Third Sunday of Epiphany

‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’

A priest was fed up with hearing the excuses people made for not coming to Church.

Bearing those excuses in mind he wrote ‘Ten Reasons why I never wash’ and put it on the Church notice board:

• I was forced to wash as a child.

• People who wash are hypocrites – they think they are cleaner than everybody else.

• There are so many different kinds of soap I can’t decide which one is best.

• I used to wash but I got bored and stopped.

• I do wash but only on special occasions such as Christmas and Easter and weddings and funerals.

• None of my friends wash.

• I’ll start washing when I get older and dirtier

• I can’t spare the time

• The bathroom is too cold in winter and too hot in summer

• People who make soap are only after your money.

One winter’s day the great American evangelist Dwight L. Moody visited a prominent Chicago citizen. The man whom he visited was not a Church goer. Moody was shown into the parlour where he was joined by his host. We don’t know much about the conversation they were having up until the point where Moody was stressing the importance of belonging to the Church and the necessity of the Church for Christian Faith. The man disagreed with what Moody  saying  that it was possible to be just as good a Christian without the Church and without being part of the Church or going to Church. Without a word Moody stood up and walked over to the fireplace. He picked up the Tongs and pulled a red hot coal from the fire and laid it in the hearth away from the heat of the other coals.

In silence they stood and watched the coal as it lost its heat and its redness and eventually go out altogether a dead lump of grey ash.

‘I see’ said the man.

Now the Church as an institution may not always appear to be  very attractive. But the Church as people in relationship with God and each other is not only attractive it is also necessary for the Gospel. We need God and we need each other and the two needs are met in the Church. And today we see Jesus beginning to draw together that group, which would be the embryo Church. He calls together his first disciples to be with him and to be with each other. And it’s the very first thing that Jesus does. Before he utters a word of teaching or reaches out hand to heal Jesus brings together a group of men to be with him and to be with each other. Eventually there would be twelve. Jesus knew what he was doing.

You see God has always worked with a community. Yes he’s worked with individuals put always as part of a community. In the O.T. God deals with Israel and works through Israel. God’s relationship is with a nation, a community. The promises of God are embodied in the life of the twelve tribes of Israel. So Jesus chooses twelve the new Israel the new community of God’s people. The Gospel message that Jesus is about to deliver is going to be entrusted to that twelve and the community which they will build. The Gospel way of life that Jesus is going to teach and to exemplify is to be lived out in a community. That first group of twelve were very different from one another. There must have been arguments - well, we know that there were. But they needed each other and Jesus needed them.

The Gospel story is very realistic and very honest about those disciples – particularly about their weaknesses and their failures. Because of that they needed each other. Each of them needed  someone else to inspire, someone else to strengthen, someone else to give support, someone to forgive and experience forgiveness. A group of diverse people brought together to live out the Gospel . That’s the Church then and now. And we need that fellowship today as we always have. Because left to ourselves the fire of the Gospel will dim and cool and die.

I have never known anyone come to faith, nor grow in faith nor develop in the Christian life outside the Church. Fellowship within the Church is absolutely vital for growth in faith. If you or I find it hard to pray we need people to pray for us – that’s what the praying Church does. When faith and hope elude us we need others to keep the light of faith alight – that’s what the faithful Church does. The fellowship of the local Church sharing together in sacraments and worship and friendship is vital for our own Christian lives. For the mystery at the heart of the church is none other than Christ himself. Here we find faith and here our faith is strengthened as the Lord himself comes amongst us as together we gather around his table and his word. But we need to be careful.

A Church is not a club. The Church is not an extension of our social life with a few hymns thrown in for good measure. It is very easy for Churches to become cliques of the like- minded. When that happens it is but a short walk to being inward looking and concerned with the life of the Church  itself rather that concerned with the Gospel and the world. A Church which lives for itself will die by itself. When William Temple was Archbishop of Canterbury during the 1940s  he said: ’ The Church is unique amongst human societies in that its exists for the benefit of those who are not it’s members. Jesus called those twelve men together for a purpose.

‘Go and fish for others’ He said to them. Go and share what you have with others and bring them into the fellowship too. And he was saying: ‘ Don’t just go to those who are like you – go to the whole world.  Go to everybody and bring them all in to fellowship – including and especially the crooked, the crazed and the cracked.  Those who are different from you. Those who have no church background or faith background – those young people who seem to  live in a foreign country and speak a foreign language but have just as much a place in the fellowship of the Church as we do if they could only find it.

Maybe we need to ask ourselves some tough questions including: ‘What is it about the way we do things and worship and live that fails to attract them?’ What do we need to do? Are we prepared to make the costly changes that mission in today’s world demands of us?

A Church which lives for itself will die by itself. Jesus called those first disciples into fellowship with him and with each other. God has called us into his Church and he has called us to be his Church in this place. But he hasn’t called us just for our own benefit ; he has called us for the benefit of those who do not yet belong.

‘Follow me says the Lord and you will catch people.’