SERMON PREACHED BY THE REV’D ALLAN B. WARREN III AT THE CHURCH OF THE ADVENT,
SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 2012, THE THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY
From the Gospel this morning: “And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men’.”
South Carolina has been very much in the news lately, and as most of you know, I grew up there - in that section of the country known as the Bible Belt, where religion is one of the regional pastimes. Like football it is a local obsession, and try as you may, you cannot escape it. Religion in the South is everywhere.
I remember when the Interstate Highway was built just outside of town quite long ago when I was a child and Eisenhower was President. As well as making travel easier, the highway was intended to make a road trip pleasant. There was a ban on billboards. No garish advertisements all over as on other roads, just the countryside: fields, peach orchards, the mountains in the distance. This prohibition, however, did not deter one of the local churches from putting up a huge sign on a hill which faced the road, which, in bright red capital letters, posed the question: “Have you found God?” A number of people in town got angry about this, but there wasn’t much that they could do. Opposing religion did not win you many friends in South Carolina, and the church stubbornly maintained that this was not a billboard, not an advertisement, but rather a question which everyone was obliged to answer. And so the sign stayed there for years. As I said before, in the South religion is everywhere – even on the highway.
But looking back on this, I’m a bit surprised by the question. Because . . . in spite of all the Bible thumping “Have you found God?” is not a very Biblical way of putting it. For the Bible does not consider God to be something which you and I can find. Rather the Bible pictures God as someone who is seeking to find us.
The Hebrew and Christian God of the Bible is not an idea or a concept or a force which can be discovered, but is understood to be a person - a person who is engaged in a quest. A person engaged in a quest - a search really - for man. The God of the Bible calls out to man. The God of the Bible searches for man. God yearns for His creature and searches for him to find him and bring him back to Himself. That is how the Bible pictures God. And it is important to notice that the movement is one-sided - from God to man. God’s action of yearning, searching, calling, finding, and finally bringing man back to Himself - God’s action is prior. It is an action of grace, and grace is always prior. God acts. God searches. We are found, and then we may respond.
Beginning with the nineteenth century, most people got used to thinking about this the other way around - man searching for God. Philosophers, when they were at their best, told us that all of human life is a search for God. Novels and plays and poems have been written on this theme. People journey to the East to find God - as if He were somehow more there than He is here. Man in search of God. The Bible, however, has an alarming way of turning our ideas upside down and forcing us to view things from a very different vantage point. Certainly, it doesn’t discourage man’s search for God, but what it tells us and what it shows us is that the God for whom we may be searching has all the time been searching for us.
It’s worthwhile to search - no doubt - and we must never stop, but the point really is to be found. One may be asked, “Have you found God?” but that’s not it. The question is rather, “Have you allowed God to find you?” And at the bottom of it all is a paradox: until one is found by God, one has no inkling where to look for God. The real search begins only when one has already been found.
God, as Scripture has it, searched out, found, and called to Himself a peculiar people - Israel, the Jews. The history of the people of the Covenant is the story of God’s searching for and calling back His own people - sending prophets, sometimes kings, even foreigners to bring them back to His way. And God made that people to be the instrument of His search. The Jews’ ultimate destiny was, according to the prophet Isaiah to be a “light to the Gentiles.” They were to be a missionary nation which would be God’s agent in His search for all humanity. That was the purpose behind Israel’s election as God’s people. That was how she would fulfill herself as God’s chosen.
There you have the Old Testament - the Hebrew Scripture - but don’t we find a continuity and indeed a culmination in the New? For we believe - don’t we? - that God’s search for man found its completion in the Incarnation of His Son - Jesus - when God Himself entered human life. Himself there to search for, Himself there to find and call and bring man back to Himself. And again that is Jesus - God Himself searching. Indeed that is how the Bible again and again describes Him. The itinerant preacher/rabbi who roams the countryside gathering to Himself the poor, the despised, the thieves, the prostitutes, the outcasts, the lost? The shepherd who goes out to find the sheep that is lost. Is He not the One who dies on the cross in order, as St. John tells us, that He might “draw all men to Himself” - all men, all women no matter how far away they have strayed, no matter how utterly they have allowed themselves to be lost. Jesus - He is God in search of man.
And the first command He gives to those who would be disciples (the first, mind you) is this: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.” Follow me - be found by me, I found you - and join me in seeking out and finding / fishing for others. The Church St. Paul tells us - and Paul was certainly a man who was sought and found - St. Paul tell us that the Church is the “new Israel” and she is that because she continues and extends the mission of Israel as God’s agent in His search for humanity. The Church, Paul again tells us, is the body of Christ. And it is that because it is the body of those who have been found by Christ and made one with Him. It is that because it is the body which searches for and seeks out those whom Christ would find. Like our Lord lifted up upon the cross - His body broken - the Church is the body which draws all men to Him. “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.”
We are now in that season which the Church calls Epiphany, and you all know - I am sure - that Epiphany means “manifestation” - literally “shining out” - and each Sunday during this time the gospel appointed focuses our attention on an epiphany - an incident in His life in which who and what Jesus is shines out and is made manifest. Today’s Gospel, however, is a bit of a puzzle. It is not the account of a wonder or a miracle. It does not record a mystical experience or a vision. It’s just the seemingly simple story of fishermen who leave their work and follow Jesus to become, as He commanded, “fishers of men.” How can this be an epiphany? It is unlikely, certainly (who would drop everything and follow a stranger?), but what can it possibly tell us about Jesus?
Only this, but certainly this: that Jesus is the continuation and the unfolding of God’s yearning for humankind. If God is, as Scripture teaches He is, then here in Jesus’ charge to become “fishers of men” we have an explicit epiphany of the God of Israel - God-in-Christ Jesus in search of man; God-in-Christ Jesus sending others out to search for man. This makes clear what Jesus is all about, and how the God of the Jews is present in His life and ministry.
And it makes clear as well, dear brothers and sisters, what you and I are called to be. There is a principle which can be taken from the New Testament which describes the nature of the Church and of each individual Christian. It is this: what our Lord Jesus Christ is in Himself, He calls the Church and each Christian to be. What He is, we through grace are to become. He is the Son of God, we are to be sons of God through Him. He is the epiphany of God; He calls us to be epiphanies of God ourselves through Him. We are called to be like Him, and we are given the power to be like Him.
And again, one aspect of this call is to be a “fisher of men.” It is - remember - the first command Jesus gives to the Church. It is the primary action by which the Church and the Christians make evident the saving action of God:
by searching as God searches,
by loving with God’s love,
by declaring and making manifest His glory,
and by joining Him in bringing back those lost sheep whom He, as their Savior, has already found.
Amen.