'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 sea—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.'
--Matthew 4: 17-22
It seems that quite a few people want me to join their church. It happens a lot more than you might thin, and it doesn’t even matter if I tell them, “Sorry, I’m taken,” they just go right along with their pitch; in fact, just a few days ago, when I got home after being in the office, a church van was parked on our street, and several folks were going door to door to talk to people. I like these conversation, so I walked out to meet the two who were coming up our driveway. They asked if I had a church. I pointed to my collar and said, “Actually, I’m the priest at the Episcopal church in town.” Clearly, they hadn’t rehearsed what to say next because they stumbled, and one finally said, “Oh, well, uh, we’re inviting folks to church, and uh, we’d love to have you.” Then they gave me a card and scampered away, but not before I gave them one of mine.
This is what evangelism sadly ends up looking like most of the time. No one is really interested in having a conversation, getting to know people, finding out who God is for them or where they see God, no, it’s just about, as Cardinal Glick once put it: fill those pews, people!
Cardinal Glick, it must be noted, is a character from the wonderfully irreverent theological comedy Dogma, played by the late, great philosopher George Carlin. We resort to a host of tactics, from scaring people with the prospect of hellfire and damnation to enticing them with promises of the perfect children and youth programs and the best—that is, shortest—sermons. No conversation, no genuine interest in people’s journeys. We're just selling a product for people to buy. Evangelism, a word that comes from the Greek evangelion, meaning "gospel" or "good news", has, for many, become something of a curse word. The e-word. We are so put off by it that most of us just stay in our comfy churches and never really talk to others about God, often because we’re afraid of what will happen if we do. Will others try to accost us? Will they themselves feel accosted if we try to share our story with them? What are we to do with the dreaded e-word?
His Eminence, Cardinal Glick.
Evangelism, it must be said, is not about filling those pews or saving souls from hellfire. At its core, evangelism is about relationship; after all, this is what the evangelion, good news of Jesus Christ, is all about, and it’s why our friends in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America decided to reclaim the e-word when their denomination was formed in 1988.
To practice evangelism doesn’t mean that everyone needs to leave their houses of worship on Sunday with pamphlets in their hands to give away at the grocery store, brunch outing, or golf course where they frequent in the afternoons. More power to you if you want to do that, but odds are good that you'll come off a little desperate, like you're trying to just sell your product, much like those folks I met in my driveway. But what if we thought of evangelism as something else? What if we looked at the brand of evangelism practiced by Jesus?
These folks get it.
To practice evangelism doesn’t mean that everyone needs to leave their houses of worship on Sunday with pamphlets in their hands to give away at the grocery store, brunch outing, or golf course where they frequent in the afternoons. More power to you if you want to do that, but odds are good that you'll come off a little desperate, like you're trying to just sell your product, much like those folks I met in my driveway. But what if we thought of evangelism as something else? What if we looked at the brand of evangelism practiced by Jesus?
The early pages of our Gospels give us two different models for ministry: John the Baptizer and Jesus. John’s message consisted of him loudly calling out those in positions of power, and he did it all without ever leaving his station near the Jordan River. You don’t hear stories of John walking the countryside and going to people’s houses for dinner, do you? He remains where he is, whereas Jesus is a wanderer who searches people out and meets them where they are. John waited for people to come to him to receive good news. Jesus took good news to people.
And when he did, he didn’t do so with any threats, unrealistic promises, or products to sell. Last week we heard the story of Andrew and Simon Peter joining Jesus as it’s told in the Gospel of John, but we get a different version in Matthew’s Gospel. In the Fourth Gospel the two of them are disciples of John the Baptizer who Jesus after John points him out in a crowd. In Matthew's version, as also in Mark and Luke, Andrew and Simon are fishermen, it’s how they make their living, and while out on a job they see Jesus, who invites them into a relationship: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people,” or in the poetry of the King James Version, “I will make you fishers of men.” For the life of me I will always wonder what it was about Jesus that made them leave everything—their jobs, their families, their security—to follow him. Maybe they had already heard of him, or maybe this was the first time they encountered him. Maybe it was his voice, his presence. We may never know, but what we do know is that he invited them into a relationship, and that changed their lives.
The calling of Andrew and Simon
I have an app on my phone of Orthodox prayers, which I regularly use when praying the Daily Office, and the one for the third hour—that is between 9 am and noon—says this:
It’s a lovely prayer, as is the bidding from Jesus to make Simon and Andrew—and by extension everyone who follows Jesus—fishers of people, but I can’t help but think: what about the fish? Consider this: most of us have gone fishing, right? It’s a pretty painless endeavor, but not for the fish! So if the analogy is that the followers of Jesus are the fishers and others are the fish, I’m not sure I’m super comfortable with that. I don’t want to hook someone or capture anyone into my net or the net of my parish. And yet, this is what evangelism feels like to so many: a hook or a net to grab folks so they don’t get away from us.
“You are blessed, O Christ our God, who made the fishermen wise by sending down your Holy Spirit. Through them you have captured the world into their nets.”
It’s a lovely prayer, as is the bidding from Jesus to make Simon and Andrew—and by extension everyone who follows Jesus—fishers of people, but I can’t help but think: what about the fish? Consider this: most of us have gone fishing, right? It’s a pretty painless endeavor, but not for the fish! So if the analogy is that the followers of Jesus are the fishers and others are the fish, I’m not sure I’m super comfortable with that. I don’t want to hook someone or capture anyone into my net or the net of my parish. And yet, this is what evangelism feels like to so many: a hook or a net to grab folks so they don’t get away from us.
It seems to me that churches that rely on such methods are more afraid of losing people—that is, losing butts in the pews and bucks in the plate—than they are eager to form relationships that are authentic and life-changing. Madeline L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, once said, “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.” That is evangelism! That is what it means to spread the good news and show others that, yes, the kingdom of God/heaven has, indeed come near. Jesus “fished” by seeking people out, by loving them where they were, by showing them more than just telling them, and by embodying the self-emptying love of God through his own self-sacrifice on the cross. Writing to the fractured church in Corinth, the apostle Paul said that the cross is foolishness to some, and surely that is the case even still. Self-emptying love is pretty foolish in this day and age, wouldn’t you say? All the more reason we need it! If the kingdom has, in fact, come near, then this is our kingdom work: evangelism that is self-emptying, rooted in relationship-building the same way Jesus’ own ministry was grounded in relationships like the ones he established with those fishermen, relationships that changed not only their lives but ours.