St. Mark Lutheran Church
Pastor Michael's Final Sermon
January 22, 2023
Were you watching the sermon on Facebook yesterday when the live feed froze a few times? We apologize for the technical difficulties. You missed a great sermon. But, fear not. Pastor Michael was kind enough to provide us with Sunday's sermon for you to read. If you were sitting in the pews, you might want to read it, too. It was that good! Check it out...
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Rev. Michael McKillup, Interim Pastor - St. Mark Lutheran Church
Sunday, January 22, 2023 Sermon
Epiphany 3, Year A | Isaiah 9:1-4; Psalm 27:1,5-13; 1 Corinthians 1:10-19; Matthew 4:12-23
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
There’s a whole lot that I could say today about what we’ve accomplished during these past eleven months, but I’m not. Many of you already know what we’ve gotten done – perhaps not as quickly as some might have wanted – but truth be told, you are in a different place than you were late last February when Pastor Ian said goodbye. You are now ready to begin a new chapter in the life of St. Mark Lutheran Church with a new pastor.
So, I’m not going to recap our time together. No. I’m going to leave you with just one small piece of advice to guide you as you move forward with Pastor Clark.
Over the years, I’ve heard a lot of sermons preached by other people, and to be completely honest with you, I remember very few of them. But there was one that I heard – nearly twenty years ago – at the installation of a pastor in what was my home congregation at the time. In his sermon, Pastor Tim Poston talked about the characters in the Wizard of Oz and the things that they wanted – the lion wanted courage, the scarecrow wanted a brain, and the tin man wanted a heart – and they thought that the Wizard of Oz could give them what they wanted – could give them what they thought they needed. He then likened this to the congregation – that the congregation wants a lot of things and that the congregation might be thinking that their new pastor can give them what they want – what they think they need.
And then Pastor Poston quoted from a song – a song by a band named America – a song titled Tin Man. And that song lyric is my final gift to you today. It goes like this: “Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man that the Tin Man didn’t already have.” [repeat] Your new pastor is NOT going to give you anything that you don’t already have.
You see, the Tin Man already had a heart. He just didn’t see it. And you already have everything you need to be God’s people in this place called Hamilton – you just need to see it. That’s all that I’ve tried to do here – to help you see that you already have everything you need. And, that’s all that Pastor Clark is doing to do for you – help you see it and help you use it. My prayer for you is that you open your hearts and let her help you be all that you can be as the people of God in this place.
Now for the sermon…
One day, Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. He saw two men in a rowboat – two men waiting for some unsuspecting fish to wander into their nets. Two men doing exactly what they had done the day before and exactly what they expected to do the day after. What happened next is hard to believe isn’t it? Jesus offered them a job – a job with no pay and no employee benefits – no two weeks summer vacation – no career advancement. “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” And they accepted the offer. Instantly. Immediately.
It doesn’t make any sense does it? If the sales pitch had been, “Follow me and make more money than you could ever imagine – more money that you could ever make fishing,” then it might make sense. But this invitation isn’t anything at all like that. And the response seems really unlikely, doesn’t it? Two fishermen – and then shortly thereafter two more – drop everything and head off to God only knows where, to live lives that they couldn’t possibly imagine.
Now, people always try to explain away unbelievable stories and this one is no exception. Some commentators suggest that young men often left their families and their occupations to become students of a rabbi. They say that this whole thing sounds much more unlikely to us that it would have to people in the first century. They say that, more than likely, this was not the disciples’ first encounter with Jesus. Surely Peter and Andrew and James and John knew Jesus before this. But Matthew doesn’t seem to feel the need to tell us any of this. He doesn’t feel any need to explain why the disciples would follow Jesus. And so, their instant acceptance of Jesus’ invitation is about as dramatic a moment as we will ever find.
There are times when all of us face big decisions. There are times when we stand at the fork in the road and have to choose. We all have moments when we feel that we have to choose a particular way – and then we choose that way for reasons that we cannot completely explain. We have all felt the need to sacrifice something that we would rather keep. We have all taken at least a few big risks. But, most of the time, our lives are not that dramatic, are they?
Just like many of you, most of my life is routine. My work is enjoyable, but, for the most part, it’s not all that spectacular. Just like many of you, my life doesn’t feel as adventurous as that of the disciples, leaving their nets and following Jesus into the unknown. Yes, there are folks who live each day in danger because of their faith. And there are people who do astonishing, heroic things. Maybe someday we too will do something spectacular. But, at least for now, most of us feel called to less dramatic discipleship, don’t we?
And maybe, Jesus’ disciples had days like that too – days when their lives didn’t seem so sensational – as they walked up and down Galilee from village to village – through Samaria to Jerusalem and back again. I’ll even bet that they had days when they thought that things were going a bit too slowly. And maybe, on those days, their faithfulness was more like ours – a bit more modest.
But, you see, we tend to forget the importance of the small things in the journey of faith. We tend focus on dramatic conversions – overwhelming encounters with God – powerful moments of prayer. We constantly search for spectacular events and end up assuming that some people are born with a level of faith that we just don’t have.
And that’s because we also tend to forget that God is not just in the big things. God is in the little things too. And, God’s call to us is not just a big, flashy, one-time event. It’s every hour of every day. God invites us to be a friend to someone in need – to practice kindness to the folks we encounter – to pray for our daily bread. You see, the routine, everyday ways in which we follow Jesus – the way we read Scripture – the way we welcome strangers – the way we love the people we run into – are all crucially important. The difference between the pillars of the church and most of us is not some spiritual talent that we don’t possess. It’s the way their everyday habits, disciplines and practices have prepared them to live extraordinary lives.
God is at work in a whole lot of unspectacular ways. God is present in every way that grace is shared – every time hope is proclaimed – every time healing comes. Love spreads word by word. The bucket fills drop by drop. Wrongs are righted one by one. Details.
Our call is to be faithful – to live into God’s grace on routine days in ordinary ways. And then, if we really pay attention, we begin to see that the unsurprising life that most of us think we live is actually extraordinary – taking a child to school – hugging someone we love good-bye – eating lunch with a friend – trying to do a decent day’s work – talking to a neighbor – coming to worship. There is nothing we do that is so commonplace – so routine – so ordinary that God is not there. Every moment and every word have possibilities. On the day they first followed Jesus, the disciples were brash and impulsive and stubborn and they smelled like fish. They had to learn day by day how to be the church.
We grow in faith, not only in once-in-a-lifetime, never-to-be-forgotten moments, but also in those completely forgettable moments when we decide to pray instead of turning on the TV – when we choose to do better with the next hour than we did with the last – when we give away something that we would rather keep. We become more faithful as we confess a misspent hour – an unnecessary word – a wasted opportunity. In these moments we start to follow again and again and again.
In another sermon that I remember – a sermon that was delivered at, ironically, another pastoral installation – Dr. Charles Leonard put it this way: Our God is the God of another chance. Hear that again. Our God is the God of another chance. In every single moment of every single day, God offers us yet another chance to take a step in the direction of Jesus – to begin anew to live with purpose and hope and love. Thanks be to God that God never stops offering us another chance to follow Jesus. Amen.
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WAIT! BONUS GIFT for reading the entire sermon -- click here for the "Tin Man" song by America.
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