Yesterday the Sacramento Bee ran a good feature story on Rachelle Archer, a Christian young woman from Southern California who moved into a tough area in North Sacramento for the express purpose of caring for kids and teaching them about God’s love. This is wonderful! But everyone doesn’t have to do something like that! In fairness to Rachelle, she herself admits that this is something she felt called to do and in no way suggests that everyone ought to do what she is doing. Still, we might feel, well see, now there’s a real Christian!
As I say, such a mistaken view of our calling as Christians continues to haunt the church, so that we customarily tend to feel that someone like Billy Graham, for example, who travels around the world engaging in great preaching crusades, is more dedicated to God than Baptist Bob who stayed in Citrus Heights and works at Safeway, or than Lutheran Lois who stayed in Westhope, North Dakota, and works at the Post Office.
As a corrective to this, let us look more carefully at our gospel today. We might suppose that those first four disciples, Peter and Andrew and James and John, on accepting Jesus’ call to follow him, made a huge break with everything, never to return to their fishing or even their families. But supposition is wrong. J. Andrew Overman comments on the call of the four:
Given the relatively small size of Lower Galilee and close proximity of the Galilean places named in the Gospel, there is no need to assume that those who followed Jesus never returned home again. A far more likely scenario is the group gathered around Jesus, went out on the road for a day or two, and then returned back to their homes and town. This is exactly the scene in chapter 8 when Jesus and his followers come to Capernaum. They reside in Peter's house (8:14).... According to the narrative, Jesus retained ties with his mother and his village, Peter did the same with his home and village, and the group was never more than a half-day to a day's walk from their traditional homes. [(Church and Community in Crisis: The Gospel According to Matthew) p. 67]
I would add, as does our gospel today, that they not only continued to live Galilee, they and Jesus even continued attending their familiar local churches (called synagogues). In other words, except for the end of Jesus’ public ministry, when he traveled down to Jerusalem to die on the Cross, Jesus and his band of merry men and women never left home! What is more, on the day of the resurrection, the angel at the tomb told the disciples that the Risen Christ would meet them back in good old ordinary Galilee. And as John points out in his gospel, after the Resurrection, not knowing what else to do, good old Peter announced up in Galilee, "I’m going fishing." The truth is, never leaving home may well be the hardest thing of all. What would have happened for example, if, after seminary I had been assigned to my home congregation! Probably a lot of trouble. I’ll never forget the discomfort on the faces of my high school classmates when I went back for a class reunion and they had to deal with the fact that I was now a clergy person. They could hardly square what they remembered of me in high school with the fact that I had now become, in their view, a holy man! What’s the old saying, one Jesus used? "No prophet is accepted in his hometown." In the secular world we say it this way, "An expert is someone with a brief case fifty miles from home."
Of course, we do recognize that something needs to change as we take the call of Jesus seriously. But what does this really mean? Thomas G. Long (Matthew) comments:
In these stories of the calling of the disciples… Jesus disrupts family structures and disturbs patterns of working and living. He does so, however, not to destroy but to renew. Peter and Andrew do not cease being brothers; they are now brothers who do the will of God (Matt. 12:50). James and John do not cease 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 obliterated; it has been transformed by Jesus' call to follow. [p. 43]
Thus: God may call some of us to leave home and family and settle in a foreign land to live and speak the Good News. But whether overseas, or in another state, or right here, our mission calling is not a matter of a contest to say who is more Christian but is rather a call to be faithful wherever Christ calls us. You don’t have to be a Rachelle Archer and move to another neighborhood to be a real Christian, you can do that where you’ve living and working now.
You are not just a housewife and/or a mother; no, you are in Christ, one who is called to provide nurture and hospitality in your home and neighborhood. You are not just a state employee, you are in that bureaucratic, governmental world of facts and figures and procedures, an ambassador of truth and compassion. You are not just a retail clerk, you are, in Jesus’ name, a servant to humanity. You are not just a student, you are also a learner of the ways of God, that you might make a difference in the world. You are not just an artist or a craftsmen, you are one who brings the beauty and playfulness of God into the world. You are not just retired: if you like to travel, consider that some of your travels could be to serve the needs of the poor, rather than merely entertaining yourself. Even those who are shut-ins aren’t just shut-ins. God is giving them the time to pray for others and the needs of the community and world. Our common lives, our place in the scheme things is obliterated, but rather, transformed, by Christ’s call.
God and the world needs us to grow and serve where we are planted. A little parable makes the point: A man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. "Dear God," he cried out, "Look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in Your world. Why don't You send help?" God responded: "I did send help. I sent you."
Having received Christ in Communion, leaving this place we are no longer just ordinary, we are fragments of Christ, cells of his glorious body, walking out these doors into the mission field of California. It’s in this ordinary Galilee life that we learn how to follow Jesus:
Not just to be religious. Not to become stars. But to help lost and confused people find their way back to God. By God’s grace, we can do that. And if we love Christ, we will. Amen.