|
Matthew 4: 12 - 23
12 Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. 13 He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14 so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
15 “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
16 the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”
17 From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 18 As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee, and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. 23 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.
John had been arrested. This is not a minor detail. John has been arrested because he has spoken out about injustices and wrongs happening in the Roman leadership, and those who are in charge have not appreciated what he had to say. Really not appreciated it.
And John’s arrest, the Sunday after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, one week after his birthday, has led me to spend some time about what it means to be grounded in what you believe- so passionate in your care for others, that you are willing to make sacrifices for it. That you are willing to do things like go to jail for it.
As I’ve shared before, one of my spiritual practices is to re-read Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter From a Birmingham Jail[1] at least once a year. It’s a letter written from a place he did not want to be but was willing to be because he wanted us all to work harder at being the people God created us to be.
He addressed that letter written to all the people who thought his words and his actions, the words, and actions of the Civil Rights movement, were unwise and untimely.
I hope I never get comfortable hearing that someone is in jail because they would not back down or run away from God’s promise of a kingdom where love and justice reign. I hope that never becomes normal. It was dangerous. It was risky. It was hard.
This is how our reading begins today, with the information that John had been arrested. And the language used here tells us that John’s arrest does not clear the way and make things safe for Jesus to take up the banner and work John had begun, it makes it more dangerous, and unsettled. And Jesus must thoughtfully, prayerfully decide how to proceed.
What Jesus does, is move. It is not, however, a move toward safety. Where Jesus goes is both symbolically and practically significant. He goes to a place ruled by Herod, the one who threatens John’s life. The one cruelly ruling over the Jewish people. And Jesus goes to a town that is not filled with the rich or elite but with common, normal, working people.[2]
And there Jesus begins, begins by calling disciples.
Jesus finds them as he walked. Was he looking for them? We don’t know. Other gospels indicate more intent and purpose than Matthew does, but maybe Jesus is doing something akin to what he sees the fishermen doing- casting a net to see whom he finds.
And that is how he finds Peter and Andrew- casting their nets.
James and John, they are mending their nets.
Mending their nets. An ongoing task and process. Not because they get it wrong, but because that’s what happens when fishing. Nets get damaged. Nets get torn. The only way to keep them from getting damaged is to not use them at all.[3]
And maybe this is a small detail, except for what Matthew tells us Jesus does next.
23 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.
Jesus takes these men who have been mending their nets and immediately they begin mending people. Jesus mends people who are sick. Who are in need. Whose souls have been starved.
And we should know what Professor Warren Carter reminds us, one of the reasons Jesus’ healing ministry was so significant was because there were so many sick people to be healed, to be mended.[4]
The Gospel reflects its imperial world at this point. Roman imperial structures and practices were bad for people’s health. Some 70-90 percent of folks in Rome’s empire experienced varying degrees of poverty. Such factors resulted in widespread diseases associated with poor nutrition…and a lack of immunity…. These kinds of diseases were death-bringing in a world that required physical labor for survival.
Jesus’ healings are acts that repair imperial damage and enact God’s life-giving empire in restoring people’s lives. They anticipate the completion of God’s working that creates a world, envisioned by Isaiah, in which all people enjoy abundant good food (Isaiah 25:6-10a) and physical wholeness, where “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them” (Matthew 11:5; Isaiah 35:5-6).
James and John are transformed into a new kind of mending.
What does this mean, how do we understand this in our 21st-century world, that Jesus calls disciples who are professional menders and a God who begins his ministry by mending? Might we consider that we all need mending?
We can jump to the understanding that we are called to be menders, too.
But I think that skips a step.
The step where we realize, accept and know that we all need mending, too.
Because we are all, in our own ways, imperfect or broken, hurt or hungry.
One of the books I got Ben for Christmas a couple of years ago was “English Pastoral.” Written by one of my favorite authors, James Rebanks, an English farmer, shepherd, and caretaker of a herd of belted Galloways. He writes about his experiences on the farm and in the world. In this new book, which I graciously allowed to Ben unwrap before I asked if I could borrow it, Rebanks tells the story of a fence mended by his father and his children:[5]
One Saturday, [my father, not long after he received his terminal diagnosis] he took my eldest son, Isaac, and my youngest daughter, Bea, with him to hang a gate, because, he said, I would ‘never get it done.’ The gate was on the pastures opposite our farmhouse, between a field where our sheep were grazing and a meadow full of wildflowers and vetches that we mowed each summer for hay. It is flanked on both sides by an old wall covered in moss and lichen that shines, depending on the light and the hour, green, yellow, purple, and silver. Over the centuries the old wall has sunk a little under its own weight back into the earth, six inches down in some places. And it has sagged left and right, so it rises and falls, and meanders ever so slightly, like a loose shoelace….
My seven-year-old son Isaac now calls it ‘Grandad’s gate.’ He tells me often that he, his sister, and his grandfather mended it. His grandfather spliced tighter two broken gates, recycling them, to make a new one. My wife had smashed one of those broken gates on the school run, reversing her car out of the farmyard without seeing it, it had blown half-shut as the children distracted her with their bickering in the back seats. The resulting mended gate looks a little peculiar, but it works perfectly, I pass through it almost every day. It swings good and true. It rained the day they mended it – but they didn’t seem to mind. They all came back soaked with smiles on their faces, proud that they had done it together. Dad knew there would be a million things he would not now get to teach my children, that so much that might have been would now never happen, but this day he had shown a little farm boy and girl that you could make something new from something broken.
Jesus calls two fishermen who are mending their nets as Jesus calls us, because we, too, need mending.
Whether it is from a challenge you don’t know how to meet.
Or wounds deep within that have not yet healed.
The struggles of trying to figure out how to be more faithful in a world that seems like it wants to shout more than it wants to solve.
The enormity of grief and hunger.
When you have tried to meet the challenge and failed, failed a little, or failed miserably.
We all need mending.
And maybe this text today can help us see, that this need of mending, this mending work Jesus does with us, it’s not our weakness. It’s what makes us whole. It’s what we have in common. It’s can be a strength.
Susan Cooke Kittredge, in a wonderful piece for NPR’s This I Believe series that aired in 2008 – I’ll put the link in the footnotes to my sermon if you’d like to listen to it – talks about the healing she has found in sewing and mending, and what it has taught her about life. She said,[6]
I believe in mending…..Mending something is different from fixing it. Fixing it suggests that evidence of the problem will disappear. I see mending as a preservation of history and a proclamation of hope. When we mend broken relationships, we realize that we're better together than apart, and perhaps even stronger for the rip and the repair.
Mending doesn't say, "This never happened." It says instead, as I believe the Christian cross does, "Something or someone was surely broken here, but with God's grace it will rise to new life." So to my old pajamas, the fence around the garden, the friendship torn by misunderstanding, a country being ripped apart by economic and social inequity, and a global divide of enormous proportions — they all need mending.
They all do mending. As do I. As do you.
The good news is that Jesus calls those fishermen while they are still mending, while they are still in need of mending. To go out and serve and love and share Good News with people who need mending, too. And Jesus does the same to and for us.
We all need mending.
Not to hide where we have been, but to move forward, faithfully.
To be the gate that isn’t lesser because it has been mended, it is more.
The quilt that has been mended is often, now, stronger.
And so it is for us.
And so it can be for us.
For people who are mended, are invited to follow Jesus in this ministry of mending.
As L. R. Knost has written:
“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, and unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”[7]
The light that comes from Jesus Christ.
And Jesus found James and John in the boat, mending their nets. And he called them. Immediately they left the boat and followed him. Alleluia, Amen.
[1] https://www.gracepresbytery.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Letter-from-a-Birmingham-Jail-King.pdf
[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-412-23-4
[3] https://leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-reason-of-following.html
[4] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/third-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-matthew-412-23-3
[5] James Rebanks, “English Pastoral” Published in September of 2020 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books Pages 204 – 205
[6] “We All Need Mending,” Susan Cooke Kittredge. Independently produced for Weekend Edition Sunday by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18582136
[7] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/9106284-do-not-be-dismayed-by-the-brokenness-of-the-world
| 
