You and I are called – the whole point of faith is that you and I go out as God’s love in the world, for the healing of all things.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 A
Texts: Matthew 4:12-23; Isaiah 9:1-4

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

This week our Minneapolis Bishop Jen Nagel recalled Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a message she sent to our rostered ministers.[1]

She said Bonhoeffer identified three ways that the church can respond to oppression: “by holding our government and leaders accountable to their commitments, by tending to the direct needs of those being crushed under the wheel of oppression, and finally by driving a spoke into the wheel itself.”

We are under an occupation here. There’s no other way to describe it. Yesterday’s sickening public execution of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti just underlines it. We are under occupation by government sanctioned bullies and thugs who are defended at the highest levels, completely unaccountable. These people delight, take joy, in brutality, cruelty, and humiliation, going far beyond anything law enforcement has ever been permitted to do in our nation. And so our neighbors stay locked behind doors. Preschool children are snatched in arrests or gassed in their parents’ car. People are disappearing. We are the people walking in deep darkness looking for light that Isaiah speaks of.

But our bishop is right. Bonhoeffer is right. There are these things we can do: hold our government and leaders accountable. Tend to the direct needs of those being crushed under the wheel of oppression. And drive a spike into the wheel wherever we can.

Which actually brings us to this scene by the lakeshore with four people who fish for a living. Because there’s a lot more to this story than you might think.

To see it, we need to help Matthew a little with his fellow Evangelists.

See, Luke starts this story earlier than this moment we heard. Peter and Andrew have fished all night, caught nothing, and when they come into shore, Jesus asks to use their boat for a pulpit. When he’s done teaching, he tells Peter to cast his net one more time. Peter does, and the net’s so full it nearly swamps their boat, and James and John have to help. And that’s when Jesus calls them to fish for people.

John provides the next crucial part of the story. After Jesus’ resurrection, a few disciples return to Galilee and go fishing while they wait for Jesus’ instructions. Once again they catch nothing. In the morning, someone calls from shore, and tells them to throw out their net one more time. Once again, the net fills to overflowing. John recognizes it’s Jesus, Peter swims to shore. And Jesus serves them all breakfast. And that’s when Jesus reveals what their calling truly is.

Because Jesus always called people for a purpose.

He didn’t come to start a club, or seek members to something. Or invite people to believe in God so they’d know they were somehow on the right side.

He always called them to a vocation. Every time. He said, “follow me, and I will have work for you to do.” With these four, he used fishing – their livelihood – to help them understand: I’ll send you out to fish for people. To draw people into God’s love by dragging a huge net of welcome and teaching and love through the world, catching as many as you can.

The faith Jesus invites in people is always the way for them to become who God needs in the world, for the sake of others, not an exclusive possession. So they, so we, radiate God’s love in our own bodies and voices and actions and words. Like Jesus. To draw all God’s children into the abundant life and love of God. That’s why Jesus came.

But this doesn’t seem to be how many understand Christian faith these days.

For many Christians today faith is something you own, it’s personal, centered on a hope in heaven in the next life, and it’s not about how you live here, not a calling. Many Christian voices today proclaim a way of life so radically divorced from Jesus’ teachings it’s apparent that what Jesus said, what he taught, how he lived, loved, died, doesn’t matter much to them. If you know you’re a Christian, that’s apparently enough.

But not for Jesus. He calls people to follow him so that they become God’s love in their lives. Sending out a dozen, then 70, while he’s still teaching. Filling hundreds with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and sending them out to bear God’s love.

If your faith is only for your own good, your trust is in something completely different than Christ.

John’s part makes this all clear.

These four fishermen have no clue what’s coming when Jesus first calls them today at that lakeshore. They follow, but they know nothing of what this Teacher is going to ask of them.

But by this second miraculous catch of fish, they’ve seen God’s love in person, teaching with love, healing with love, welcoming all kinds of people into God’s heart who weren’t considered worthy. They’ve seen God’s love go to the cross and suffer and die. They’ve seen God’s love rise from the dead. Now Jesus can show what “fishing for people,” what this calling really is.

Three times after that breakfast Jesus calls Peter – and you and me and everyone else who follows – to this calling: If you love me, feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. Three times, the call is to care for the ones Jesus cares for. Jesus’ sheep who need to be tended. Fed. Protected. By you. By me.

That means what people are doing in these awful days to care for all God’s children is exactly what they are called to do. What you are called to do.

With all these terrible things happening to our neighbors, Jesus says: Care for them. Feed them. Protect them. Be my love for them. In person. That’s why I called you.

And all three of Bonhoeffer’s things are how we will answer that call. And all three are being done right now, in this city. Holding leaders accountable, tending to the direct needs of those crushed, finding ways to put a stick into the wheel itself. That’s the amazing thing. Tens of thousands gather Friday in peaceful protest downtown, thousands sing in the streets day after day, or stop abductions of neighbors, including one in our neighborhood Friday. Hundreds drive, feed, care for their neighbors in any way they can. Millions refuse to believe lies and instead believe what they see and know as wrong and evil and then find a way to be love.

That’s caring for Jesus’ sheep. Doing what you’re called to do. The whole point of your faith. A calling to be God’s love in this world, outside your own self interest and for the good of the world.

But don’t forget the bursting nets.

The call is to put the nets out into the world. God’s power filled them then and will fill them now. The call is to love God’s sheep. God’s love will empower that care and protection all around the world.

This is our time, our moment, to be Christ. Perhaps never before have we in our own lives seen so clearly and close by Christ’s sheep, God’s beloved, who need love, care, food and shelter, protection from the wolves.

Follow me, Jesus said, and care for all my beloved ones. And in your loving faith and trust, and mine, and countless more, God will break the rod of the oppressor as Isaiah promises. In your love, and mine, and countless more, God will fill the nets to overflowing.

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

[1] Email to Minneapolis Area Synod (ELCA) rostered ministers, Wednesday, January 21, 2026.

The Holy Spirit descends and remains upon Christ at his baptism. In our sacramental lives and the life of our city, this pattern continues to this day. God is continually coming down to stay.

Vicar Erik C. Nelson
January 18, 2026
Texts: Isaiah 49:1-7; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42

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

I’ve probably talked about it too much, but in case you haven’t heard, I went to Sweden last summer. And it will surprise no one to hear that I demanded we go into every church we found. One of my favorites was a small village church on the west coast, a church built by my ancestors and their neighbors in the mid-1800s.

In that church, above the pulpit was something familiar but also unfamiliar. They had a bird hanging there, a symbol of the Holy Spirit descending on the preacher. But instead of being all white, like we might expect, it was painted gray and black, with green and purple around the neck.

I asked the steward why they had a pigeon hanging above the pulpit instead of a dove, and she explained that in Swedish, like many other languages, they only have one word for pigeons and doves, because they’re actually the same animal.

When my ancestors heard today’s gospel reading in their heart language, they heard the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a pigeon, the beautiful, clumsy, iridescent gray and black, green and purple birds that lived among them.

As I thought about that, I fell in love with the idea of the Holy Spirit as a pigeon, not a dove.

When we think of a dove, we think of something we see at weddings and graduations, flying away from us. A dove is a pure, white thing, that flies high up in the air, above us all.

When we think of pigeons, it’s very different. Pigeons have lived among us for thousands of years, so this is where they want to be — down here, on the ground, with us. They live with us in the muck and mess of the world.

In our Gospel reading, the main thing the Holy Spirit does is come down and stay. The Holy Spirit doesn’t float above us, staying far off. The Holy Spirit comes down and joins Jesus in the muddy, mucky water of the Jordan River.

That’s what the Holy Spirit always does. That’s what God does. The central message of Christianity is that God comes down to us and stays.

But on days like today, in weeks like the last few, it can be hard to know where God is among us. It’s difficult to see the Holy Spirit descending and remaining.

In some ways, I do see the Holy Spirit in our city. In the midst of our collective heartbreak, I see the Holy Spirit as the community comes together to march for justice and liberation. I hear the Holy Spirit in whistles and horns that warn neighbors to seek shelter. I see the Holy Spirit descending and remaining as volunteers bring groceries to people in hiding. 

But if I’m honest, I want more than that. I want to see God come down in bigger ways. I want to see giant hands coming down from heaven to save us. I wish we didn’t have to march for justice. I wish our neighbors didn’t have to hide. I want God to act quickly and boldly to save us.

I want to believe what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that we are not lacking in any gift as we wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. I want to believe that God will strengthen us to the end.

Even as we wait for God, I do believe that God is faithful.

I see God’s faithfulness in the community coming together in acts of love and service. I see God’s faithfulness in the care this congregation has for each other and their neighbors. I see God’s faithfulness in God’s presence in this place.

A couple weeks ago, on the day our neighbor Renee was shot, I came here to pray in the church. I was moved to tears, thinking about our belief that Christ becomes truly present in this room, every time we gather for worship. Right there. (pointing at the spot where the presider stands to distribute the Body.)

Not in a metaphorical or symbolic way. But we believe that he is really present here. He’s here, in this neighborhood that has experienced far more than its fair share of pain.

Seven blocks from where George Floyd was killed by his government. Six blocks from where Renee Good was killed by her government. In this room, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, killed by his government, comes to us. Right here.

Into the most difficult of places, God is always coming to us to stay.

The baptism in the Jordan is the messy beginning of Jesus’s ministry. A ministry that we know can only lead one place: the cross. The ways of this world that demand purity and uniformity, submission and compliance, will always clash with God’s way.

Isaiah reminds us that God loves outsiders. God loves the one “deeply despised, abhorred by the nations.” The one regarded as a “slave of rulers” is the one God uses to cast down the monarchs and chieftains.

God shows us strength through vulnerability, salvation through sacrifice. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world, not through conquest with angel armies or heavenly occupation, but in his love poured out for us in his innocent suffering and death.

God in Christ has already reached his arm down from heaven to save us, stretching them out on the cross. Showing us an embrace wide enough to take in the whole world.

On the cross, Christ took all our pain, all our suffering, all our heavy burdens upon himself.

And in his dying, he overcame death. He passed through the pain and the grief and the weight of this world, and overturned it all. So now we have the promise that wherever we encounter death, God has new life waiting. Resurrection is coming.

As Jesus says to the disciples, “come and see.” I say come and see new life in the middle of a land under imperial occupation. In a city that knows too much tragedy, in the heartland of a rotting empire, eternal life springs forth.

New life springs forth in our sacramental life, as God comes down to us and stays with us. New life springs forth in the life of this city, as neighbors come together and sacrifice for each other, giving up their time, money, privilege, safety.

As followers of Jesus, there is no promise that our days will be easy. We have no guarantee of safety. But the promise we have is the promise that we are God’s beloved. The Holy Spirit has come down to us and remains with us now.

The Holy Spirit keeps coming down to us. Again and again and again.

And so, we live, filled with the Spirit. The Spirit whose iridescent beauty finds us in the muck and mud and mess and leads forever into new life.

Thanks be to God.

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