the economic interests of the empire would go unfulfilled.

Jesus triggers a change in the fishermen … who, in turn, disrupt Roman economic interests … freeing the men as they answer the call of discipleship by accepting Jesus’ invitation to “Follow me” into forming a different type of community.

It’s no wonder that the Imperial forces feel threatened by Jesus and the idea of a new kingdom.

Today’s passage calls us to consider what triggers us … what would trigger us to become disruptions to the unfair systems of the world? 

What triggers a person to change and embrace a life of discipleship? What are we willing to commit ourselves to?

Does the presence of an unfair or dangerous situation move us in that direction?

For some it does. 

People become advocates when they see the pain caused by an unjust system or by great acts of violence. 

Here, congregations have come together when they recognized a need in the community or when they saw people in distress. Images of refugees in distress triggered churches and local group to work together to bring Syrian and later Ukrainian people to safety.

In those times, we leaned into our calls to serve.

Discipleship means following Jesus … to be willing to travel wherever the call to love and serve takes us … to be in relationship with God and whomever we meet in our journeys.

And through the grace we share in these sojourns … people’s ideas of what peace looks like changes. 

Being a disciple means helping the world live in wholeness … to experience peace … to experience a world where there is no hunger or thirst … where there is no marginalization of anyone. Discipleship calls us to be done with systems that create and foster injustice.

And instead to work together as a community that fosters the inbreaking of God’s kingdom into this world. 

AMEN