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My brother and I went on a fishing trip a few weeks ago up to South Dakota. We went through an outfitter, which meant they provided a boat for us with a guide who knew where to fish for the walleye we were targeting. Now I hadn’t been fishing for about 15 years before that, and that had only been at Louisville Lakes down by the Platte River with my son. So you might imagine I was pretty grateful to have a guide. Not only did the outfitter provide the boat and driver, but the fishing poles and the bait as well.
But it didn’t stop there. Our guide knew where the fish were biting. We had to go about 10 miles down from Chamberlain where we launched, and we hung out there until the three of us hit our limit. Our guide also baited the hook for us every time. If we caught a fish, we’d get to reel it in ourselves, which of course is the most exciting part. The guide, however, would always take the fish off the hook for us, put it on a “marker” or hook if it was a keeper, and placed it in the water storage compartment in the boat.
Afterwards, the guide wasn’t done. He even cleaned the fish for us, put it in Ziploc bags, and kept it in a freezer for us until we were ready to go home. All my brother and I really had to do was show up and reel in the fish. That’s my kind of fishing!
Now you probably know where I’m going with this. When Jesus called his first two disciples in Matthew 4:19, Simon Peter and Andrew, he said, “Come, follow me, and I will send you out to fish for people.” Now of course, we have to be careful about carrying this metaphor too far. The endpoint of the metaphor is that we need to gather people into the kingdom.
In our gospel passage today, Jesus switches up the metaphor in those last few verses of Matthew 9 from fishing to farming. Verse 35 reads almost like a summary of what Jesus’s ministry had been like up to that point, which is a nice transition into chapter 10, where get a formal introduction to Jesus’s 12 chosen harvesters: the disciples, or apostles if you will. One for each tribe of Israel, as it were.
Now to put a little more meat on the bones here, let’s quickly review what Jesus had been doing since he called his first two disciples, at least from Matthew’s perspective. He’d preached the longest sermon we have recorded in the Gospels in chapters 5 through 7. In chapter 8, he healed a man with leprosy, a centurion’s servant, and Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, along with many others. He talked about the cost of following him, so that those who chose to do so knew what they’d be signing up for.
Later in chapter 8, he calms the storm at sea, cast out demons from two men, and in chapter 9 he forgives and heals a paralyzed man, raises Jairus’s daughter from the dead, and heals a woman who’d had a bleeding condition for 12 years. And to put the icing on the cake, he heals two men of their physical blindness and a man who couldn’t speak because he was possessed by a demon. In the midst of all that activity in chapter 9, Jesus also calls Matthew out of his tax collector booth to follow him and answers a theological question on the side about fasting.
Now Matthew makes it sound like all these events leading up to our passage of the day could have happened in somewhat rapid succession, perhaps covering a time frame of three to seven days or more. Matthew’s rapid-fire collection of stories about Jesus set the stage for us about the scope, breadth, and depth of the challenge of “fishing for men.” Any disciples who’d been with Jesus up to that point could recognize this was not going to an easy road to walk down.
But with Jesus, it would not be so hard as they might imagine. We only need to jump ahead one chapter to see that Jesus says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. Just like my brother and I had a guide to help us on our fishing trip, Jesus and his heavenly father have already done much to prepare the fields for the harvest. And the more workers they have for the harvest, the easier the task becomes.
A poll by the Pew Research Center in March of this year, as you might expect, showed church attendance dropped off slightly over the pandemic. Here’s a summary of what the poll said:
“The poll found that the share of U.S. adults typically attending religious services at least once a month dropped from 33% in 2019, before the COVID-19 outbreak, to 30% in 2022. About 20% of Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.”[1] According to the same article, the largest drop by demographic was among Black Protestants: the percentage attending at least once per month was down 15 percentage from pre-pandemic levels, from 61% to 46%. A pastor friend of mine has said for several years now that only about 20% of Omahans attend church on Sundays.
Now the survey didn’t go into what the causes of that were. But the point is that there are a lot of people out there who aren’t going to church, and many of them need not only the hope we have in Jesus but also the friendship and fellowship we have with one another in the name of Jesus. But over the years, I’ve noticed that among people who do go to church, they increasingly say they’re going there not necessarily because of the denomination of the church or what “brand” of Christianity they practice; they go and keep going when they feel a sense of connection with others in the church.
One of the things they beat into our heads in seminary was that, when you have a new person or family come into your congregation to “check it out,” if they don’t form any significant relationships within the first one to two months there, they’ll probably not come back. They may agree 100% with your doctrine, but if they’re not connecting with others, they’re not sticking around.
The author of Hebrews hints at this 10:24–25:
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.[2]
I spent most of my pastor career in small rural congregations much like Mt. View here. They have very traditional worship, usually have an active core of people, and typically draw an older crowd, because the young people are always looking for something new and exciting. Their attention spans are shorter than ever these days. In some cases, those smaller congregations actually have a significant role or mission in their community or that their members are involved in. That’s a beautiful thing!
Larger churches may have fancier worship with a full band and lights and big video screens and other fancy tech, but they don’t stay big because of all that. They stay big because they’ve found success in connecting with people and connecting those people to other like-minded people. They typically have a large small-group network where members get the bulk of their spiritual support. It’s challenging enough for a full-time pastor to manage a congregation of about 50 to 100 parishioners. It’s quite another thing to manage and maintain a congregation of 2–3,000 people. They just can’t do it on their own, obviously. That’s where the small groups fit in. The leaders of the small group I’m in at my church have turned over the membership in their group several times over in the 12 years I’ve been there. That’s because their small group members go out and start their own small groups. Before the pandemic, they would have an annual “reunion” of those who’d been in their small groups over the years. That would usually draw about 30 to 50 people.
Getting back to our gospel passage today: Jesus understood that dynamic of the small group, which is why he chose his own small group in Matthew 10. He needed a group of disciples he could train so that when he was gone, the church would have established leadership at its birth on Pentecost. Not only does he train them, though, he gives them authority to do the miracles he himself was doing. In other words, they had a drawing card that would attract people to the good news: not just in words, but in miraculous deeds as well.
He tells them to go to the Jews first, because they were the ones who had known and clung tight to the hope of a coming Messiah all those years. And the most challenging part: he tells them to go out in faith and not to take any money or extra clothes. That had to be scary. When people go out today to plant a new church, they have a whole big plan of where’s the best spot and what their trajectory would look like even before they hold their first worship service. But Jesus wants them to trust him and, in reality, the power of the Holy Spirit, who was already starting to work in the hearts and minds of the disciples, even though he hadn’t come in all his fullness yet.
He also says to seek out a worthy person wherever they go and stay with them for a few days. That’s an important note there I want to emphasize: If you want to grow the church, do everything you can to attract quality people who will do the hard work of building the framework for success. Sure, we can welcome anyone who comes through our doors, but not everyone is going to be a leader. When you find those with leadership potential, do everything but kidnap them to help attract people to the kingdom.
The last section of our passage this morning is a warning that is becoming more and more relevant for Christians today. Let’s look at that again:
Jesus says his disciples are entering into a danger zone when he sends them out. “Sheep among wolves”; floggings; arrests and depositions before the highest rulers in the land; family betrayals; and universal hatred toward them. What Jesus is saying here isn’t political. After all, Jesus told his disciples to go to the Jews first, and this is how the Jews, their own flesh and blood, would treat them. It really didn’t have much to do with Roman rule, although the Romans would have been suspicious of large crowds, like those at Pentecost. In the dictatorship Rome had become under a Caesar who considered himself divine, people tended to toe the line out of fear and survival instinct. You’ll notice that Jesus never once spoke out against Roman rule.
But in a free society like ours, where traditionally there has been no attempt to force any unity of thought or behavior, we have become either accepting or tolerant of people’s free will choices, some of which have no respect for God, his followers, or his creation. Jesus is speaking of a godlessness that has infected the Jews, and that such godlessness will lead to hatred and persecution. Are we not beginning to experience that godlessness today?
Just like Jesus, I’m not trying to be political here. What I’m talking about isn’t politics, it’s paganism at best, and at worst, it’s just plain evil. America has lost track of 85,000 unaccompanied minors who’ve crossed into our country in the last two years. We know many of these children are being trafficked for labor and sex, which is unspeakable. Children are exposed to sexualized content, and not just in books, at a young age, something that would have been considered child abuse 20 years ago. And the operations that are being performed on some kids who haven’t even reached puberty yet that will scar them for life? That was unthinkable even 20 years ago. All in denial of the fact that God created two biological genders, each with their unique and divine purpose and form. How have we gotten to this point where we’ve objectified children and gender for godless ideologies? The church must be a light in this darkness.
And yet, when we speak out against such evils, the wolves come after us. We’re cancelled, banned, brought before judges to defend what we believe. It is happening just as Jesus said it would for those who would proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is near. But Jesus doesn’t expect us to sit back and take it. He says we need to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. Keep your head on a swivel. Don’t worry about the material things; God will provide for your needs as you find people worthy of your greeting and your peace. He also promises the words to say when dragged before rulers and authorities. The Holy Spirit will speak for you and through you in those moments if you stand firm.
The promise in Matthew 10:22 is still true today: “The one who stands firm to the end will be saved.” That sounds like what Paul says in Ephesians 6: “Put on the full armor of God so you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” It’s a spiritual war we’re fighting, not a political one. We need spiritual armor and spiritual weapons. The armor of God is the armor that God himself is said to wear in the Old Testament. I know I got a little heavy there, but know that your own ministry efforts here are winning battles as well, especially by bringing warmth and comfort to those who need it most through your quilting ministry and the other ways you reach out to the poor, lonely, and needy.
In reality, we can only influence one heart at a time. Where we plant a seed of hope, someone else may come along and water it and cultivate it. But in all cases, God causes the growth. Let us remain steadfast and faithful in the ministries that God has called us to so that we can continue to spread the good news that the kingdom of heaven is near. We are his hands and feet, may the Lord bless us to his service. Amen.
[1] Poll: Religious service attendance a bit down after pandemic (omaha.com)
[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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