Date: January 26, 2020
Scriptures: Matthew 4:12-23

Let me tell you a story. A story of three Bakers.

Not the kind we find in a kitchen. But three people with that surname. Three Bakers. A mother and her two daughters.

As life would have it, I came to know each of these three Bakers in sequential decades: the 1980s … the 1990s … and the “aughts”, the 2000s. All through the church.

My first Baker encounter was in 1989. Susan Baker and I entered seminary together that year.

Susan was one of several lesbian, gay, and bisexual classmates of mine in the M.Div. program – the ordination track. That’s remarkable, considering the doors closed – nay, locked – to LGBTQ candidates for ordained ministry in our denomination at that time. For why would anyone endure a three- to four-year master’s program for ordained ministry – with no job prospects at the end?

The answer: Each of my LGBTQ seminary classmates felt an irresistible calling. A calling – as today’s scripture puts it simply – to follow Jesus. In Susan’s case – as in the fishermen’s case: leaving a secure profession behind.

But that’s not why I am lifting up Susan – or her mother or her sister – today.

I am lifting up Susan today because, participating in several seminary courses together, we learned what Jesus really meant when he says to the fishermen four today, “I will make you fishers of all if you follow me.”

But I really don’t want to bother you today with what we learned that Jesus really meant. How Jesus draws these metaphors of fish and fishing from his Hebrew scriptures. Ah, the Old Testament. That’s boorish, hidebound stuff.

And I really don’t want to inflict upon you the heavy knowledge that these metaphors reference the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah – where the image “fishers of men” is used as a symbol of Yahweh’s censure of Israel. That’s the dry, socio-political stuff of – say – impeachment.

And I don’t want to prattle on about how our Jewish Jesus had to know that the image of hooking fish is employed by the Hebrew prophets Amos and Ezekiel as a euphemism for judgment upon the rich. That hits a bit too close to home. And besides: that judgment is none too popular for our calling as Christians sharing “Good News” – now, is it?

I don’t want to go on about how – through these three Hebrew prophets – Jesus is inviting his common folk here to join him in a kingdom struggle to overturn the existing order of Roman power and privilege … that the calling to be “fishers of men” has absolutely nothing to do with the saving of souls … and that he is not conferring upon these two pair of brothers instant evangelist status.

I do not want to go on how Susan Baker and I learned such amazing and disturbing and essential things about the nature of real evangelism as played out in scripture stories such as the one today.

I do want to focus more today on That “E” Word – evangelism – as played out by a particular faith community’s response to Susan’s mother, and then her sister, in the two decades still to come.

For it was late in the 1990s, Susan Baker – now the Rev. Susan, pastoring a thriving United Church of Christ church in a former Presbyterian church building because we Presbyterians would not ordain her – (Rev. Susan) gave me a call. I was in Ann Arbor by that time – early in an 11-year pastorate at a church there.

“Chuck,” Susan said, “My mother Mary Sue Baker is about to move in with my sister Kate in Ann Arbor.” I had not known till then that Susan’s sister even lived in our community. “I know,” Susan added, “that my mother would be very interested in the open-and-inclusive church you are pastoring there.”

Music to this pastor’s ears! And so I arranged for several of our number to assist Mary Sue Baker in her move to her daughter’s place. And Mary Sue Baker – church lady hats and all – became a faithful and beloved member of our congregation for her last few years.

When Mary Sue died, her daughter and Susan’s sister Kate – never a church-goer – was bereft. Kate had grown closer to her mother in caring for her in her final years.

And so Kate Baker grieved. And in her grief, she took note of our church’s response. She took special note of the compassion shown her by one of our church number who volunteered to do some housecleaning for her while she struggled with her loss.

Many of us know the hymn: They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love. They will especially know that when the love is shown during the two greatest stressors of life: moving from a long-time home, as Mary Sue Baker did, or the death of a loved one, as Kate Baker suffered.

Kate was so moved by our church’s response to her mother’s death – more by our hands-on service to her than by our service of resurrection for her mother – that she began to come to the church she had sent her mother off to by taxi every Sunday for several years, so Kate could stay at home and have some alone time for herself.

Well: Kate Baker continued to have that time to herself. Only now, in the company of church loved ones she had never known as an adult. Time to herself – in the joy of her baptism at our church, because she had no record or memory of being baptized as a child. I can remember still the white drop cloths we laid down for that baptism – Kate wanted, and we obliged, with water a-plenty!

This stole you see me wearing every Sunday? This is Kate’s creation; a talented seamstress she is. A product of her cottage industry: Passionate Stitches.

Passionate, indeed. Passionate … in deed.

While in seminary, Kate’s sister Susan and I grew more and more passionate for the liberationist gospel we were discovering in scripture’s pages – and in our witness to that gospel around us. The liberationist gospel played out in today’s passage: laying out how our very Jewish Jesus communicates today’s kingdom-call with a prophetic Hebrew call to his first disciples to catch the big fish with him. To reel in the Roman imperial powers that deny, with their oppressive ways, God’s kingdom presence in their midst.

In seminary, Susan and I grew passionate for that liberationist gospel. And years later, while I was a pastor in Ann Arbor, Susan’s mother Mary Sue and her sister Kate grew passionate for that gospel in a more interpersonal way. All because they were invited by our church into the presence of this liberationist Good News by simple service to them in their times of greatest need.

And That “E” Word – Evangelism – serves both liberations: the social and the interpersonal. The word itself – did you know – is a word of social liberation. You see, euangelion – the biblical Greek word for evangelism – was a technical term of the Roman Empire used for declaring Caesar’s victories in battle: “Good news – glad tidings – the Emperor, again, is victorious!” So Jesus took Caesar’s word for victory – and flipped it on its violent head! To declare a new Good News – only one that was nonviolent. To reel in, Susan Baker and I learned in seminary, those big fish behind the world’s violent battles. That that is the Christian calling of all of us – the true Good News we proclaim at the end of Worship each Sunday with our Charge: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, anointing me to bring euangelion: Good News to the poor.” Good News to the poor: the ones who suffer the most from the euangelion of warfare. The ones who benefit most when the ways of peace are exalted.

That “E” Word: Evangelism. It is a word of social liberation. And who can deny that it is as well a word of interpersonal liberation to the poor, and to the poor in spirit? Setting free the Mary Sue Bakers and Kate Bakers of the world – any one of us – from going it alone ’midst our hostile dominant discourse of alienation around us. Setting us free from the word’s violent Roman – and American – imperial usage: increasing interpersonal alienation all around. (May we not return to our evangelical siblings that interpersonal alienation, my friends. Many do on social media, I have seen. And that grieves me deeply.)

This past Tuesday morning, we laid to rest my beloved great-aunt Ethel at her beloved First Baptist Church in Richmond, VA. First Baptist is a massive church – and Ethel had been a faithful member there for over 70 years.

During the reception afterward, I learned that this congregation of a multitude of ministries has one called the Ministry of Invitation. You see, First Baptist had decided to step away from using the much-maligned “E” Word by using instead the more “invitational” “I” Word.

Now: If a major Southern Baptist congregation can steer away from the missionary-focused, conversion-oriented, heavy-handed, black-or-white, you’re-either-in-or-out creedal trope about Christ … if they could move away from that interpersonal alienation and shift their Good News message from belief-centered evangelism to relationship-centered invitation … if they could do this, and even if this church does not engage or does not understand That “E” Word’s kingdom-vs.-empire prophetic ramifications of social liberation …

… Who knows? I believe there’s euangelion – Good News – in that effort, somewhere.

That “E” Word. If using the “I” Word instead helps you to be a channel of Good News: Who will you be inviting to church next Sunday? To Worship – to the Hebron documentary showing on Thursday, to one of our Black History Month programs – to our Saturday scripture discussion? Ask Christina or Ron or George or Louise how invitational that discussion is. It’s interpersonal evangelism: that’s for certain!

That “E” Word. Now, on its social, liberationist level: How are you being challenged to participate in witness to truth-to-power? Participating – in some small way – in the hooking of big fish as prophesied by Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Amos? In church and out: the opportunities are endless.

So let us be interpersonally invitational: to the Mary Sue and Kate Bakers of our world – who need us by their sides. And let us be socially challenged: by the Rev. Susan Bakers of our world – who trade in their job security for the freedom of the gospel.

Let us be interpersonally invitational, and let us be socially challenged, by That “E” Word.

And in both ways: let us be compelled … by what Dr. King rightly called the fierce urgency of now.

By the fierce urgency in today’s gospel … of Jesus.