Sermon - January 26, 2020
Following The Wind…
1 Corinthians 1: 10-18 Matthew 4: 12-23
Gentle or strong, warm, chilly or cold….the wind is always with us…so too is our faith…so to is Christ…no matter what our mood or desire, Jesus does not turn from us…rather it tends to be us who make great choices, or not…who make choices that are rested and vested in faith… or not.
Yet many, if not perhaps all of us, have had moments when we would like to be like the leaf, or snowflake or kite…blown aimlessly wherever the wind might take us….the freedom of not making decision, of letting the wind pick us up and deposit us at our next destination without the hassle of having to make an active choice….
Are there moments when we, as adults, still yearn for the teenage joy of throwing on a backpack, getting on a train or a bus, with no fixed destination? The joy of adventure, with relatively minor upfront commitment.
In today’s gospel we hear of such an adventure.
As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed him.
And in a moment, without hesitation, Peter and Andrew were in the wind…they left their job…they left their family…they left their friends… they left their way of life…to start a- fresh…to start anew…to walk to foreign lands with strangers they did not know.
They were called to take flight…as we too are called to take flight…to follow the divine wind of faith that blows through creation each and every moment; yet is so frequently ignored…to tagged as something we will get to later…call me back…I might be interested next week…this week I am too busy to follow Jesus or be a faithful Christian.
Peter and Andrew did not wait…did not hesitate…did not chat….did not send a a text to friends…or check review on yelp or google…they did not tweet…or snap a photo for instagram…or contemplate the heading to go with the pic for their facebook page..
They dropped their nets and left….touched to the core by what they had heard and seen in the man from Galilee…Jesus the healer…the fisher of men and women.
To yearn for such a deep, instantaneous revelation that changes one’s life in such an extreme way. In a flash they turned their life inside out…
Sometimes we do need to follow the wind…to make dramatic change…to confess to ourselves and those around us that we follow a Christian path… that we yearn for connection to the divine and seek it out. This is what brought you through the door today…and will do so again…follow the wind. It will lead you to divine places…quiet places…joyful places…places to nurse your grief in times of sadness…places to be joyful for every minute with which we are blessed…follow the wind and discover the divine. Amen