Pastor Paul E. Hoffman

The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Before we go charging head-long into Matthew 5, let’s review. To this point in his Gospel, Matthew has told us, among other things, of

An inconvenient pregnancy
The threat of divorce – Joseph’s from Mary
A quirky set of visitors from the East, following a star
A maniacal, manipulative king
A dream-inspired flight to a foreign country, making the Holy
Family refugees
The slaughter of innocent children

We have heard about the cousin of Jesus and his eccentric preaching: winnowing forks, unquenchable fire, an ax lying at the root of the tree, that sort of thing…

We learn in early Matthew about:
A forty day fast in the wilderness ending with an encounter
between Jesus and the devil
Christ’s teaching and healing those afflicted with various
diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics

That’s what gets more-or-less covered in the first four chapters as Matthew sets out to tell the story of Jesus. And with that scene- setting backdrop, we turn the page to chapter 5, Jesus climbs a
mountain, has a seat, and begins to speak…

The poor in spirit are blessed, for the reign of heaven is theirs.
Those who mourn are blessed, for they will be comforted.
The gentle are blessed, for they will inherit the earth.

What are the first four chapters of your life? Frankly, I have no idea. I haven’t known you long enough. But, I know this after forty years of ministry. I know that the chapters of your life and my life are a
whole lot like the opening strains of the Gospel of Matthew.

They are life stories that contain
An inconvenient pregnancy somewhere in our family
The threat of divorce: our own, our friends’, a member of our
own family
We have quirky friends who may have followed a star or something a whole lot more bizarre in search of something meaningful or real
We are not strangers to maniacal, manipulative leaders
Is there a day that goes by that we don’t hear of siblings in
Christ fleeing for their lives to a foreign country?
We are, unfortunately, acquainted with the death of children;
painfully, some of them have been our own.

We know what it means to be tempted, and we ourselves or those we love with all our hearts are
afflicted with various diseases and pains…

So Jesus is not just whistling Dixie when he sits down here among us, today, in – of all places  Minneapolis, Minnesota – and says, says to us – in a way that the world around us would find foolish…. Jesus says, “I know. I get it. I see you.”

Jesus, who by God’s grace, came to live among us full of grace and truth knows first-hand how the crowded ways of human life get crossed up.
With wretchedness and need.
With human grief and burdened toil.
With famished souls from sorrow’s stress.
The world will never see us as Jesus does. The world in its wisdom wants us to move on, to get over it, to buck up and pull ourselves together.

But Jesus sees us with all the tempts us, with all our various diseases and pains, with our broken relationships, and grandiose ideas gone south. He knows how we are tempted to go chasing off after other gods, and how that never, ever satisfies. And so he sits among us today, right here, right now, and says, you who hunger and thirst for righteousness are blessed. You are mine. You are beloved.
Loving us as he does, just as he loved those before us on the dusty roads of Galilee and the lush mountains where he sat to teach…

Knowing us as Jesus does, and loving us, is reckless in the eyes of world. Foolish. The world does not deal well when those who are low and despised get God’s attention. The world roils and fumes even
more when those who it deems losers are given the title “blessed.”

At its worst, the world will be so flummoxed by those who are called by his name, so undone by any who do justice, or love kindness, or walk humbly with our God that the world will revile us, and
persecute us, and utter all kinds of evil against us falsely.

And yet, and yet. This is what defines us. This is who we are. Blessed at the hand of the One whose own hands are pocked by nail prints, whose side was pierced with pain to heal the pain inside of us. This is
who we are – not perfect, but blessed. In all the messiness of whatever chapters of our lives have led us to this day. Gathered at Christ’s feet once again today we find ourselves: wounded, yet grounded. By mercy surrounded. Already and not yet. Always moving forward in the power of God, and the wisdom of God.

Blessed. Blessed. Blessed.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Jesus calls the disciples, and us, to consider what vocation means for our lives and the ways that God calls us.

Vicar Mollie Hamre
3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Year A
Texts: Matthew 4:12-23

Beloved in Christ, grace and peace to you in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

You have probably been asked this question at some point when you were younger. You might have said that you want to be a doctor, a teacher, a professional athlete, or anything else you could have imagined. In the case of my four year old niece, she excitedly told us she was going to be a cooking game show host. But all of these answers have a commonality: you can only pick one thing. 

At such a young age we are put into a mindset of thinking we can only be one thing. That we can only do one thing. And what is even more strange is we stop asking that question after a certain age. For Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John this is a question they learn that we are to ask as we seek out where God continues to call us. 

Our Gospel starts with Jesus receiving news of John the Baptist being arrested.

In reaction, Jesus flees to Galilee and calls Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John to be his disciples. Jesus approaches them in their day to day work and calls them directly: “Follow me.” We do not find the group of four in the synagogue or somewhere one might expect Jesus to be recruiting, but instead appearing to them in their normal jobs–their normal lives. Jesus calls them to follow, carrying their experiences and knowledge with them in saying: “Come! I will make you fish for people.”

Fishing is a language they understand, it’s their background–but being disciples? Not so much. Yet, the scripture says that they immediately left their boats and followed him. Strangely enough, a question about this drastic life change they are about to experience, never seems to pass through their minds. 

Such a reaction can both leave one in awe as well as skeptical. 

What about their vocation as fishermen? What about all that they were leaving behind? Matthew’s version of calling the disciples feels sudden and there is a reason for it. Jesus’s call is direct, urgent, and encompassing. This is the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, we find him proclaiming that the reign of God has come near, there is no reason to beat around the bush: Jesus knows it is time to get to work. 

But also notice that in calling the four Jesus does not ask them to stop being fishermen or to boost their resumes. Instead Jesus calls them as they are. This call story is not just about dropping one’s nets to jump to another career, it is about exploration, growth, and examining one’s call. The disciples were not only fishermen, they were students, teachers, friends, community, and so much more. All of these aspects of their lives were within the call to discipleship and part of their vocation. We hear this as Jesus goes throughout Galilee doing multiple things: teaching, proclaiming, and healing everywhere. 

As the Gospel continues and Jesus moves between communities, we see that these fishermen disciples realize that their calling means one’s occupation as well as their relationships, their context, and the way that they experience the world. 

What would it mean for our own lives if we lived them out in the same way?

When we enter into the waters of Baptism we are told that we walk with one another holding the “spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy.” That is how each and every one of you are called. You would not only think about this while at your occupation, but in all aspects of your life. 

This is not me saying you need to take on more, but asking what if we thought about vocation and calls to discipleship in a way that was encompassing. That your vocation does not drop and picks up as something completely new, but shifts as we grow. That the way you earn money is a vocation as well as your vocation in parenting. Or the vocation of being a student, being a mentor, being a friend. 

Our Triune God calls out to you to follow.

To live out your vocational calling in your jobs, families, friendships, and everything in between. Teaching one another about love. Proclaiming where you see God within one another. Working as a community and individuals to bring healing and mending places within each other. Peace, justice, and caring for the neighbor are not calls that are saved for people who need to meet the discipleship benchmark. But one that we are all called to as Children of God. 

So I ask again, what do you want to be when you grow up?

What ways do you see God in your life? Where do you feel God calling, “come! Follow me!,” I will guide you in loving your neighbor, connecting with someone who needs a friend, or caring for one another. We know from the journeys and stories of the disciples that even when four of them were called in the same way, their call to discipleship took so many different forms that were all important as the reign of God comes near. And even when we do not know what that vocation looks like or struggle to hear God, we know that God calls us to life. Life in community, life that loves one another, and life even after our time is done here. 

In the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.