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January 23, 2011, Third Sunday after Epiphany, All Souls' Episcopal Church 

Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

 This is the Third Sunday after the Epiphany. As most of you know, the word ‘epiphany’ means manifestation, enlightenment, seeing what’s there; illumination, light shining on truth. It is associated with waking up. (“Waking up” is a lovely phrase indicating that one is awake to what is above.) What we are waking up to – or to put it correctly – what is waking us up is the very appearing of the one for whom the whole world has been waiting, the one who unites God and man, the longing and deep desire of every nation; of every human being created in the image of God.  The Bible is clear that all people desire God whether or not they know it or can express it. Isaiah 45 says: “Look to me and be saved all ye nations of the earth.” The hymn writer, Charles Wesley, calls Christ “the dear desire of every nation,” “the hope of all the earth,” “the joy of every human heart.” The prophet Hagai (2:7) writes: “the desire of all nations shall come.”  In fact, it is no coincidence that the wise men representing the desire of all the nations followed a star to the Christ child since the root of the word ‘desire’ comes from the Latin ‘de sidere,’ or ‘from the stars.’

 In keeping with the Epiphany theme of the spreading of light the Gospel reading today focuses upon the calling of the disciples. Jesus begins calling his disciples in a border region. Christ brings together what normally we think of as being apart: the divine and the human, God and man, the eternal and temporal, the universal and the particular, and so it is not surprising to find him being made manifest in an area where boundaries are crossed. To the north of them was the border of Syria, where the ancient cities of Tyre and Sidon are located, and also to the north was the border of beautiful Lebanon. In is in this borderland, looking outward and upward, that he begins to preach and proclaim the good news that “the dear desire of every nation” is fulfilled in Christ.

 We are told that Jesus called fishermen, Andrew and Peter, James and John, to follow him with the promise that he would make them “fishers of men.” How does Christ do this; how does he make these fishermen into fishers-of-men? Let me put it to you this way: Fishing for men is like fishing for fish, only upside down. Before I explain what I mean, I want to remind you that you are sitting in what we call the ‘nave’ of the church, which comes from the Latin word ‘navis,’ or ship. It is how we arrive at the word ‘navy.’ Look at the back cover of our parish missal, or look at our parish banner. You will see the familiar image of the church pictured as a boat sailing on the waters of life. Now look up and you will see the hull of our vessel. Yes, I said you need to look up to see the hull because that is what the interior of our roof is designed to portray. Our ship is upside down. Or is it? Is our ship upside down or are you just seeing it that way because in fact you’re upside down? In any event, the disciples could only learn to be fishers-of-men by having their understanding turned upside down. How else could they possibly go forth proclaiming that the meek shall inherit the earth; that the poor in spirit shall be rich, that in dying we live, and that in possessing nothing you may own all things?

 The thought which might have gone through the heads of the disciples upon hearing the phrase “fishers-of-men” was the image of throwing a net around humanity and dragging people into the church. They would not have thought of doing this literally, of course, but perhaps figuratively in the sense of converting people. We cannot convert anyone. We cannot make anyone believe. We cannot use force – not the force of argument or the point of a sword, nor even the power of our checkbook which is the preferred method today. We cannot cause a conversion. What we can do is proclaim the truth as clearly and as lovingly as possible. We can also teach converts and nurture them with discipleship. What we cannot do is drag them in. So, when fishing for men, the disciples need to take that notion and turn it upside down. (By the way, this is what is behind the advice which Jesus gave St. Peter, a professional fisherman, about fishing; advice like telling him to try his luck when everything he knew about it told him it was the wrong time, and the seemingly silly business of casting nets on a certain side of the boat as if water doesn’t flow. To St. Peter, all this advice was counter-intuitive, but it was given to prepare him to be a fisher-of-men in which case he would have to turn his thinking upside down.)

 The disciples would have celebrated not only being in the company, but also counted among the company of their long-awaited Messiah. And, he was their Messiah. He was the one for whom they had been waiting. They certainly would not have understood him to be the Messiah or the Christ or the King of the hated Samaritans as well. But Jesus has good news for the Samaritans. He has come for all the lost sheep of the House of Israel. He is the Messiah of the Samaritans as well. He is their King and their Christ as well as ours. This news would have shocked the disciples. Jesus even tells stories of good and godly Samaritans – Good Samaritans who are identified in his stories with the figure of Christ himself. This repeatedly shocked the disciples until eventually walking with Jesus and trusting in Jesus they received enough faith to overcome even the narrowness of their beliefs. They learned to turn their views upside down. Only in so doing could they learn to see right-side-up.

 The disciples, perhaps still disoriented at the prospect of being one body with the Samaritans, would nevertheless have endeavored to remain firm in their resolve to overthrow the filthy Gentiles with their pagan ways. (When it came to a fight with the Romans, the disciples probably thought the Samaritans could serve at the very front of the front lines.) Imagine their shock to learn that the Gentiles are welcome to come to Christ as well. Maybe Jesus showed the disciples the gold, frankincense, and myrrh he received as a child from Gentiles who traveled a long way to worship him. We don’t know about that, but what we do know is that it came as a shock to the disciples and indeed to the early church herself to learn that in the Body of Christ, Gentiles are to be valued and welcome members. This is yet another example of how the disciples would have had to take their conventional wisdom and usual notions and treasured expectations and turned them all upside down. The coming of Christ is God’s revelation of Himself and it was not something the disciples could copyright or something over which they could claim intellectual property. Had they invented it all, it would have belonged to them. Instead, they were called, and they were taught, and they were entrusted with passing along in an unimpaired manner the very truth which allowed them to see this topsy-turvy, upside down world, right-side-up.

 If you think I’m exaggerating about this world being topsy-turvy and upside down, just watch the NEWS, or worse still, take in some of what passes as popular culture in our time. It is indeed an upside-down world in which the average citizen cannot name three members of the Supreme Court but knows the names of all of the Kardashian sisters, or who can correctly identify more cast members of Jersey Shore than they can name their nation’s Founding Fathers. In case you haven’t noticed, the world is already upside down.

Once it dawned on the disciples that all people, even Gentiles, are called to come to Christ they immediately would want to protect him by limiting access. They would attempt to guard Jesus. But much to their chagrin, Jesus forbids this behavior. While the disciples try to keep away such people as hated publicans, notorious sinners, those banished by contagious disease, and women of shady reputation, Jesus bids them come. Even when the disciples attempt to have “disruptive” children removed from his presence he forbids them and tells them that they cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless they themselves become as little children. Over and over again Jesus takes his disciples and turns their natural approach and inclinations and beliefs upside down. Yes, the door of the sheepfold must be guarded; it must be guarded to ensure it stays open. We must guard the doors of our church so that they remain open as well and continue to be unobstructed by our fears, our sense of ownership, our pride and prejudice and hidden agendas, and everything else by which we would deny others entry. 

When the disciples fished for fish they used a net. When you fish for men you have to turn this upside down because what you discover is that men already are caught in nets, and our task is to help them as they are freed from those nets. We put those nets on ourselves. We wrap ourselves in these nets. If you have come to believe your life has no meaning unless you perform some task which you yourself have laid out for yourself you have managed to wrap yourself in one such net. Maybe you’re convinced your life has no meaning unless you find your “soul-mate,” a toxic tween fantasy almost as destructive as the notion that to be meaningful your life must be successful. These are more nets cast around you. Theses are all attempts to give life meaning instead of finding it. We cast other nets around ourselves when we tell ourselves such things as “nobody loves me,” “nobody cares, “I’m such a loser, such a failure,” “I cannot do it.”  These are all nets, and the harder we try to free ourselves from them the tighter they become. What we discover is that if instead of struggling we learn to be still and focus upon Christ and his love and grace and glory and likeness, those nets slowly begin to fall away and drop off.

Finally, I do not know why the disciples just stopped what they were doing and followed Christ. The accounts say they “immediately” followed him, leaving what they were doing “straightway.” We need to be like them. They were working hard and working honorably but they also were alert to the presence of the Lord. They were waiting for his arrival, after all. This is why, even though he in fact found them, they proclaimed that they had found him. It seemed like that to them because they were hopeful of his arrival. They are awake and alert and watchful. We need to be like them. We must remain awake and watchful and alert to the presence of God. When a young mother is falling asleep at home she may hear the various sounds the house makes, and she may be generally aware of all the ambient noise from outside: cars passing by, and the occasional siren. She may hear all that but pay it no attention as she falls asleep. But, if her baby in the other room makes even the slightest sound, she sits up wide awake. Love has made her alert to that sound. She may sleep but her heart remains awake.

A week ago while I was saying my prayers in the morning a stray thought flashed through my mind. It was a distracting thought which I should have just let go, but the thought itself managed to latch on to some negativity in me and persist. I recalled that I had ordered three books from a local bookstore. I had ordered the books a while ago and they should have been there by now. I then remembered that the salesperson at the store had my phone number written down incorrectly when I called earlier to check on the status of the order. Perhaps the salesperson had not bothered to correct my number. Maybe the books had arrived but then had to be sent back because they couldn’t reach me at that wrong number! I got angry as I thought about all this. I thought, “This is unacceptable, and I’m going to say so.” My patience all but gone now, I thought, “Why can’t people just listen!?!” I then apologized to God for not listening to Him as I remembered what those books were about ; the books I was so fired up and angry about were on the topics of patience, trust, and joyfully abiding in the Lord. It was the humor of this realization that allowed me to observe what was going and see what I was doing.

If we can learn to grow in simple awareness of the presence of God and in that awareness observe ourselves reacting to situations mindfully and thoughtfully, de-escalating conflict before it is allowed to escalate, establishing custody over our mouths, and always recalling whose children we are, we shall walk in the light of the Epiphany, in the presence of our Lord. And we shall do something else as well. In Acts 17, the Christian church was described as “turning the world upside down.” We must re-learn and re-discover what it means to set the world as we know it upside down, for only then can we obey when the Lord calls to us in the midst of our busy lives as says, “Follow me.”

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