Kaleidoscope

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the third Sunday after the Epiphany are here.

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What would it take for you to hear someone say “follow me” and you immediately drop everything – your job, your life as you know it – and go? Can we even really imagine a life so terrible that we’d even consider doing such a thing? Dig deep in your compassionate imagination and consider what kind of life these men must have had that an invitation from a stranger would cause them to drop everything and go. Galilean Fishermen in first century Palestine were near the lowest rung of the caste system ladder. Most of us simply think of fishing as a leisurely sport but these men worked day and night to make barely enough to feed their families. Roman law demanded they sell every single fish they caught into the Roman Economy. The best of the catch were sold to the elite and wealthy and what was left, if any, to the very fishermen who caught it. The money they were paid for the fish they caught was barely enough to buy fish to feed their families.

In our gospel reading today, Mark tells us of Jesus’ arrival in Galilee to take over when John the Baptizer was interrupted — proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “the time IS fulfilled, the Kingdom of God HAS come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.” And he offers these fishermen an invitation to live in the economy of God’s Kingdom, an economy built not on using people up but on building each other up with companionship and collaboration.

And they are willing to drop their nets and follow. They needed genuine good news and they were willing to follow Jesus to see if what he said was true. Perhaps, probably, for the first time in their lives, they are given a choice, given the permission and authority to decide how they will live their life. In our 21st century, middle-class, North American world, we really have no idea what it is to not have choices about how we live. And yet, we still have a tendency to let ourselves get caught in the currents of tribalism, exclusivity, and scarcity, none of which offer much good news or freedom.

In the Kingdom life, we are freed from our self-created struggles of building our own kingdom by proving ourselves, needing to be admired, to be the strongest, the smartest, the happiest, or the one with the most or best stuff. The Good News is that God’s Kingdom is ‘at hand’ as some translations put it, right here among us and it is available to all of us if we change our hearts and minds and believe that God’s Way is what we are created for, who we genuinely are – people loved by God so that we can learn to love each other better and show the world they are loved, too.

When Jesus tells these fishermen that he will show them how to fish for people, Jesus is saying that relationships are the building blocks of God’s Kingdom, not money, not bricks and mortar, not prestige or political power or military might. These men lived in a culture that said other people were simply a means of getting what I want and except for the form of official government I don’t think our consumerist culture is much different.

Is the person on the other side of the cash register there only for your benefit? How can you be a blessing to them and show them Jesus by who you are? Are folks of the “other” political party your enemy? How can you love them as Jesus asks us to do so that they know God loves them, too? Do you see those who are seeking a better life in this country as trying to take away the life you feel entitled to simply because you were born here or with more than they were? How can you learn to see them as Jesus saw these fishermen?

We can change our hearts and minds with God’s help and in companionship with each other. The good news of God is hope not despair or destruction. The good news of God is that we are all loved. The good news is that we don’t have to wonder if we are enough. Jesus tells us we are. We are already on the journey of the Kingdom we were born for, all of us together, making each other whole and holy with the light of God’s love shining through all of us, like a kaleidoscope.

A Kaleidoscope is filled with seemingly random bits and pieces that are each beautiful but when viewed together with a light shining through them they create amazing pictures that change as they move together. Their combined and reflected nature is so much more than what the bits could be alone. The amazing beauty of a kaleidoscope comes from all of the bits and pieces being tumbled around together in the light.

This is how I picture God’s Kingdom. This Kingdom life isn’t always easy and we get tumbled about sometimes but together and in God’s light we make something wonderfully beautiful. This is the life of companionship and collaboration, seeing others as companions in a life of abundance rather than competitors in a world of scarcity. Jesus invites us into a life lived rooted in abundance, believing that the treasures of God’s Kingdom – love, joy, peace, hope – increase the more we offer them to others. We are more, we are whole, we are holy, when we live with each other rather than against. We are most fully human, God’s beloved people, who and Whose we are created to be when we answer Jesus’ invitation to follow God’s way.

One of my favorite still living theologians, Os Guinness, says that all human beings have two calls in life. Our primary call is toward God. It is God’s desire to be in relationship with us and God calls to us, inviting us to be aware of God with us in every moment of our lives. Jesus offers us this invitation in flesh and blood. Our second call – and yes, each of us has this secondary call as well – is to live vocationally. Whatever it is we do – teacher, accountant, janitor, maintenance worker, engineer, server, business owner, retired, whatever – we are to do it from the image of God within us, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, for the glory of God and the wellbeing of all. We all have a choice to live in the economy of God’s kingdom, choosing companionship over competition, abundance over scarcity, compassion over exclusion.

So, what are the nets we need to drop so that we can focus our attention on God’s Way? How do we need to change our thinking, our hearts and minds and let God’s Way illuminate the beautiful Kaleidoscope of God’s Kingdom? How do we offer this Good News to others by the way we live?

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.” Amen.