- The gospel lesson comes from the gospel of Saint Matthew, chapter four. Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home at Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. Land of Zebulun, Land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light and for those who sat in the region and the shadow of death, light has dawned. From that time, Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen and Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people." Immediately, they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John in the boat with their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. This is the gospel of our lord. 

- In today's gospel, Jesus begins his work and how does he begin? By announcement. The kingdom of God has come near to you and then by invitation. Come, follow me. Good news begins with God and God's relentless determination to have us. You might think of the whole Bible as a long record of God's determination not to let us be. God comes to us. The kingdom of God has come near. The word good news is used here. You un galeon evangel. That's what evangel means, it means good news. It's news in that it's something that comes to us, rather than something that arises out of us and it is good because it's something that God does before we do anything. I think right here this is difficult for us, mainline American, do it yourself, Protestant types. 'Cause we often think of religion as something that we do. Church is where we come to get our assignment for the week. Work on your sexism, work on your racism, God has no hands but our hands, and so a lot of Protestant worship, a kind of suffocating moralism pervades. Where is the good news there? No, like those first disciples, we're here because we've been claimed because God has intruded into our lives and called us. It's not that we've reached out to God, it's that God in Christ reached out to us. This is Evangelism, enacting the evangel, the good news. And yet, if you look at our shrinking membership at most of our churches, a loss of an entire generation of youth, you would think that there's not much good news being done around here, among us. We've been poor Evangelists. Or to the point of today's gospel, we've been lousy fishing. Well we don't want to get lumped with all those tasteless Evangelicals, and we're shy and we're introspective. We're not too pushy, we're unwilling to say too much about our faith to others. Religion is a private matter, we say. But mostly I think we suffer from a kind of limp theology of good news, which makes us lousy Evangelists. You notice that Jesus said, "If you follow me, I'll teach you to catch people." Obviously catching people is not something that comes naturally, it's something that's gotta be taught to us by Jesus. I want to teach you something about Evangelism this morning. Luther spoke of the gospel as the external word, that which comes to us from the outside, that which comes to us, rather than something derived from within us. Jesus. You can see it in today's gospel. Intruding, reaching toward these people, speaking to them, calling to them to follow him. We all know people who have certain vague inclinations, which they label as spiritual. Someone was saying the media today, "I'm a very, I don't go to church. "I don't practice any one religion, but I'm very spiritual." But that isn't the same thing as the good news in Jesus. Christians are those who believe that in the good news gospel proclamation of the life and death and words and work and resurrection of Jesus, we have seen the normative, distinctive path to God. Paul says, "Faith, the Christian faith, "it comes from hearing. "It comes from preaching Christ." And maybe some religions that come to you when you're having a long walk in the woods or you're pondering your psyche alone in your room or your lying on your back and staring up into the stars, but look, Christianity isn't one of those religions. Here's a faith that comes to us from the outside, by hearing something we wouldn't have heard, we wouldn't have known had not somebody come and spoken it to us. Theologian Karl Bark says this is the main difference between a Christian and a non-Christian. The main difference, Bark said, is a noetic difference, that is, Christians are not necessarily better people than non-Christians and we're certainly not smarter, it's just we're simply those who've heard something, whereas non-Christians have not heard. As Isaiah says, "Light has come into our darkness." It's like a dawn has come into our lives, light not of our devising and that makes us just see the whole world differently. It makes us long to share that light with everybody else whom we care about. That's Evangelism. Just telling somebody what you've heard. Last summer I was speaking up in Canada and somebody said, "Do you really think that we Christians ought to try "to, like, convert people to Christianity?" And I said, "Sure, go ahead, give it a try. "You're United Church in Canada so it probably won't work, "but hey, go ahead, go for it. "You put your stuff on the table and see what happens." Well the group clearly didn't like what I said and they didn't like it. Of course, I didn't quote today's gospel about fishing and catching but they said I sounded arrogant. I sounded culturally imperialist, exclusivistic, at my suggestion that Christians learn the business of going out and catching other Christians, but would you please note the assumption behind the question. Ought we try to convert people to Christianity? Shouldn't we obey Jesus and go out and try to do some fishing and try to catch some people? Behind this question I find an assumption and the assumption is you got these nice, innocent, virginal, untainted, North Americans wandering around and then you've got these pushy arm-twisting Christians who always want to corral and convert everybody, want to put the squeeze on people with our narrow, culturally bound, exclusivistic, culturally conditioned point of view. Yet truly one thing we've learned around here with our critical and post-critical studies is that, hey, everybody's got a point of view, everybody stands somewhere, everybody has been, if you will, baptized into something. It may be that culture that we celebrate and I intend to inculcate here at 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, or it may be the more officially, sanctioned, administratively-approved culture of consumerism, the culture of the modern state of whatever lords have their way with us. But be well assured, everybody's been converted into something or in the words of the great theologian Bob Dylan, "Everybody serves somebody." So, the issue is not, will I be converted into some culture, will I be caught by some point of view, but rather, the question is, which pushy, arm-twisting culture is going to have it's way with my life? That's the question. I told my Canadian friends, I don't know why we should abandon everybody in Canada to the clutches of late 20th Century, North American capitalism. Why should Jesus defer to that? Let's go ahead, let's put our stuff on the table, let's argue, demonstrate that Jesus really does have the capacity to make human beings more interesting than the Spice Girls. Let's see. Let's go ahead and see who's left standing at the end of the discussion. See our problem with catching a few more fish for Jesus is not that we're so respectful of other cultures, we're so open-minded and pluralistic. Our real Evangelistic good news problem is that we find it very difficult to imagine that any culture is more powerful than that culture sanctioned by the Pentagon, the White House, Amway, and Toys"R"Us. That's a problem. It isn't claimed that of the Christian faith, call it arrogant if you will, it's a claim that all these other cultures have been conquered, are being overcome in baptism. The biggest adversary for the Christian gospel is not that so many people around here are skeptical, critical, intellectuals. The biggest problem is that so much of us are rich, whereas the gospel tends to tilt toward the poor and the dispossessed. A lot of us are here because we're either powerful or we plan one day when we grow up to be powerful, but the gospel tends to be about the powerless. I'm just saying the gospel is going to feel a bit abrasive toward those cultural expressions which have us enslaved and through which we have vainly tried to find some meaning. The good news of Jesus has been in conflict with every culture in which it's found itself, including the very first culture in which it found itself. In just about six weeks or so, we're gonna see where all this open-handed, invitational fishing got Jesus and his followers as we go up a place called Golgotha, to a cross. I remember when I came here to the university, somebody wanted a rule that nobody could proselyte anybody else on campus for his or her religion, that way we wouldn't have any problem with all you pushy, conflicted, religious people. If we could just stop these religious people and their efforts to put the make on everybody then, see, no problem with religion on campus. I remember one of the campus ministries said, "Hey, this is a university. "Everybody's in the proselyting business here." Everybody's trying to put the make on everybody else and I'm not just talking about zealots and women's studies or in botany or fu qua. It's all conversion. It's all, hey kid, come over here and let me put the make on you. Let me have your life. Let me change it. Let me tell you about something they wouldn't tell you about in Des Moines. Let me change your whole. Let me get you. It's biology. Well, it's all conversion, baptism, persuasion, enlightenment. And why should Christians or Muslims be excluded from all the transformative fun? It's all metamorphosis here. It's just not good enough to say, well look, all religions are saying fairly much the same thing and they're all just different paths to the same place. No. Any religion I've ever heard about does actually claim to be true. You can't say something like, well all faiths say fairly much the same thing and be fair to different faiths. There's just no way for religions to avoid bumping up against each other by denying or suppressing our true differences. Sure, we Christians ought to repent of past unfaithful attempts to coerce people into believing in Jesus. We're not permitted to coerce people, not because we believe in some kind of limp tolerance, but rather because Jesus doesn't permit us coercion or violence. The only way Jesus permits us to do our fishing is through proclamation and persuasion and argument and witness. However, it's the nature of any good news you get, whether it's the good news about the Republican party or botany or Jesus Christ, to want to share that news with people that you care about and it's the nature of this good news to make you care about people who aren't even your friends or family. We want to share what we've heard with anybody who will listen. As Christians, we ought to be intensely curious about the fates of others. We ought to listen, both in order to understand our neighbors better and also to understand our faith better. However, at some point, we do long for the opportunity to witness, to show in word and in deed that the truth we have found, or more proper to today's scripture, the truth that has found us in Jesus Christ. I challenge you this week to do a little fishing. To attempt to share your faith, maybe even using words, with one person whom you know. Try to express why you're here. Invite somebody to come here next Sunday, when we have a really good sermon. Do one visible act of Christian charity to somebody in need and do it in the name of Christ and see what you catch. In just a few moments, you're going to assume the proper position of a Christian, you come to the table and your hands are empty and outstretched. You'll be given a gift, the body and blood of Christ. You'll receive that and then having received and having been nourished, you're to go forth as light to a world in darkness, as a word to speak amid the world's silence, that word is Jesus Christ, that name to us above every other name, that lord who began his work by first calling ordinary people like us to be the vanguard of the good news that God is among us and is determined to have his way with us. Amen.