Finding Home in Christ

A reflection on Epiphany 3 - Matthew 4:12-23 - By the Rev. Deb Seles

In the summer of my 17th year we loaded up the family station wagon and headed to the small Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois where I was going to attend college. I decided to go there, sight unseen, on the advice of my older cousin, a college counselor. Yes, that’s right: the times were different. We didn’t know about early admissions. I was the first child in our family to go to college and I wanted to go away. Against my mother’s wishes. She wanted me to stay in Chicago, at least for my first 2 years. We’d fought and fought about that but finally I got my way. I received a state scholarship and made the commitment to enter Quincy as a freshman in two months.

As we rounded the bend in the road that passed alongside the muddy Mississippi there, on the side of an ancient brick building that housed the Quincy Casket Company was a sign for Quincy College. “Well, there it is,” sniped my mother with a sound of self-satisfaction. My heart sank: was this the place I was to spend four years? How could I have been so foolish? Where were the ivy-clad walls?

It turns out the building housed Quincy Business College, not the Franciscan College I would eventually attend. And it turned out to be an okay experience all in all.

Leaving home. I bet you all remember what it was like when you first left home. Whether you left to go away to school or to take a job. Maybe you left when you joined the military or got married. You know that mixture of anticipation and fear that face us all.
This passage from Matthew gives us a slice of what happened when Jesus left his home in Nazareth and went out into the sticks to begin his ministry. His cousin John had been imprisoned by Herod and it seems Jesus flees out to the country. The word “Galilee” means circle and describes the circle of land to the north of Jerusalem. People from Galilee were considered hicks, unsophisticated rubes at least to the city folk in Jerusalem.

Most of these folks made their living fishing or farming. And it was these folks that Jesus gathered around him to form a new kind of family, a new community. “Follow me” he says and people do just that.

Now probably what we have is a kind of snapshot of what really happened. Imagine how it might have been: Jesus enters town, dusty and thirsty and approaches the town well. People are gathered there to gossip. Perhaps he talks with them, perhaps he just listens at first. He finds a friendly house to stay for the night. He walks along the beach where the fishermen are throwing their nets. He observes them. He goes to the synagogue to pray and to teach. And gradually people begin to take an interest in this stranger. Perhaps there’s been a buzz all around because of what happened to John the Baptist; people had heard of his message and had hoped that he would be the one to free the Jewish people from the oppression of the Romans.

We may wonder why Jesus left home. Why do any of us leave home? Especially when we are young, don’t we leave home to become the people we feel we are called to become? Perhaps Jesus moved away from Jerusalem as a way of saying that the kingdom of God is not tied down to a single location. We learn how he expands his message to include all people—not only the Jews but everyone.

Today I come to speak to you as you have just learned that your beloved pastor has heard the call to leave what has become her home for these past years. And each of us is facing the uncertainty of what the future will bring. Knowing Terri as I do, I know there is sadness and shock as you consider parish life without her. I know that she has led this community in a wise and compassionate way. I imagine you are struggling to consider your life as a parish without her.

But let me invite you to consider who each of us is really following and who our true leader is. Do you remember the old American Express tag line: “Don’t leave home without it,” we were advised. The scriptures remind us not to leave home without Jesus. We may leave all that is familiar in our lives but God is with us. We may give away our old furniture and donate our old clothes but because God calls us we can be certain of an ongoing shaping of our lives by his power.

“Follow me,” is the invitation Jesus uttered not only to Andrew, Peter, James and John but the call he uttered to Terri and the call he repeats to each of us. He promised the disciples that he would make them fishers of people but first Jesus caught them in his net.

And what did his net consist of? What is the net that we find ourselves in? It is a net of hope and love. It is a net of healing and wholeness. In that net we find ourselves with a most unlikely lot—sometimes strange and unusual ‘fish’ not ‘fish’ that look or even act like us. But he is the net that holds us together.

Now I don’t know about you but there are times I’d rather be a fish swimming free rather than one that’s been caught. Being caught, even by Jesus, means that I have to surrender control. And boy, oh boy, I don’t like to do that. I want to be master of my own fate.

Because we know the fate of fish that are caught. The ones that are useful, well eventually they die. And of course that is the foolishness of the cross of which Paul speaks. We’re invited to follow Jesus and that eventually is an invitation to die to the old.
You leave home and you’re never the same. You die to that person in order to become something new. Not someone who belongs to Paul or Apollos or anyone else. Not even a people who belong to Father Crist or Pastor Terri. But a people who belong to Christ.

Because it is Jesus who brings God’s light. The people of St. Hilary’s may feel like you are walking in darkness. But you have seen a great light. You have seen it in the lives that have been transformed. You have seen it in the way that you are called out in ministry to help refugees. You have seen God’s light in your participation in the selection of a new bishop. And you continue to see God’s light in the faces of each other gathered around this table each Sunday.
How do we follow Jesus? We follow him with all our heart as we seek to love others as God loves them. We follow him with all our mind as we read God’s word—in scripture and in other sacred writing. We follow him with our wills as we commit to actions that are faithful to that word. How do we follow Jesus? We decide to again and again. This following Jesus isn’t a one time thing but a constant call to listen to him as he calls us to love one another as he loved us.

We leave our various homes in order to find our home in him. This community has been gathered in that net which is Jesus. May we move forward and respond to his call. May we surrender to his love.