Third Sunday
after Epiphany
Text: Matthew 4:17-22
Vicar Jason Zirbel
Christian “Apprenticeship”
If there’s
one thing that seems to have a remained a constant in life, it’s that a person is
typically expected to prove his or her self before being able to move on to bigger and
better things. This is especially true in the
workplace. Now, I know that many of you here
today are retired, having left the politics and headaches of the workplace behind you. However, just because you’ve been away from
work for a while doesn’t mean that EVERYTHING has changed. Unless you’re a close relative of the boss,
chances are still pretty good that you’re going to start out your career at a lower
or “probationary” level in the company’s food chain, with the expectation
that you will work your way up the ladder. If
want more from the company, you are expected to prove to the company that your worthy of
their additional investment.
As we turn
our attention to the Gospel lesson for this morning, we hear Jesus calling men from their
trades as fishermen to follow Him. Immediately,
something strange should be jumping out at you. Notice: Jesus went looking for His followers. Now, I say this should seem strange to you because
this isn’t how the world we know and live in works.
As I said earlier, we only know of the world in which you have to prove
yourself first. Well, guess what? Things haven’t changed that much in over two
thousand years! We aren’t working
with some “revolutionary” principle. This
was still the same principle in Jesus’ time.
In fact, the
working model that was in place at this time regarding students, or “disciples”
as they were called back then, was already quite old and established. You see, in order for a disciple to receive “internship”
or “fellowship” with the Master for study, the disciple had to
first seek out the master and win over the master with his persistence and loyalty
and an expressed desire to learn. This was
true of Plato seeking out the wisdom of Socrates, Aristotle seeking out Plato, and it was
true in the Jewish world as well, as we know, for instance, that
Now: back to
our Gospel lesson. With all this in mind, it should
rightfully seem very strange now that Jesus, the Master, is the one who is out “pounding
the pavement,” seeking and calling disciples to study under Him. This just isn’t how it’s supposed to
work! In fact, as we have seen, it has never
worked this way! My dear friends: I know that this isn’t how the world works,
but this is how God chooses to work. God
breaks into our lives, coming to us where we are, calling us to be His own. Sadly, because this method doesn’t make sense
to us, we often wind up getting the facts wrong, putting ourselves in the place of the
“seeker,” and making Jesus and His forgiveness and salvation out to be something
that we seek out and prove ourselves worthy of receiving.
Brothers and
sisters in Christ: When it comes to your
receiving salvation and forgiveness from God; your justification before God,
understand: it was He who first sought you out and called you
out of the darkness of sin and into His marvelous light. In fact, Christ Himself even says this very clearly
in John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you
should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide….” Scripture tells us rather plainly that in terms of
conversion from unbelief to belief; from death to life, that apart from Christ, we are
dead in our sin; that is, we are nothing but corpses of sin before God. Tell me: Can
a corpse impress anyone with their actions and intellect?
Can they “prove” themselves worthy of anything? Does a corpse have the ability to “find”
or “seek” anything? Have you ever
heard of a corpse giving the hearse driver directions to the cemetery? Folks: When
it comes to our conversion; our justification before God, it is God who
seeks us out, coming to us in His Word and in His sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper. It is God, working through these means
of Word and Sacrament, who literally breathes life into us, making us dead to sin and
alive in Him.
Now: up to
this point I’ve been talking about justification and the total inability we have in
“seeking” justification before God. However,
does this mean that Christians do not properly “seek” God? By no means! As
baptized and redeemed children of God who have heard and trusted in Christ’s call of
justification, we do, in our sanctified lives in this world, properly seek God out, right
where He has commanded us to look; namely, in His Word and Sacraments. That means that we don’t seek for Him in the
New Age section at Barnes & Noble. We don’t
seek for Him in horoscopes or even in our hearts. My
heart didn’t die on the cross for my sin! No! We seek Him out, as believers, right where He
points us and guides us—Word & Sacrament. That’s
why you’re all here today, right?
My dear
friends: In closing, I do want to point out
that Christ
calls each and every one of us into His salvation with the same call. My call to justification was not different or
“better” than any of your calls. God,
when calling His people from death to life, calls with one single message of Law and
Gospel: “Repent, and then trust
that you are completely forgiven in Christ!” However,
when God calls us to serve Him in the world in our sanctified lives,
understand: He does call us all in different ways
to different callings. He calls some to be
doctors or nurses. He calls some to be farmers
or factory workers. He calls some to be
teachers, pastors, parents, retired grandparents etc.
In short, God has called each and every one of us to serve Him in the
specific vocations that He has called us into. For
some, this means that God says: “Put down these things.
I have a new job for you. You
will be a pastor and steward of my gifts.” For
others, though, God calls you to serve Him by serving His people right where
you’re at in life. This is where
God needs you to take His life-saving Word of the Gospel into the world.
Brothers and
sisters in Christ: In this way, you can begin
to see that each and every one of us, in whatever vocations God has placed us, are
continuing to do the work of John the Baptist, pointing those who are still trapped in the
darkness of sin and this world to the light and life that is found only in Christ Jesus. Understand: God
isn’t asking you to come up with some grand presentation that will “wow”
the crowd into believing. He certainly
isn’t asking you to take the initiative and judge whether or not the people are “worthy”
enough to become a Christian. All God
has ever called you to do is simply share the Good News of Christ that is in you. Speak God’s Words to the people, and let God
handle the converting of the sinner from death to life.
After all, it was God’s Word alone that caused four fishermen to drop
everything and follow after a carpenter’s son. It
was God’s Word that called you and made you His own.
And it is God’s Word this very day that continues to call you and
assure you that you are His and that you are completely forgiven in His body and blood,
which was sacrificed on the cross for all mankind; the same body and blood He brings to
you this very day, calling to you, “come and eat, come and drink. This is my body and my blood, given for you for the
forgiveness of all your sins; not because you’ve somehow proven yourself worthy to
now merit forgiveness, but given for you because in My death and resurrection, I have made
you worthy before our Father in Heaven.”
AMEN