"Gone Fishing With Jesus"
Words of inspiration from our neighbours on the hill.
Sermon Preached by
The Reverend Canon Milton Barry
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Text: Matthew 4:12-23
It is a great pleasure to be back at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, and I want to thank Jean Hunnisett and Bill Fritz for their warm welcome, both at the last service and this one as well. This is my fourth time preaching here at Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, and I really hadn't realized I had been at Grace Church-on-the-Hill that long! One of the great pleasures of being at Grace Church is to be part of the Churches on-the-Hill, a remarkable fellowship among nine churches that cover the great spectrum of mainstream Christianity: from Roman Catholic to Baptist to Anglican to the United Methodist tradition, Presbyterian and Lutheran. I think people in this area forget just how remarkable this fellowship is. The ecumenical movement is in decline in most of the world. Churches are not getting along that well together, and you would think in a time when we had fewer people in our pews, and we were losing our hair or graying, that we might work better together, but that is not the case in many places.
When I meet people across Canada, it is with great wonderment that they hear that we do as much together as we do. I need to remind you that you, yourselves, are the home place for the Churches on-the-Hill Food Bank, and I have the joy and pleasure of having many of my people come over here and work; both the President and the Treasurer of the Food Bank are members of Grace Church. My wife worked in this food bank with a team from Yorkminster Park Baptist Church and the like, and it has become the second-largest food bank in Toronto.
Our work together makes a difference, and I was never so aware of that as this last September, when on a lovely night, there was a gathering at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church of our congregations to hear Stephen Lewis on the matter of HIV/AIDS in Africa and the world's response. The clergy had been muttering together that on the 13th of September, it was not likely that many people were going to come out. They were still enjoying the Canadian summer, what was left of it, and many were still at their cottages. On that night, we were overwhelmed by the attendance of 1,700 people, who came to see Stephen Lewis. It was a most moving experience, and made me proud once again to work shoulder-to-shoulder with other clergy in this area and with lay people, together, to make a difference.
On that night, the people gave over $23,000 in support of Stephen Lewis' work in Africa. Not only that, at the end the clergy all got in a circle and prayed, and Stephen Lewis told me afterwards that it was the first time he had ever been prayed for in public. That just added to the depth of the experience for me. But and I am not here today just to sing the praises of the Churches on-the-Hill. I am here to speak about Jesus!
One of the most remarkable things about Jesus is how he began his work and ministry. My wife, Shirley, introduced you to that day by reading from the fourth chapter of Matthew's gospel. We have had three chapters already in Matthew, which introduce us to the genealogy of Jesus. We have experienced the visit of the wise men, and Jesus' encounter with John the Baptist and his own baptism. Now, we have Jesus wandering along the Sea of Galilee, and beginning his ministry.
Now, Matthew might have begun his gospel in so many different ways. I mean, he wrote it some time after all this ministry had been finished, and you might think he'd want to capture people's attention, the way a good novelist does, you know, with a gripping story in that first page or two. And so I've often thought, why didn't Matthew take the fifth chapter and move it up. The fifth chapter is the Sermon on the Mount, the grabber, the greatest sermon that Jesus ever preached, but that's not there.
Why not one of those spectacular miracles, that says, “Ooh, this guy's worth paying attention to?” No, he begins by recruitment. He begins by asking some very ordinary, everyday fishermen if they will join him in bringing about the Kingdom of God. Jesus establishes, right from the very beginning of his ministry, that he's not a Lone Ranger. Lots of clergy begin their ministry that way, as the only one, the Lone Ranger. But it is a team that makes any church hum and vibrate with the love of God, and Jesus taught that to us right from the beginning: inviting ordinary men to join him, God's Chosen One, who you might think could do it all on his own, but who chose not to, in establishing a kingdom.
I have often thought about these ordinary men, and the way in which Jesus began his ministry, and it has occurred to me from time to time that Jesus must have had the gift of speaking like your senior minister, Andrew Stirling. But you know, even with the healing power of Jesus there had to be something more.. I think Jesus must have from time to time thought: “If I am going to have ordinary people follow me, I need to have ordinary people working with me. Maybe it takes a working class guy to talk to a working class guy. Maybe it takes a fishermen to make contact with other fishermen. I may preach the sermons, and I may have a healing effect on a group, but it will take ordinary people to make it take hold.” So, he called these fishermen.
I have a question for you: “When was the last time you went fishing for people, the last time you went in the name of Jesus to make a difference and to invite somebody out of one place of being into something of the nearer presence of God?” Before you answer that question, I want you to think about how it is that you are here today in this church, maybe not just in this church, but where you are in your own journey of faith. Perhaps you have had a life-changing moment, a shining-light, Damascus-like experience. They are rare, but they happen for people. From an encounter at a particular moment in time, everything is different.
Maybe, like me, you were raised in a Christian family, and somehow the example of your mother and father was enough to nurture you and bring you along almost in a seamless way into the life of the church and an introduction to God and the way of Jesus. Maybe it was seamless for you. For others it is a clear invitation. A particular relative - often a grandmother - somebody brought you to the life of faith.
Well, whatever the way, we are told this is an important part. Reginald Bibby, who has become the most significant poll taker in Canada, especially around our religious life, working out of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, tells us that when people are asked “Why don't you go to church?” the majority say, “Nobody asked me!” We have come to depend on being invited, and often, that is exactly the experience people have when saying, “That is why I am here.” Only eight per cent of the people who find themselves in the Christian church are in the Christian church because of the preacher. Only eight per cent. The majority of people are there because somebody invited them and somebody in the fellowship of the group continues to nurture them in faith. Now you begin to understand why Jesus called ordinary men - fishermen - to the work and ministry that he called them to.
I want to tell you a story about that. Many years ago, when my ministry was focused in Peterborough, my wife made me very proud by beginning an organization called the Peterborough AIDS Resource Network. She acted on behalf of the federal and provincial governments to begin a resource network for people who were HIV-positive or had AIDS to put them in contact with resources, but also to support their families and friends. Well, a good friend of mine whom I met this week was reminding me about a lovely older woman who became a part of that group. She went to a conference on AIDS here in Toronto from Peterborough, and as she sat in the audience that day, she heard the speaker harangue the church for its lack of care and concern for people who had become an embarrassment. There was a way in which the church seemed to imply it would have nothing to do with people like this. She came back to Peterborough and spoke to a group of women that she had known for a long time - they had been part of a Bible study group together - and they had talked many times of growing in understanding Jesus, but recognizing that it was very hard to follow Jesus while doing the work of Jesus.
In the process of talking about that, one of the women in the group said, “I'd like to tell you about a man who lives on the same floor as I do in my apartment building. This young man needs help, and from time to time, without trying to embarrass him, I say, ”˜I am on my way to get groceries. Can I pick up a few things for you? Can I run an errand for you?'” Eventually, as his eyesight failed, she used to read to him.
There were a whole lot of things she did for him, and in the end, that young man said to her, “You are like my grandmother. My grandmother, my parents, my family won't have anything to do with me, but can I adopt you as my grandmother, because that is what you are for me?”
She shared that story with the other women, and they resolved together to start a network of grandmothers, who would be a support to people who had HIV/AIDS, by running errands for them, by doing some shopping, by reading to them, by doing any number of things that made a difference, in the way grandmothers/grandparents do for young families. Parents are so busy they don't always have enough time to add that little extra touch that only a grandparent can add to family life. These women did it for these young men and women with AIDS. They took something that they knew how to do, and offered it to God, and God blessed it and gave it back as the ministry of the Christian church to people in need - very ordinary women who knew how to be grandmothers!
When I was in theological college, we had to do field work. Now, field work was working in an institution like a hospital or in a parish church or in a congregation like Timothy Eaton Memorial Church, but we complained constantly that we didn't have enough time for our studies, our Greek, our Latin, our Hebrew, and all the other studies; maybe it would be better if we did our studying first, finished that, and got our degree, and then moved on with the rest. I will never forget when Charles Fielding, who was the head of field work, said, “You can't learn Jesus until you do Jesus.”
I learned the truth of that in my first placement, in a burn unit in a hospital. It transformed me actually more that my biblical studies did! Somehow, my biblical studies came alive: To do the work of Jesus is in a manner to learn Jesus.
One of the people in my whole congregational life of whom I am very proud is a man by the name of Paul. Paul is the president of the food bank we share in common. Now Paul retired early a few years ago. He had been the vice-president of various divisions in bank life, and he said to me one day, “You know, I could never make president there, so I decided I would be president of the food bank instead!”
Well, one of the great gifts that Paul brought was his administrative skills. Being able to organize things, to organize teams, to make sure you have the right food supplies, and that you have got the suppliers in place, and the like, is an important gift, and you know, it might not seem like much - Paul used to say, “Well, you know, I am only a banker, I am only an administrator….” but you cannot imagine what a gift he made to the functioning of such a place as the food bank.
He offered to God his talent, and Jesus welcomes this. God does not engage in the business of transforming the world as a Lone Ranger. God means hands and feet, eyes and mouths, and most of all hearts that become, if you like, the extension of him, and help us all to realize something of the presence of the Kingdom. It may be that you can only offer a cake or a plate of sandwiches, maybe you can offer your organizational skills; maybe you have the gift to read to someone. Whatever it is, your call is to be fishers of people!
I preach in the name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.