How to call disciples

Sermon for Epiphany V, 2025, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: Luke 5:1-11

Twenty years ago, I started a three-year quest that led to a Masters degree in Biochemistry. I took one class at a time, and would leave my lab job for an hour to an hour and a half on class days, and then return to finish my work day. There were two other lab techs I worked with, and after I left that lab job, I learned that they both went for their Master’s degree. One of them told me that once she saw me do it, she realized that she could do it as well. I had no idea that they were paying attention to me, watching me juggle a full-time job, classwork, and raising a family.

In June of 2020, we started our food collection service here at St. Paul’s to help Calvary church downtown keep their pantry open during the pandemic. The area around Calvary had recently become a food desert when two grocery stores had closed, and people found themselves without many options between social distancing and food scarcity. As our food collection became known in this part of town, we got to know the people who came regularly, and relationships developed. Eventually, several of those donors joined St. Paul’s as members because, as one person said, they wanted to be part of what they saw going on here.

Jesus is at the water’s edge on the Sea of Galilee, also known as lake Genesseret, and he’s telling people about the kingdom of God. There are so many people who want to hear him that he asks the owner of a nearby boat to take him off shore a short distance so that more people could gather to hear him speak. I imagine some waded into the water as the crowd grew. When he finished speaking to the crowd, he told Simon Peter to put out his nets, and to his surprise, Peter pulled the net up full to the breaking point with fish. Jesus said to Peter to follow him, because Peter would be catching people, rather than fish.
 
There are two things going on in these stories that don’t seem to have much in common with each other. The first is that there is someone who is doing something different that catches the attention of others. The second is that there is an uncovering, a revealing of something deeper that was hidden because the people watching were focusing on the activity that caught their attention. Whether it was taking classes while working full time, or collecting food and trying to stay healthy, or performing an unannounced miracle, people who witnessed me, or members of this parish, or fishermen watching Jesus saw something new, something they hadn’t considered possible. But when the improbable or unlikely was happening, a new reality with new possibilities opened up to them and life didn’t have to be what they expected it to be.

This newness was the very beginning of discipleship, where people attracted to the newness found a path to follow that would lead a different life. They began to hope that following this path would give them a new sense of purpose and maybe a better life. I, and this congregation became unwitting evangelists as we went about our lives, bringing others into our experience. It wasn’t our intent to lead people to a new part of their life; we were just being disciples ourselves. Sometimes the most effective evangelism is when we don’t say anything about Jesus or God, but instead follow where the Holy Spirit leads us, listening to God’s call, doing God’s work in the world. That kind of focus and devotion is hard to ignore and it makes people curious about just what is going on. That’s when a disciple is born, from the infectious experience of the power of the Spirit. To bring people to God is to be a disciple, not trying to be or sounding like a disciple.
 
Episcopalians are allergic to evangelism because we think that it means knocking on doors, asking people about their personal relationship with Jesus, and by the way, are you saved? In reality, though, we are effective evangelists when we share our stories with people just like us, and tell them how we live our lives with God’s help. We are evangelists when we invite people into our lives to become part of our story, and us becoming part of their story. We bring to life Jesus and his teachings as a normal part of our daily life. By doing so, we wake up the Holy Spirit within them and let it guide them. I didn’t set out to make two of my colleagues go to graduate school - I just wanted to learn enough to have intelligent conversations with the PhD’s I worked with. St. Paul’s didn’t set out to increase the size of our congregation - we just wanted Calvary to have enough food in its pantry. Jesus didn’t set out to make disciples - he wanted Peter, James, and John to hear God’s call to them to fish in a different way for a different purpose. We are all disciples of Jesus, and that makes us the best evangelists to find more disciples by showing how we have been transformed by him, in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds.

I get a little annoyed when some people I’ve come across infer that their faith is better than mine because they are saved, or that they believe certain things. There’s a certain sense of pride in the kind of faith that they hold. I’m left with the impression that they are trying to look like saved disciples of Jesus, rather than be saved disciples. In order for us to be disciples we have to be authentic, that is, to show our real selves without fear of being rejected by God. Peter was not rejected by Jesus when he said “Go away! I am a sinful man!” There is no “standard” Christian persona that we have to look like in order to be “real” Christians. Following the example of Jesus’ teachings where the first will be last and the last first, we can put our life in Jesus ahead of our attempts to find more disciples. God is not keeping score on how many people we bring to Jesus. Our ability to call disciples as Jesus did is not dependent on the status of our salvation or piety.

We read in the letter of James that faith without works is a dead faith, but then, where are those works taking place, and what is being accomplished? Is the focus on our suitability to be a disciple, or is it on how closely we live Jesus’ life? It’s not an either/or proposition that we make disciples at the expense of serving the needs of the world, because the people around us will see that being a disciple is to serve the needs of the world, to show compassion and mercy, to show love. Jesus was nothing other than himself when he called Peter to be a disciple, and Peter was none other than himself when he confessed his sinfulness. It was his fearless authenticity that led him to be a disciple of Jesus, not his confession. This is what is being revealed to us during Epiphany, that to call or lead someone to discipleship is easy, as easy as saying “follow me.” But the real work of discipleship happens when we become disciples ourselves and show in our lives what it means to be a disciple.