- Tonight, the season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday.
- The Ash Wednesday service will be held at 7pm at Fairhaven United Methodist Church. All are welcomed to attend.
2415 Saw Mill Run Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA 15234
Sunday 9:30am Worship
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It’s time to order lilies and hyacinths to decorate the altar for Easter Sunday. The names of those remembered and those honored will be listed in the bulletin on Easter Sunday. You may take the potted flowers with you after worship service. Lilies are $13.50 and hyacinths are $9.50.
Please have orders to Flo Black by March 8, 2026.
In accordance with information from Chapon’s greenhouse, we can request specific hyacinth colors, but Chapon’s cannot guarantee color availability. If available, hyacinths colors are blue (b), pink (p), and white (w). If you have no preference of hyacinth colors, please let Flo know when you place your order.
Please provide the following information:
Your name and contact information (phone # please)
_____________________________________________
In memory of __________________________________
In honor of ____________________________________
In memory of __________________________________
In honor of ____________________________________
Number of Lilies ordered ____
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Capernaum from the air. Summary
n this week’s service, Rev. Peg Bowman explored the season of Epiphany and the importance of understanding Jesus as a person, not just a historical figure destined for the cross. She emphasized the value of getting to know Jesus in the same way his early disciples – fishermen like Peter, Andrew, James, and John – did: through shared meals, community involvement, and observing his care for others. Bowman illustrated this by highlighting the recent story of a Texas judge who included Scripture verses in a court order concerning a young boy, demonstrating a “salty” way to point others towards faith and truth.
Bowman then delved into the Sermon on the Mount, focusing on Jesus’ call for followers to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.” She explained that “salty” signifies not just preservation, but also being impactful and truthful. Connecting this to Isaiah’s prophecy of restoration and rebuilding, Bowman challenged the congregation to live out God’s love, be restorers in their communities, and to strive for better, embracing the hope and promise of God’s love through Jesus.
Transcript
Well, good morning again. This morning we are still, at least for another week and a half, still in the season of Epiphany, the revealing of Jesus to the world. And I was really hoping that we could take some time between Christmas and Lent to to get to know Jesus as a person, what he was like before he was famous, back when he was hanging out with the fishermen and preaching in local synagogues. But here we are only a week and a half from Ash Wednesday, so there’s not a lot of time left to talk about Jesus before we get to the cross.
But I’m going to do what I can with the time that we have. My thought, though, is not to do just like just a Bible study, but to get to know Jesus kind of the same way that the fishermen did as a person, as a neighbor, as a member of the community. Let’s do this. I mean, that’s how Peter and Andrew and James and John got to know Jesus, right? The fishermen knew Jesus.
They knew he was a preacher. In fact, Peter and Andrew had been introduced to Jesus by his cousin, John the Baptist, when they were all down by the River Jordan before Jesus began his ministry. So for them, Jesus was already part of the community when they met him. They had meals together.
They hung out together. They watched him care for their neighbors. And can you imagine what it would have been like to spend time with Jesus before anybody knew that he was the Messiah, before anybody knew that he was heading for death on a cross, Now, Jesus always knew these things. He knew he was the Messiah.
He knew, at least he knew that much before he started his ministry. I suspect, and this is just a guess, but I suspect, remember that story back when he right? was a kid who’s 12 years old and he got left behind at the temple and his parents found him a couple days later talking to the clergy in the ministry there. And I suspect that what Jesus was doing was asking them questions about the Messiah, about what the law and the prophets said about what the Messiah would do. He was figuring out who he was because Jesus had to learn about life like all of us do, a little bit at a time.
And so that’s what, I suspect that’s what he was doing there. So keeping in mind, though, our purpose of getting to know Jesus, we approach today’s gospel reading with that purpose in mind. And the passage here is part of what’s known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus preached these words early on in his ministry.
In fact, the sermon… comes immediately after Jesus called the first disciples.
He called Simon and Andrew, who were brothers, and James and John, who were also brothers, all four of them fishermen who fished the Sea of Galilee and lived in or near Capernaum, which is a working-class seaside village. We have a slide of Capernaum, I think, yes? Yeah, there you go. Take a look at that. So, this is what Capernaum looks like today.
You can kind of imagine what it might have looked like back then. So, we have the village, the houses here and here. These are villages and shops here and here and here. And there were some under here.
This thing looks like a flying saucer here. That’s a church. One of the things that bugs me about the Holy Land is like every place where Jesus put his feet, somebody has to build a church, right? So, here you have this flying saucer. This actually is up on Stiltsa, so the houses that were there are still there.
They’re under the church. So, for example, Peter’s mother-in-law’s house. Peter’s mother-in-law lived at Capernaum, and we hear about her in the Bible. Her house was like somewhere.
.. underneath there is where that is. So this is the village.
And you can see also, for people who lived here, that you could literally like roll out of bed and throw a rock into the Sea of Galilee. You’re right there. Also, the beaches here are not sand, they’re rock, and so they would have been parking the boats somewhere along here. This building here is a synagogue.
That one was built, I think, if I remember correctly, like 1 or 200 A.D. So, this is not the building that Jesus was in, but the building that Jesus was in is underneath that one. They actually built it on top of, and you can see, I mean, even the houses and things like that are down lower than this synagogue.
So, there is a synagogue below there, which is where Jesus taught, where He did some of His first healings. That is it. The next picture, which don’t put that up just yet, but the next picture will be taken from, I believe, right around here. There’s a gate right there into the city, and I think the person taking this next picture was standing there.
If you would put up the next. This is the mountain where it’s believed that Jesus taught Jesus. the Sermon on the Mount. And again, because Jesus was there, there’s a little tiny chapel on top of the hill, so you have to have one of those.
But it’s believed that He would have been teaching here and people would just be sitting around on this hillside listening to Him talk. How cool is that? So that’s sort of, this is where we are. So back to the disciples. When Jesus called these fishermen, he also gave them nicknames sometimes.
So Simon became Peter, which means the rock. And James and John became the sons of thunder. And he had a way of making friends with people right off the bat, seeing who they were, joking around with them, putting them at ease. And I think Jesus would have been fun to hang out with.
So as we come to the Sermon on the Mount, pardon me, Jesus might not have called all Yeah. 12 disciples at this point. He called them from different towns and different places as he traveled. So at this point in the Sermon on the Mount, we know that there were at least four disciples.
More beyond that, we don’t know. Also thus far in Jesus’ ministry, he has been staying within the region around the Sea of Galilee, preaching in the synagogues. So, He had not gone south to Jerusalem yet. There are lots and lots of little villages and towns all around the edge of the Sea of Galilee, as well as on the hills beyond the shorelines.
So there would have been lots of synagogues to visit. And also, the word synagogue in Hebrew means to gather together and to gather together. So it wouldn’t even necessarily have been a building. It’s just a place where people got together that he would have preached, okay? And that’s still true today, by the way.
Wherever God’s people gather, that’s the church, no matter where you are. So Jesus was traveling around, preaching in the synagogues. And many of the sermons that he preached were received really well, like the one that he preached at Capernaum. Some of the sermons were not received well, like the one that he preached in his hometown of Nazareth, where the congregation very nearly threw him off a cliff.
That’s another story for another day. So here we are, now gathered on this hillside, looking out over the Sea of Galilee, listening to the Sermon on the Mount. And Jesus has already spoken what we call the Beatitudes, the blessings, blessed are the poor, blessed are those who hunger. I believe that, did Pastor Dylan preach on that last week, maybe? No, okay.
That comes right before today’s reading, so I’m kind of, anyway. But all those blessings come right, we’ve led up to this. Today’s sermon, the same sermon, but further along, Jesus changes gears, right? And he says to the people listening, and to us as well, you are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? Now, I don’t know about you, but I have heard a lot of sermons in my lifetime on that particular verse that, And most of the time, the focus I’ve heard has been on the fact that salt is a preservative.
Salt keeps food from going bad, especially in a warm region like ancient Israel. And likewise, people of faith help keep society from going bad. And there’s some truth to that thought. But as I look at what Jesus is saying here, I’m not sure that was his point.
So I went back to the original Greek just to double-check, and as it turns out, there actually But, are two meanings for the word salty in Greek, neither one of them having to do with preservatives. One is salty like the flavor, as in salt makes food taste good. The other is salty as in being on point, like hitting the nail on the head, and that’s That was a salty moment, for example. And so both meanings of the word salt tell us that God has made us and blessed us to be a blessing, even if it means being a little salty sometimes.
And I came across a wonderful example of this in real life this past week. I think most of us have been at least somewhat following the story from Minnesota about that little boy Liam in the bunny hat. When I heard that the judge in Texas had handed down a decision in his case, he said, I got nebby, and I went out on the internet and found the actual judge’s order, okay? Wanted to see exactly what he said, and you guys are welcome to see this afterwards if you want to, but what I’m interested in here is the very end, because at the end of a judge’s decision, you usually have the judge’s signature, and that’s it, right? But that’s not what he ended with. He put on this a little picture of Liam here, and then two Scripture verses, Matthew 19, Right? 14, and John 11, 35.
And he didn’t spell out those verses. He just left them there. That’s salty. So I, of course, had to be nebbier and go out and find out exactly what those verses said.
Matthew 19:14 says, Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them, for it is But… such of these as the kingdom of heaven belongs.
And then John 11:35, Jesus wept. That’s what it means to be the salt of the earth, to direct people’s attention to God’s word and God’s truth and God’s love in the way that we live out our lives every day. And along those same lines, Jesus continues his sermon by saying, ‘You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others.
‘ We don’t light a lamp and put it under a bushel. We put it up where it can be seen, and so other things can be seen by that light.’ So when Jesus says that this gives glory to God, again, there are two possible meanings in that phrase, giving glory to God. One means praising God, and then second means to speak God’s truth.
One theologian put it this way, God made us to spice things up. not to overpower the dish, but to enliven it, highlighting other colors. And likewise, God makes us to shine as only we can. So we do good things like putting food in the food pantry, not because we want to be blessed, but because we are blessed, and we are blessed to be a blessing.
Jesus then counterbalances all of this with a word of wisdom. He says, Don’t think I’m doing away with the law and the prophets. Everything in the Old Testament still stands. Every word of it is there to be fulfilled.
and And with this in mind, think back to the Old Testament reading from Isaiah we heard a moment ago. Isaiah writes, Is this not the fast that I choose? – See? To loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house, and when you see the naked to cover them and not hide yourself from your own kin? And God promises when we hear and do these things— that our ancient ruins will be rebuilt, that we shall raise up the foundations of many generations, that we shall be called repairer of the breach, restorer of streets to live in. And I just want to say, apart from the sermon, that has always touched me as someone living in Pittsburgh.
because of how the mills went down and the towns went down. We are called to be restorers of these places, rebuilders of these places in the name of God. I’ve always believed that. These words of Isaiah were written 500 years before Jesus was born, but they are so fresh and so relevant the ink could still be wet.
And isn’t that really what we want to see, is to see restoration around us, both for ourselves and for the generations to come. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that God gives us hope for this. Jesus says everything in the Old Testament stands right down to the last comma or period the Old Testament stands. But Jesus challenges us to do better.
He says, And That could be a little scary thought right there. But Jesus had some specific issues with the scribes and the Pharisees. The scribes were people whose full-time job it was, whose career it was, to copy the Scriptures. They had no printing presses back then, so everything had to be copied by hand onto scrolls And, made out of either sheepskin or papyrus, and they had to be copied absolutely exactly so that God’s Word was not changed in any way.
So it’s understandable that the scribes became perfectionists. They were by nature nitpickers, which is a great thing for the job, but it was not so good when dealing with people. And the Pharisees, they were legalists. Okay.
They were people who knew the Scriptures very well, and they knew God’s law very well, and they held everybody else to the letter of the law, but not themselves. And Jesus said they were like whitewashed tombs, looking good on the outside, but on the inside they were full of greed and self-indulgence and wickedness. And Jesus looks at all this, and he says that his people— His followers, His disciples, need to do better than that. In these words, both from Isaiah and from Matthew, we catch a glimpse of who the real Jesus was.
We also see and hear the hope that God offers us of a future where God’s word and God’s plans are fully and completely lived out. But we also realize that human beings can’t manage that on our own. We need a Savior, and that’s why Jesus came. Jesus shows us by words and actions how very much God loves us.
and Jesus has come to us where we are as one of us so that one day we can be where he is. So in the name of Jesus and by his power, be salt, be light, and give God the glory. Amen.
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n this week’s service, Rev. Dylan Parson explored the biblical story of Jesus calling his first disciples, drawing a powerful contrast between the idyllic imagery of a peaceful seashore and the harsh realities of life in Galilee under Roman occupation. He emphasized that the fishermen weren’t enjoying a leisurely outing but were engaged in difficult labor, facing economic hardship and a pervasive sense of oppression. Parson used this context to highlight the profound nature of Jesus’ invitation – a call not to simply apologize for shortcomings, but to radically transform one’s life and embrace a new direction, moving beyond a predictable and often bleak existence.
Parson challenged the congregation to consider why these fishermen, without witnessing miracles or hearing Jesus’ message, would abandon their livelihoods and families to follow him. He suggested they were drawn to the promise of something fundamentally different—a glimmer of hope and the possibility of a transformed life, a light piercing through the shadows of their world. The pastor concluded by urging listeners to consider their own “nets” – the routines and securities that might be holding them back—and to be open to the radical change and unknown journey that following Jesus might entail.
Transcript
The Prophet Isaiah’s words feel especially heavy, visceral for us during a western Pennsylvania winter, I think. You know, we’re living in a pitch-dark land, right? I feel like we’re home for two hours after this before we’re in pitch darkness. We get just a few hours of clear sky a week. Christmas cheer, the busyness of the season, the high points of winter, unfortunately front-loaded, have completely faded at this point.
We’re in the long part of winter, the intractable piece, where it feels like the sun just barely gets over the horizon and then drops back down. So it might feel a little bit disconnected to hear Matthew’s gospel text this morning that takes place on the beach. You can picture the image of Jesus and these first disciples. Some date palms swaying, the light pebbly sand, the water gently lapping on the shore against the tied up boats.
You’ve got the sunrise. James and John are just silhouettes against the morning sky. Yeah. And this is this really appealing image.
Almost feels like a tropical paradise, very different than what we have right now. And we can envision the sounds of these men sloshing through the surf, boats slicing through the waves, these four future disciples throwing their nets on a peaceful morning. I think that’s a mistaken image, at least an incomplete image. Because we picture fishermen in our context as doing something for fun.
It’s leisure. We picture them going out to relax on the water while the rest of the world is asleep. But these are men at work. This is their job site, these fishermen.
And they’re doing this work to provide for their families. They’re commercial fishermen. So forget the palm trees and the sea spray. Drop the idea that anybody’s on a casual stroll on the beach to watch the sun come up.
These guys are at work. Five in the morning on the job. And envision what that’s really like. There’s a cold wind.
You can’t escape the smell of seaweed and wet wood mixed with the smell of dying tilapia flopping in the boat. And every man’s hands out there are chafed and blistery from throwing ropes over and over and over again. No. And this is, as Isaiah puts it, a land of deep shadow.
And so envision what that’s really like. The people of Galilee are an occupied people. They’re just keeping their heads down. They’re trying to make a living under the boot of the Roman Empire that just marches violently and carelessly through their cities.
There’s massacres all the time. The king’s a tyrant. This is a shadow over the land that isn’t just emotional, isn’t just spiritual. It’s killing people.
It’s creating orphans. And maybe we can feel that shadow in our land, in our world. Right? And so all this said, this is not a leisurely day on the lake. This is not like going to Presque Isle.
It’s not like going to North Park Lake. This is hard labor in a hard place. And that’s where Jesus shows up to meet the disciples. Not the synagogue, not the temple, not the market square.
He goes and sees them at work. And so we meet Jesus this morning, walking through all this bustle on the lakeshore, all of this mourning work. And he has just returned from his 40-day temptation in the desert, which we get back to in Lent, strangely. But the Holy Spirit had sent him out immediately after his baptism by John in the Jordan, and he’s tempted in the desert for 40 days.
And after this great trial, he’s proven his ability to resist Satan at all costs, but And so he chooses now to begin his ministry in the world. So he moves away from his hometown of Nazareth because the prophets never heard in his hometown, right? And he decides he’s going to begin a new chapter in the lakeside town of Capernaum. And so that’s where we are today. And what’s happening here is the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry.
He transitions from being this Nazarene carpenter to a preacher across the region of Galilee. And he’s no longer the guy that he was in his hometown. One chapter has closed, a new chapter has begun, and he’s no longer the guy that he was in his hometown. And the time has started for something new.
And he has this simple message that he proclaims everywhere that he goes, and he says, Repent. The kingdom of heaven has come near. A better translation, the one you heard Flo read from the CEB this morning, is, Change your hearts and lives. Here comes the kingdom of heaven.
And Jesus’ message is clear: God is doing something right now. And He’s doing it here, He’s doing it among you, He’s doing it in this place. Amen. This isn’t just a far-off, abstract prediction.
So shape up or face the consequences. And this is why I think the change your hearts and lives language is so much better than repent. We understand repentance to be like apologizing. But repentance is, there’s a word metanoia in Greek, which is not about apology.
It’s not even a call to recognize, to name the sins you’ve committed. It means turn around. It means to become radically different than how you were, to go in a different direction. So don’t just fiddle on the edge of things.
Don’t just apologize for what you’ve done. Change your life. Change who you are completely. And so this is the message that Jesus has started proclaiming.
We don’t know how long he’s been doing this at this point, but he’s still a really minor character on the Galilean landscape. You know, just like Pittsburgh, they have preachers that wander around on the street corners. Jesus is still just one of those people. But we meet him this morning, walking along the Sea of Galilee as a new chapter begins.
So first he sees Simon, Peter, and Andrew, and they’re fishing from the shoreline. They’re casting their nets into the choppy sea. And he says, come, follow me, and I will show you how to fish for people. And they drop their nets immediately.
These tools that have been their livelihood for the entirety of their adult lives, Amen. and probably before that, they drop their nets and they go immediately. They follow Jesus up the beach. And now these guys are a group of three, Jesus and these other two, and they continue along the shoreline.
And soon they spot James and John, and they’re not on the shoreline. They’re out on their father’s boat a couple yards out into the sea. And again, Jesus calls out to them, follow me. And they’re out on the shoreline.
That’s it. And he doesn’t try to pitch them on anything. He doesn’t give them a plan or a job opportunity. He doesn’t promise them the secrets of the universe.
But still, they just respond to this simple invitation. And they drop their nets. They climb out of the boat. They wade to shore.
And they set out on this journey to somewhere with this guy. And without so much as a see-you-later to their own dad, he just stands bewildered in Okay. the boat, what’s he going to do now? What are they going to do now? Nobody knows but Jesus, but they’ve decided to go. And I think the most glaring question that grips any of us as we read this story is a really basic one, and that is, why did they go? because at least as Matthew tells it, they’ve not seen a miracle.
Why? They’ve not seen any kind of wondrous sign. They’ve not even heard Jesus preach. They’ve not interviewed Jesus to see what he’s got in mind. And they’re not like John the Baptist.
These guys are fishermen. They’ve not been actively waiting for the Messiah, pouring over prophecy, seeing if he’s going to show up. And yet without a moment’s thought, without a moment of debate, they just leave behind everything. No, they’re not.
Their family, their friends, the livelihood that keeps food on their tables, a roof over their heads. They drop it and follow this man they’ve never met. Why would they do that? Why would they do that? Well, Matthew tells us that the Jesus ministry as he moves away from Nazareth into Capernaum, which is this land of Zebulun and Naphtali on a road by the sea, the same place that Isaiah talked about, he says that this is a fulfillment of prophecy. And Matthew tells us that the people in this very land live in the dark.
And Jesus’ arrival marks the coming of this brilliant light that just shines upon everybody there, that slices through this shadow of death that they lived in. And I don’t think that these fishermen knew Isaiah’s prophecy by heart. They did not have all this stuff memorized. They were not looking for the Messiah.
They didn’t see Jesus and go, aha, just like Isaiah chapter 9, that’s the guy. They didn’t do that. But I think they did feel something shift when they saw Jesus. They felt this disruption.
life under the Roman Empire, well, really in any empire, is just painfully predictable. Right? With a few exceptions, there aren’t many. You know your place in the world. You know your fate.
And these four fishermen, they know what each passing day is going to bring for them. They’re going to fish. They’re going to eat. They’re going to sleep.
They’re going to wake up and do it again. And a couple times a year, they’re going to pay their taxes. Repeat. Repeat.
From adolescence to old age when they can’t do it anymore, their life is going to look the same every day. And their fathers pass this life on to them. They’ll pass it on to their sons. There’s nowhere to go.
It’s a closed cycle. It’s a limited horizon. And the shadow that hangs over them and over their land is not just this darkness of oppression and occupation. It is that.
But there’s this deep spiritual stagnation too. There’s this feeling that this life that they have, that’s all there is. Nothing really ever changes. That’s it.
And Jesus, when he arrives on the lakeshore here… offers this straightforward call that they come and follow him, that disrupts that stagnation.
This is something completely different. They’ve never seen anything like this before. Come and follow me, he says, and I will show you how to fish for people. What does that mean? They just sit there wondering, what does that mean? But it doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter what it means. They don’t figure it out. Their feet are already moving. It was compelling.
They’ve already dropped their nets. Jesus says, I will show you how to fish for people, and this would mark a transformation for them in their lives. Okay. It marks a transformation in what they do, and it marks a transformation in who they are.
It is this metanoia, this changing your hearts and lives that Jesus has been proclaiming. It’s them doing it. They have this opportunity, this offering for a radical and complete change in their lives. No one else was offering that.
And they follow Jesus because he offers them this really captivating mystery, an unknown future that lies in this possibility. They can become something new. And that’s more compelling to them, more captivating than the security of just staying the same day in, day out, nothing to look forward to. This is what life is.
the mystery of something different is more compelling than staying the same. And so I wonder, is that true for you? What would you prefer? The security of staying the same or the mystery of something different with Jesus? Because who knows? Think about this. Jesus might have walked past a dozen other boats before he got to Peter and Andrew. He might have called out to some other fishermen who looked up, thought about it, and looked back down, pretended they didn’t hear Jesus or just waved him off.
Right? It’s safer in that shadow than getting into the light. But we, I think, have a instinctive understanding of this, don’t we, about living in shadow. We know what that’s like. About a life that’s a closed cycle where we just keep doing the same thing over and over again.
There’s nothing on the horizon. And that’s not just the deep freeze that kept us in our house the past week, switching from one pair of sweatpants to the next day’s pair of sweatpants. This is a spiritual climate thing. It’s a spiritual thing.
It’s what our world feels like, what our souls often feel like. We have our nets that we take care of day in and day out. We try to hold things together. We try to survive.
We get nearsighted. And like some of these other fishermen probably, we stare so hard at these nets we’re mending in our hands, the bills, the schedules, the family stuff, the worries that we have. We miss that Jesus is over here waving at us from the shore saying, come, I have something else for you. And as we’re bogged down in all this stagnant routine, we can easily forget that life is supposed to be something else, something more than this.
We stop believing that we were made for anything besides just keeping that boat floating. But there’s Jesus on the shore, shining like this light in the darkness that’s gotten dangerously comfortable for us, this darkness. And he’s issuing an invitation to you. But of course, you can decide to keep your head down if you want.
But whenever he calls this first set of disciples, notice how he does it. He doesn’t hand them a set of instructions. He doesn’t give them a printed copy of the Beatitudes to memorize. He doesn’t give Simon and Andrew one of those little comic book tracks to hand out to people about the good news of Jesus as part of this fishing thing.
He doesn’t say, go and convince people. He says, follow me and I’ll show you how to fish for people. And he is inviting them to undergo this transformation. He’s inviting them to this turning towards something mysterious and new.
They were once in the shadow and now they’re invited to radiate his light into the world. And I think this is what we often miss anytime we talk about evangelism, which isn’t very often. We think that evangelism is handing out these little packets or saying the right thing to people to convince them to try Jesus. Right? We think it’s this task where we have to drag people to church and hope that they stay.
But in this story, we see here that fishing isn’t a chore that they’re assigned, that they have to do. It’s a result of change that starts inside of them. Jesus is saying, come with me and I will change you so radically. I’ll give you all of this light that you won’t be able to help but shine that on to people.
And it will catch them the way that my light caught you. And the invitation here from Jesus is not to become like a salesperson for God. The invitation is to become living proof that there’s more than the drudgery of the life that we have in the shadows, where nothing, where nobody could ever be any different than they are already. And think about what that means for us.
To accept that Jesus gives us this invitation means refusing to accept that just stagnation Amen. is the final word, that sameness is how things are going to be. It means refusing to believe that our lives, this church, this community, this country are finished growing. And it means dropping these heavy nets that we cling to, the nets that mean this is just how things are, this is what we do, this is how we’re always going to do it, and instead step towards the light that has shown up.
Right? And it’s choosing to know that God wants more for you personally than what this world can give you, what you can achieve on your own. And whenever we allow ourselves to be changed like that, to be turned by this mystery, we start to have that light. We don’t have to sell Jesus to people because our lives become that gospel. That’s how a net works.
It just catches what’s around. It doesn’t persuade each fish to come jump in the net. People are drawn to the light. People are drawn to hope.
People are drawn to those who live like they’ve seen something big that has changed their world. People notice that. They get caught in it. They get caught up in it.
They see it. They want to know. And so the question for us on this cold day is not, you know, who can we recruit? That’s not evangelism. The question is deeper.
The question is scarier. Are we willing to get out of the boat, the place that’s been safe, that’s been familiar for decades, whatever that means for you? Are you willing to let go of routine, the safety of knowing exactly how tomorrow’s going to go forever in exchange for this unknown journey that Jesus could call you to do something totally different tomorrow? Are you willing to let Jesus change your heart, your life so completely that you become a different kind of person? Yeah. Because that’s the choice that Andrew and Simon face. That’s the choice that James and John face.
They look at their father. They look at the boat. They look at these endless days of a predictable future. And then they look at Jesus.
And they realize that one of these paths is safe. They know it. They like it. But the other path is alive.
dangerous, maybe, but alive. And these everyday fishermen become fishers of people. They travel places they never could have imagined. They proclaim good news.
Right? They heal disease. They cast out demons. They even face down death itself and win. Jesus calls you not just to go with him, but to become something different because you have gone with him.
Your net is in your hands right now. We’ve all got our nets. Maybe your grip’s tightened on that net as you’ve heard this story. but Jesus stands on the beach.
He calls you. Will you drop that net and follow him wherever he goes? In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Due to the severe weather headed this way, all services for the South Hills Partnership are cancelled for tomorrow. If you can, please notify those that do not receive email. Stay home and safe.