Resist and Change

Matthew 4:12-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the lake, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:
‘Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
   on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people who sat in darkness
   have seen a great light,
and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
   light has dawned.’
From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

It feels a little funny that this week we hear a story that completely contradicts last week’s story. If you remember, last week we had John’s version of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and finding his first disciples. In John’s version, the disciples defected from John the Baptist to Jesus after John the Baptist encouraged them, and after the two sat with Jesus all day until emerging, convinced Jesus was indeed the messiah. This week, we have Matthew’s version, which is wildly different, and while, on the whole I generally enjoy preaching on Matthew, or any of the synoptic gospels more than I enjoy preaching on John, I really like John’s version so much better. In Matthew’s version (and Mark’s version, which is nearly identical), there’s a much more… kind of mystical cult leader vibe, which I’m really just… not loving. And aside from that, it just doesn’t feel very realistic of believable to me—just dropping all our responsibilities and comforts to follow a stranger seems insane. But then I started thinking about what we talked about in Bible study on Monday, and I started thinking about the kind of people, in very specific circumstances, who were just dropping everything to follow this strange man who clearly had a very powerful draw to him.

You see—in Bible study, Mil brought up the context in which Matthew was written. It was written during an incredibly tumultuous time— Romans ruled Judea, and Roman rule was very unpleasant unless you were rich. This was a time in which there was no middle class—merchants, artisans, people we would assume would be “middle class” by today’s standards were really not much better off than the poor fisherman highlighted in today’s passage. Matthew was written during a time of a great deal of revolts and infighting—it was after the first Jewish revolt against the Romans, and after the Romans retaliated by destroying the Second Temple. One of the major factors that led to this first revolt was the fact that Jewish laborers, employed by Herod had numerous large construction sites were barely getting paid, barely making enough to get by—poverty was rampant. And no one in leadership was doing anything about it—in fact, they were just making everything worse.

So one can imagine, during a time when a couple poor fishermen had very little to look forward to other than a life of hard labor, little money, with no notion of the concept of upward mobility, that they wouldn’t see anything especially crazy about just saying, ‘yeah, let’s get outta here,’ and dropping their nets and following Jesus. So you know, after initially being kind of turned-off by Matthew’s description of how Jesus found his first followers, I all of a sudden found myself pulling a 180—the idealist in me kicked in and said, ‘hey, yeah, things are really bad today, maybe just as bad, if in very different ways, than during Jesus’ time, so what’s stopping us from dropping everything and really putting the time and effort and passion into doing the work to really change the world?!’

Well let’s be real— there’s a lot stopping us from doing that. We have jobs, maybe even jobs we like! We have families to protect and provide for, we have roofs to keep intact and over our heads. So this isn’t a sermon about how we all have to abandon our modern responsibilities and leave our families and become some sort of strange aestic missionaries. But it is a sermon about the circumstances that might drive one to become this—and about how sadly, our circumstances today maybe aren’t so different.

Now this country has always prided itself on individuals being able to live their dreams—to study hard, to go to college, to get a dream job and work your way up the ladder. But this has turned from being true for at least some groups of Americans to being almost wholly mythological. In one article about this very topic, it’s written,

One of the reasons for lower US mobility is that the ladder of opportunity has become much harder to climb—because the rungs of the ladder have grown further apart… In the United States, the top 5% of the population own three-quarters of the entire financial wealth of the country, while the bottom 60% possess less than 1%.

That’s a pretty impossible ladder to climb, especially if you’re at the lowest. In fact, that same article states that only 8% children raised in the bottom 20% will ever climb to the top 20%. That is not and individual problem, that is a systemic problem.

But believing in this American myth of the universal possibility upward mobility is really holding us down. Last week was Martin Luther King Sunday, and remember his famous quote—“It’s alright to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his bootstraps.” But this is where we are, church—we’re telling the same story we’ve told for generations, and that story just isn’t relevant anymore.

The economist Robert Reich writes about the rise of American billionaires, “How have a relative handful of billionaires…convinced the vast majority of the public that their wealth shouldn’t be taxed to support to the common good?” he goes on to answer his own question: “They have employed one of the oldest methods used by the wealthy to maintain wealth and power—a believe system that portrays wealth and power in the hands of a few as natural and inevitable. Centuries ago this was the so-called ‘divine right of kings.’”

See, the rich and powerful today have taken a strangle hold of the now-broken American dream— insinuating that they were to get to where they’ve gotten because of hard work and grit and bootstrapping, and because they’re special. And so they deserve it. And so they’ve molded the laws and regulations to benefit them and they have no plans to use their wealth for the betterment of all. They’re the Romans. They’re continuing to hoard wealth and use that wealth and power to sow more discontent so that things will stay the same—that is, so that things will continue benefit them to the detriment of the rest of us. Maybe they’re not going to destroy any of our sacred landmarks in retaliation— no, their strategies are much more stealthy. That’s why the myth of the American dream is still so pervasive—that’s why it’s so easy to keep trucking along pretending things are fine the way they are.

I’m reminded of the science fiction author, Ursual K. Le Guin’s quote from her 2018 National Book Award speech—“[the system’s power in which we live under] seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

I mean, think about what Peter and Andrew were going up against. They lived in a world that didn’t even pretend like there was a possibility of moving up in the world. They lived in a world where they were destined to work to the bone until they physically could work no more, and that was just how it was. I mean, who’s gonna go up against those well-heeled, armed-to-the-teeth Romans? Surely two lowly fishermen were not going to be anyone’s first guess.

But they had so little to lose. And these days, I think, things feel a little different. And not just because of our myriad responsibilities—obviously the world’s changed a lot since Biblical days. While much of the oppression, economic and racial divisions, the wealth-hoarding sadly and shockingly remains the same, the circumstances are quite different. A lot of what is keeping is complacent is certainly modern day conveniences like technology and affordable consumer goods, things keeping us much more comfortable than your average non-Roman was—but I have to wonder if a bigger part of the reason we don’t see a ton of people dropping everything to really start some kind of revolution is because of this pervasive mythology of upward mobility, of bootstrapping. It’s been with us since the formation of this country, and despite how much things have changed since then, it is still with us now. See, at least in Jesus’ time, and for that matter, in later history when it came to the divine right of kings, there was no real pretense to the way wealth and power was distributed. Those who were on that bottom rung of the ladder were resigned to remain there, unless they quite literally changed the way society worked, unless they quite literally changed the world.

Now, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I want to bring this up again, because this is so close to home; it is home for many of us—the sale of those buildings down the road to a big-time developer. It was news to me thanks to a former tenant on the listserv telling her story that not only did those folks who lived in those buildings suddenly have their rent nearly doubled, but they eventually received no-cause evictions. No-cause eviction. “Sorry, you can’t live here anymore, good luck, bye.” So let’s think about those folks who received no-cause evictions—first, they have to find someplace to live, which is something that’s nearly impossible in today dismal market. Then, depending on what they find, they’ll likely have to scrape together the money for first month’s rent, last month’s rent, and a security deposit. Literally thousands of dollars most people don’t have. Then they have to figure out how to move their stuff, the list goes on and on and on, and this isn’t even touching on the fact that some of those tenants had kids who now have to start at brand new schools without their friends, after they’ve already had huge disruptions because of the pandemic. How does someone move up in life when they’re dealt a hand like that? And Church, that’s happening down the street. That’s here.

And so now, church, I want to pivot a little and talk about something else I’ve touched on in sermons before—the idea of evangelism, and sort of reclaiming that word. Because I think that word, over the past few decades has really morphed into something kind of toxic—I think it brings things up like trying to convert people, preying on people’s fears in order to get them to accept Jesus, so they’ll be saved when they die. But it’s so much more than that.

When Jesus tells Peter and Andrew that they will become fishers of people, he’s telling them that they’re gonna change the world. He’s telling them that as their movement grows, people will realize that things can be so much better—that a better world is indeed possible… that an earth as it is in heaven is possible.

And so, with this bleak picture of today’s world that I’ve painted for you of the state of our country today, I wonder—how can we evangelize? How can we spread the good news in such a broken world? Well, I think one example is something that Meredith brought to my attention—next door in Hartford, they’ve started a petition to get Just Cause Eviction on their local ballot, so landlords can no longer do what MG2 did here in Hartland. Church, I see this as modern-day evangelism—it’s making it known that systems are broken, and it’s giving a real solution to it, it’s giving the most vulnerable a better chance in life to be remain housed and safe, and to take some of the weight of being housing insecure off their backs. Now, it doesn’t solve the problem of the legality of doubling rents out of the blue, but it’s a start.

Because, Church, I think before we go out and spread the good news, we unfortunately have to realize how broken things truly are. And that brokenness is often well-hidden in a lot of propaganda and myth. But we can see here in our own idyllic town how bad things can get for the most vulnerable among us.

But I do have faith that we can work together to spread the good news that things can be better—that we can continue looking out for one another, that we can continue to support one another amidst these huge changes happening around us. I have faith that we can have the same kind of passion and almost blind faith that Andrew and Peter had, even without leaving our families and modern responsibilities behind. I think we just have to face the reality that this world is broken… and that an earth as it is in heaven is possible… and then we will spread that good news—the good news that any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Amen.