Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle A

Matthew 4:12-23

About a year ago I was approached by a man who was a friend of one of the patients at the Jewish Geriatric Center. They were both members of the same church, and were casual friends. Because he had come into the nursing home to visit his friend, the reality of disability probably intruded on his day to day consciousness; I know in my own case, despite a lifetime of taking care of cancer patients, I had very little idea of what went on in a nursing home until I became active in that ministry.

In any event, the man was very enthused about music therapy, and referred me to a few web sites about this. It was another area I wasn't familiar with, but as I explored it, I could see why he was interested; to believe the studies that have been done, music therapy has a positive effect on alzheimer's disease, stroke, parkinsons disease – you name it and music probably helps in some way or another. It turns out there is a whole scientific discipline which studies the effects of music on the human brain.

This gentleman wanted to do something. He wanted to help the people in the nursing home with music. I spent some time with him working out a project that would demonstrate whether or not this would be a good thing to introduce. After all, the nursing facility has limited resources. And I told him that he would have to get the permission of the director, as well as appropriate consent, in order to do this project. I met with him once or twice more, and then he more or less disappeared from view.

We human beings are designed to look at a situation and come up with ways we could make it better. That's kind of what my friend did. That is the very bedrock of civilization; that's the reason we make progress not only in our material world, but even in things like politics and law and religion; we are constantly trying to tweak what is so it will be better.

The Kingdom of Heaven is God's way of harnessing that tendency in us. If we are trying to know God and love him; if we have an active prayer life; if we have a relationship with Jesus Christ, then we know what the kingdom of heaven is all about; there is no more poverty; there are no second class citizens; people don't let other people go hungry, or sleep under bridges, or be deprived of an education. When there is evil in the world, the kingdom of heaven is constantly calling us to do something about it. And of course, we can ignore it, we can fail to do what we are supposed to do, and maybe someday we reach the point where we settle down in our armchair and say, “it's none of my business” or “I can't fix the problem so why bother?” But if we are at all sensitive, if we have listened even a little to the message of Jesus, we should feel a little guilt, we should feel a little of that call that Jesus gave his apostles “Come after me”.

My friend heard a little of that call, and even set out to answer it – in a very narrow, specific way. Because any time we can make the lives of our fellow human beings more human, we are bringing about the kingdom of Heaven, or I should say, Jesus is bringing it about through us.

But he didn't follow through. Because the biggest barrier to bringing about the kingdom of heaven is not really that we don't stick to our resolutions, its that we don't put down something else so that we can devote ourselves to the kingdom. That's what Jesus teaches us in this gospel. He says in effect, I will make you fishers of men, but first you have to stop being fishers of fish. And for most of us who already lead busy lives, we take it as a personal failure if we give up something good in order to take on something else. We can obviously do this once or twice, but you can see that if we keep this up, we burn out, or alternatively, we don't accomplish what we set out to do. And both of these results lead away from the Kingdom.

Every Christian should be consciously working to bring about God's kingdom – which is pretty much the same thing as fishing for men. After all, the kingdom involves moving this person or that, this group or that, a little closer to Jesus Christ. But what prevents us, what discourages us, is that when we try, we forget to put down another burden. Most of us, I think, could put down a few burdens. There's television, the internet, maybe a hobby or sport that is consuming our time and energy. Or maybe what is holding us back is that we are already working for the kingdom but that work is not what we are meant to do. Mother Theresa realized that her vocation to be a nun was not getting her where God wanted her to be – and she was in her forties when this realization hit her. She had to lay down that vocation and take up another before God could use her for the great work she accomplished.

Peter and Andrew, and John and James, threw aside their nets “immediately” it says in the gospel. It was only then that they could follow Jesus and fulfill the glorious vocation to which they were called – to become fishers of men and heralds of the Kingdom of Heaven.

We are starting a new year. We are followers of Jesus. We can't go wrong trying to bring about His Kingdom. We know exactly what that kingdom should look like. We know what we can do to bring it about – even if it's only a little part of the whole. And maybe for this new year, instead of resolutions which add something to our already busy days, we should look at what we can subtract, what we can leave behind, so that we can devote time and energy to more effectively creating the Kingdom of Heaven in our own homes, workplaces, and church.