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Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
I am a big fan of the 49ers football team.
The game last night was a nailbiter but we won.
I watch every game, but I do not always watch it live.
I record it and watch it later.
I have friends who are complete super fans.
They watch it live, cancel everything, whatever is going on,
including Mass, by the way!
If they can, they will get tickets,
and the price of the tickets are just crazy these days.
One of my friends has a whole closet of 49er gear.
It is just kind of crazy.
He has head-to-toe gear and
he has all the jerseys signed by the players
over multiple seasons from different eras.
He knows the game so well that
he knows all the plays and players and their stats.
He knows Brock Purdy’s strengths and weaknesses.
He knows everything about the game.
He goes on and on and on about it and it drives me crazy.
But I do learn a lot from him
because I was not born in his country.
I have learned a lot about American football.
Here is what is funny:
I assumed that he played when he was in college or high school.
I asked “What position did you play when you were playing?”
“Oh, I never that played crazy game.
I would not play it. Too dangerous!”
I said, “You have never ever played?”
He said, “No, it is crazy game.
You would be crazy to play that game.”
I thought to myself, that does not seem right.
And he says, “Look, I am just a fan, not a player.”
Jesus has a lot of fans but I am not so sure he has so many players.
He does not have as many followers
because it is kind of a dangerous game.
You have to get involved.
And when you get involved, well, sometimes you get hurt.
It is just messy in life being a disciple!
It is the same thing about a being player.
The player does all the work, right?
There are a handful who are on the field we see in play
but there are a whole ton on the team.
There are all the backups and then there are the trainers.
And the coaches, the people who helped,
there are so many who are part of a football team.
When they give out the rings at the Super Bowl,
the NFL gives more than 150 rings to the winning team.
That is way more than the eleven players on the field
and way more than the 53 on the roster.
They give rings to the whole organization on the team!
It is a team sport; football is a player's game.
So is Christianity.
The danger is when we do not think of discipleship as a player sport,
when we think of it as a fan sport.
The danger is we do not get involved.
We do not get our hands dirty.
We do not live the discipleship and then, you are like my friend
and say it is too dangerous!
I have another friend who knows everything about the Bible.
He reads the Bible inside and out.
He really likes Jesus.
I might even say he loves Jesus!
But he has been divorced three times.
And doesn’t pay his alimony for his kids from those marriages.
He evades taxes as best he can even though he is worth a fortune.
He is a bit of a tyrant as a boss.
Every one of the members of his company hate working for him.
He is just not a very nice man.
Boy, does he want to correct me in my homilies!
He probably listening right now.
Go ahead and correct me!
He will quote the scripture and say,
“You do not preach enough about the gospel.
You tell too many stories.”
Really? I said, tell me a little bit about the stories I tell.
They are about the gospel!
He is a super fan of Jesus,
but he is most definitely not a follower.
Let's face it, we all struggle with following what Jesus asked us to do.
But being involved in the team of Christianity,
of being a working disciple is hard work.
And it requires us to put skin in the game, so to speak.
Last night we had a wonderful celebration.
We recognized many of the volunteers
who are involved in our community, both the school and the parish.
While there were about 250 people at the dinner,
there are way more than 250 people involved in our parish
because that is what it takes to run a parish.
A parish is not about just coming to do mass.
That is one component of it, sure,
but being a parish community is about
living the word of Christ in our life.
That starts in our homes, in our families
and in our schools and places of work and in the world, for sure.
But we cannot do that here in the community
without a lot of volunteers,
all people giving up their time to make it all work.
It requires us to have some skin in the game.
What makes a Catholic parish and a Catholic school
is the involvement of the parents and the community.
That is what binds us together.
It is a testimony not just of our faith,
but it is who we believe in.
We believe and follow Jesus.
We are not just fans but we follow him.
We believe, just like the scripture says today,
we come and we follow him,
then we will bring other people,
catch men, catch other people for Christ.
But we must testify with our lives.
What does that look like practically for us?
All of us have to get involved in something.
I know that there is only like only one quarterback.
I get that there is only one priest up here doing the mass.
I understand that.
But there are a whole lot of other players every single time.
A lot of them are completely unseen.
Yes, we see the musicians; we see the altar servers.
We see the Eucharistic ministers and the lectors.
But there are lots of others behind the scenes
that make it all work.
For example, the people who cleaned the church,
people who water the plants, people who clean the linens.
These are all unseen jobs.
And yet each one of those is only one or two people.
And they have been doing it for years with no relief.
The person who cleans our linens
has doing it for something like 20 years!
When she gets a day off, we have to find somebody to do it.
How hard is it to do, to find another person to help her do that?
And the tech ministry has become mission critical for us.
A lot of people, 600 people are watching joining us online
and yet, you know, we have only a handful of people
who are willing to be trained, who are willing to commit to that ministry.
We need your help.
Another example is our funeral ministry.
Livestream has become a critical part of that ministry
because so many people cannot travel.
And livestream has become a real savior for that.
Yet we sometimes cannot put it on
because we do not have volunteers.
There are a million other ministries in the school,
people who help just sort paper and get things done.
There are a lot of little things that are in the background.
The point being is that we have to stop being just fans
and just showing up and rah, rah, rah Jesus.
It is more than rah rah Jesus.
We cannot just wear the clothes of what Jesus did and be a fan.
We have to be fully involved and invested.
I am not telling you what ministry to choose
as I may not even be here.
I understand that some of you can do other ministries
beyond these walls of this community and that is great,
but we all need to do some little thing,
some one component of the ministry.
Whether it is be serving people with St. Vincent de Paul,
whether it be tech ministry, music ministry, clean linen,
or doing something to the school.
We all have to put some skin in the game.
That is what it really means to be a Christian, to be a disciple.
All of us are called to live this life of repentance, this life of conversion.
But we need to truly testify to it.
We truly followed Jesus or not.
Not just knowing the plays and the players,
but by living the plays, by being involved.
I plead with you, if you have not already gotten involved,
I ask you to get involved in some way, some little way.
It does not have to be in a huge way, just something that fits you.
Together we will follow Jesus and we will catch more people.
We are followers not just fans.
Come follow me and I will make you fishers of men.
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