Sermon: Third Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 4:12-23, January 22, 2023 Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Linman

Sermon: Third Sunday after Epiphany, Matthew 4:12-23, January 22, 2023

Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

On January 6th, we celebrated Epiphany, the festival of the Three Kings who visited the child Jesus and Mary and Joseph, and who gave their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

This year, among you, I got to learn new traditions about Three Kings Day and to enjoy for the first time in my life Roscas de reyes – but I did not find the baby Jesus in any of my pieces of the sweet bread. Rather, I found Jesus among you! Thanks be to God. And thank you for your welcome to me as a new pastor here.

The festival of the Three Kings began the Season after Epiphany. An epiphany is a revelation, an unveiling. The Epiphany season is a series of Sundays each of which provides its own epiphany, or revelation of Jesus to us. Each Sunday during this season we learn more and more about Jesus.

One of today’s epiphanies is that Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah in today’s first reading: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them has light shined.” (Isaiah 9:2) Jesus is the one who reveals God’s light to the people of Galilee who lived in a land of deep darkness and who sat in the shadow of death. And Jesus is our light today in our darkest hours.

Jesus shines this divine light when he begins his public ministry saying “Repent, for the dominion of heaven has come near.” To repent here is not so much about confessing sins. Rather, it’s a command to re-direct our lives from our old human ways to God’s ways. It’s a change of direction. A change of mind. For the dominion of heaven, of God, has come near in Jesus Christ.

But there’s another epiphany, another revelation in today’s story from Matthew. This epiphany has to do with Jesus calling his first disciples, Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” And upon hearing this, “immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus.”

They didn’t know Jesus at all. They hadn’t yet heard him teach. They hadn’t seen him perform any miracles. And yet, according to Matthew, immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus. No questions asked. No conditions. They didn’t call Jesus’ references. They didn’t do a background check on Jesus. No, they just followed him.

How could Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John just get up and follow Jesus like that? Some call this Jesus’ first miracle in Matthew’s Gospel. The miracle, the epiphany, is that God’s power revealed in Jesus was so compelling that these men left everything behind to immediately follow Jesus, no questions asked.

It would take a miracle for us to follow Jesus in that way. But that’s the point. Jesus, as the anointed chosen one of God, works miracles in our lives in giving us the gift of faith to follow him even now.

Then there’s still another epiphany, another revelation in today’s gospel story. Jesus makes them fishers of people. That is to say, Jesus completely re-orients their life’s work. Before Jesus, these four men caught fish for a living. They were businessmen.

But upon encountering Jesus and responding to his command to follow him, they were given a whole new calling focused now on people, not fish.

And this new godly work is not about winning great numbers of people like a great catch of fish. It’s not about manipulating or coercing people to become part of a movement.

No, it’s simply that Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John would become people-persons, focused on the needs of people. It’s as if they went from being business men to becoming ministers or persons in what we call the helping professions.

Indeed, being fishers of people involved the disciples ultimately in Jesus’ public ministry. And here’s how Matthew describes that ministry: “Jesus went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the dominion of heaven and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23).

Teaching, proclaiming, curing – these were the focal points of Jesus’ ministry and identity as our Messiah, part of today’s set of epiphanies about who Jesus was and is.

And after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension, the disciples like Peter, Andrew, James and John would become apostles, ones sent to do as Jesus did, namely to teach, proclaim the good news and cure people in need of healing. Indeed, the book of the Acts of the Apostles is filled with stories of Jesus’ followers doing these things.

Which brings us to 2023 and to our calling. We, too, are called by Jesus to follow him. And, by God’s grace and in the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus makes us fishers of people, too. Thus, we, like Jesus and the disciples, also teach and proclaim the good news and share in God’s healing ministries in our own ways.

We share in Jesus’ teaching ministry, for example, when we come to worship to listen to sermons like these. And we share in Jesus’ work of teaching when we participate in bible study.

And we proclaim the good news when we tell our family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers and others the wonderful things God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And we share in Jesus’ ministries of healing when we pray for those sick at home or in the hospital and send a card to them or give them a call or better yet, visit them in person.

In all of these ways and more we play our role in the epiphanies that God continues even now in 2023 to give to the world in revealing Jesus Christ to be our friend, our teacher, our healer, our Savior, our Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.