January 22, 2023
Hope Lutheran Church
Rev. Mary Erickson
Matthew 4:12-23
The Turning Point
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jesus calls his disciples. Imagine being one of these four. They’re fishermen. They’ve been fishermen. Each morning, they rise early, probably before first light. They head to Lake Galilee and get in their boats.
It’s a routine they’ve engaged in hundreds of times. Every morning, the same weathered crew of fishermen assemble on the shoreline. They exchange greetings in the grey dawn. One day so very much like the next. On this particular morning, so like every one preceding it, there’s no way these four fishermen could have imagined the extraordinary thing about to take place.
On any given day, how can any of us know what might step into our lives? What will call to us? What opportunity might take us into an unexpected new direction?
In that unanticipated moment, we reach a turning point. We take the direction we never imagined.
Turning point. Interestingly, when Jesus begins his ministry, his proclamation is “REPENT, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
When we hear the word repent, our minds naturally turn to thoughts of sin. Jesus is calling us away from our sinful ways. But the word Repent in Greek really means to change your direction, to turn around. Jesus is calling us to reroute ourselves. Take the on-ramp and merge onto the kingdom of heaven way. Start following Jesus.
Lo and behold, this is exactly what our four fishermen do. Jesus approaches them and makes an amazing invitation: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”
And even more amazingly, all four of them immediately get up, leave behind their fishing boats and nets and catch of the day AND their family, and they follow Jesus.
It’s an amazing turning point. For years, when I read this story, I thought, how surprising that they would leave everything just like that! Could it really have happened like that? To just leave everything behind when some guy comes up and throws out a fanciful invitation?
How could that be? Was there just something that magnetic about Jesus? When they were in his presence, were they simply drawn in by his spirit-filled charisma? Even so, it seemed unlikely.
But then I remembered my own call story, my own call to the parish ministry, and it all happened just about that fast.
I was a senior at St. Olaf College. I was a psychology major and fully intended to pursue a career in counseling. I had scheduled a meeting with one of my psychology professors. He was going to write a recommendation for me to apply to graduate school.
I had just finished eating dinner in the second floor cafeteria of the old Student Center. Taking the pathway to Holland Hall, where the psychology department was located, I walked alongside Boe Chapel. And as I walked past the basement windows I could see into the offices housing the religion faculty. I spied a number of the religion professors congregating in the office of one professor. He was vigorously gesturing while he spoke passionately and all the other professors listened intently.
Now, they might have been talking about the machinations and politics of college administration. They could have been talking about any number of things. But in my mind, there was only one possible topic of discussion that could hold them all so raptly. They were discussing theology!
And as I’m walking past them, on my way to pursue a future in the field of psychology, I thought, wouldn’t it be awesome to talk about theology every single day!
And just like that, it was WHAM. I knew what my future was. I was supposed to be a parish pastor. My feet still carried me to my meeting with the psych professor. As we met I went through the motions of our intended conversation. What was I supposed to say to him, “I’m sorry, but on my way to your office I suddenly realized that I’m not going into counseling.” He’d think I was flakier than I was thinking about myself.
But it happened that fast. The call, the turning point came just that fast. And so, yes, maybe it was like that for the first disciples, too.
Turning points. They come to all of us. We reach a juncture, and God is calling, inviting. Some of these turning points beckon us to big life changes. We’re completely altering directions. Others might be smaller, momentary detours. They urge us to draw closer in compassion to another person.
Large or small, we are being called. We’re compelled to change our course.
We might be called to make a big change. Make a shift in career. Uproot and move to a new city. Let go of an addiction. Become a parent.
Such a monumental calling presented to the disciples. And they leaned into it with immediacy. But perhaps the discernment for direction isn’t quite so immediate. These big changes can lead to a period of inner wrestling. A struggle for discernment goes on. What should I do? Am I called to this new venture?
A spiritual director gave me some good advice many years ago. She said that when you face the question of a possible turning point, take one initial step in the direction you’re considering. And then wait and see what happens. Take an internal review of how this small step makes you feel. Does it bring engagement? Or regret? That initial step will have an effect. And the effects will confirm or refute the possible call.
In every person’s life we will face a few monumental turning points. But there will be many more tiny ones. They call us to take a small detour off our main course. Pull aside to address this present need.
• Maybe you’re a student at middle school and it’s the lunch hour. And the new kid in your math class walks in and doesn’t know where to sit. Is there a small voice calling to you?
• Or perhaps you see the bulletin announcement looking for volunteers to help with The Community Table lunch team. Are you being nudged to respond?
Peter and Andrew, James and John were called to an unexpected turning point. It radically changed their lives. Through turning, they became first hand witnesses to all the marvelous unfolding of Jesus’ ministry. They heard his messages of good news. They beheld his miraculous healings. They shared the deep friendship that developed over their journey.
But this turning point also brought with it sorrow. And this is the truth about godly turning points, because Jesus is calling us to take up our cross to follow him.
There was a hymn in the old green hymnal that didn’t make the cut into our new red one. “They Cast Their Nets” tells the story of these four Galilean fisherman. When they left their boats and nets that day, they had no idea how their full life journey would course:
They cast their nets in Galilee,
just off the hills of brown;
Such happy, simple fisherfolk,
Before the Lord came down,
before the Lord came down.
Contented, peaceful fishermen,
before they ever knew
The peace of God that filled their hearts
Brimful, and broke them too,
brimful, and broke them too.
Then the hymn calls us forward in time to John, who dies exiled on the island of Patmos. Peter’s destiny leads him to be crucified upside down in Rome.
Following the call comes with a weight and sorrow. That’s because it’s a cross. God’s call leads us into servanthood, and that invitation contains both challenge as well as service, pain as well as joy.
The hymn acknowledges this bittersweet nature of the Lord’s turning points. But in its final verse, it calls us to claim the greater end:
The peace of God, it is no peace,
but strife closed in the sod.
Yet, let us pray for but one thing:
The marvelous peace of God,
the marvelous peace of God.
Peter and Andrew, James and John, when they arose for their labors on that fateful day, they had no idea of the tremendous turning point about to come their way. In our own lives, we don’t know either. By the Holy Spirit’s invitation, may we be open to the divine turning points set before us.
