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Next!

I don’t know about you, but last Sunday was not a good day for me. First of all, I never like not having worship on Sunday and when I had to cancel worship because of the forecast, it put me in a bad mood. Then to make matters worse, I had to watch the Chiefs loose that night and get knocked out of the playoffs. The Chiefs had such a promising year going, they went 12-4 in the regular season, despite all the injuries they faced all year. Through the course of the year they had to go without players like Tamba Ali, Jamaal Charles, Eric Berry, Justin Houston, Spencer Ware, Derrick Johnson and the list goes on. So many Sundays they had to play without their best players, but if you follow Chiefs, Coach Reed’s motto is always, “next man up!” In other words, we can’t use the injuries as an excuse, we have games to play, we have others equipped to step in and they will need to pick up the slack, so, “next man up!”

And today, as we continue on in this Season of Epiphany, we might title our Gospel text, “Next Man Up!”

In our Gospel text for last week, we heard John proclaim Jesus as the Lamb of God. Now those listening to Jesus in that day understood what it meant to be a lamb, a sacrificial lamb, but they couldn’t quite fathom what it meant for a human to be a sacrificial lamb, so they followed Jesus and when Jesus asked them what they were looking for, the two disciples said they wanted to know where/how he was going to live. And instead of responding to them with some long, theological response, he simply invited them to “Come and See.” Jesus knew, if they were going to ever be able to carry on the ministry he was about to start, they would have to experience his ministry, so he answered them with an invitation to come and experience his ministry.

In that invitation to those disciples some 2000 years ago, we too are invited to come and see. We, too are invited to come and experience Jesus’ ministry in this world and in accepting that invitation, we then are challenged to invite others to come and experience the love of Jesus. The story last week was John’s version of how Jesus first called his disciples

Now, this week, we get a slightly different version of how Jesus began to call his disciples as we read Matthew’s story. According to Matthew, Jesus’s began his ministry once he heard that John had been arrested. For Jesus, John’s arrest meant that someone else was going to have to continue the work John had begun. John had been in the wilderness, in the river Jordan proclaiming that the people needed to “repent for the kingdom of heaven had come near.” It was a powerful message, and it needed to continue, so Matthew tells us “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matthew 4:17).

John’s arrest came in the midst of some terrible political upheaval. There had been bitter fighting among Herod’s sons and John had been challenging Herod Antipas’ lifestyle. Herod had taken his brother’s wife, Herodias, as his own which was not acceptable under Jewish law. By the way, Heriodias was also the half-niece of Herod Antipas, which would have also made his marriage to her unacceptable. So, John, publically challenges his “king,” and in turn, John gets arrested. John was challenging the people of his day to live differently, to follow God’s ways and to life holy lives and for that, he is arrested and eventually killed.

One might think knowing all this that instead of proclaiming the kingdom of God had come near and challenging the people to repent, that is to change their ways, that it would have been easier for Jesus to do something different., or maybe to just let it all go. After all, it was obvious that to continue John’s mission, to continue to proclaim God’s word publically was a dangerous thing to do. But when Jesus hears that John had been arrested he followed the motto of “next person up.” Like in the NFL today, work still needed to be done and just because the one who had been doing it was no longer available to do it, didn’t mean that the work could stop, so Jesus took the reins and carried on. Jesus wasn’t about to let fear keep him from succeeding and so he began preaching and teaching this notion of repent and that God’s kingdom was near and he continued to invite others, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people" (4:19). Jesus not only invited others to follow him so that they might experience what it meant to be one of God’s servants, but he also promised them that he would equip them to do his work, that is to fish for people.

And that is where we come in to the story. This invitation to follow Jesus is our invitation, too. Jesus is inviting you and I to follow in his ways and in doing do, he promises to equip us, but it’s important to note that our being equipped doesn’t make our call to be a disciple easy. I mean, sometimes when we feel called to do something, we prepared and we feel well equipped. But to be honest this is usually the exception and not the rule. So often we here God’s call, or are challenged to do things we seem ill equipped to do. Often times we are called to be the next one up for things we feel unprepared and ill equipped to do, yet, God says to us, “I pick you to go be a light to a darkened world.”

So often, we hold back, because we say we are ill-equipped, or because we don’t have enough training, resources, or… Yet, God says to us go and do my work. Too often, we let the fears of this world hold us back. Too often, we let our fears keep us from succeeding because we can’t imagine ourselves doing God’s work, or succeeding at it.

As we heard a couple of weeks ago, though, in our baptism’s God publically claims us as we are and, yes, we might not have everything we think we need to succeed, but in that invitation to come and see, to come and follow, Jesus promises that we have all we need to succeed, we just need to have faith and to count on God’s abundance to carry us through.

Today, we as a faith community have some big decisions to make in our annual meeting. God has called us to do God’s ministry in this place. God has challenged us to do some incredible things and, yet, as we sit here, we look at our resources and our abilities and we think we can’t do it. We don’t have enough, but I would argue, God is saying to us, “Next person up!” That’s you and me. We have to stop being afraid to succeed. We have to stop taking all God has given us as individuals, and as a faith community and saying, “it just isn’t enough!” Actually, we have more than enough! We just have to be willing to use it and share it.

Today we are reminded that God’s forgiveness and love is for everyone and like John and Andrew in today’s gospel, we are challenged to be the next one’s up. So, are you ready to accept this invitation? Are you ready to say, Here I am, Lord? Amen.

Tags: Sermons