“Do What You Can”

Preached January 25, 2026 at St. Luke Lutheran Church, St. Paul, MN
Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year A Texts: Matthew 4:12-23
Bristol Reading

The Gospel of John opens with poetry about Jesus as the light of the world. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Today, we heard the same theme from the Gospel of Matthew: “the people who were in darkness have seen a great light, and for those in the shadow of death light has dawned.” Matthew tells us this at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, to make sure we don’t miss that the kingdom of heaven has come near in this person, this messiah, this savior. It breaks over the horizon like the first piercing ray of morning.

Matthew borrowed those words about light from an ancient prophet, Isaiah. Isaiah, of course, got them from God, who proclaimed them to a people who had been crushed by war and oppression, a people who felt hopeless and abandoned. People in Matthew’s day felt that way, too; a different oppressor but the same weight of violence and poverty.

Why does the promise of Christ’s light always come with a mention of deep darkness? Because the promise of dawn is most potent in the darkest watches of night. In the brightness of afternoon, it does not seem so hard to imagine that the sun will come up again tomorrow. It is in the long lonely hours, the fearful hours, the sleepless hours, when it seems hardest to cling to that promise.

These are those times here in our community. It is really dark. There is a lot of fear and chaos and violence. And the weight of all this falls most heavily on the vulnerable: sick people trying to get healthcare, children unable to go to school, families made unsafe in their own homes. You don’t need me to read you the headlines of this particular darkness. I hope you are staying informed and engaged in the way that’s right for you.

What I do want to do is remind you that the central message of Christianity, “the good news of the kingdom,” as the Gospel writer calls it, is made for times like these. It speaks most clearly to those walking through darkness.

Because Christianity is not a religion of conquest and triumphalism, of ease and success. It is a religion of self-sacrifice and mercy. It is a religion that proclaims love for enemies and welcome for outcasts. It is a religion centered around Jesus’ death on the cross – could you get any further from conquest and triumphalism, any further from ease and success? Honestly, it’s a religion for losers: those who have lost, those who are lost. And that’s true long before Jesus gets to the cross…

When God first comes to be a person, God is born a poor person in an oppressed community living at the fringes of an empire. God is not born as an important person to an important family in an important place. God is born the son of a young woman and a woodworker! Ordinary. Unimportant. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth,” people
will ask, that’s how marginal the place was.

When Jesus launches his public ministry, he doesn’t gather to himself the most educated or influential people. He doesn’t pursue wise religious or political leaders. He goes out of his way to recruit everyday peasant laborers. Ordinary, unimportant people. It’s not that they’re the best he can find; it’s that they’re exactly who he’s looking for. Just nobodies:
fishermen, tradesmen.

When we read the phrase, “I will make you fishers of people,” I think we tend to put too much emphasis on the second part. We wonder, what does it mean to be fishers of people? The line itself is cute and clever – it sounds tailor made for Sunday School crafting. People who fished for fish will now fish for people as evangelists.

But the work Jesus called the disciples to do with him wasn’t cute or clever. It involved taking serious personal risk to spend time with people who were even less important than the fishermen. People who couldn’t even contribute to society, who could certainly never pay back any good done for them. People who were sick or disabled. The elderly, widows, children. These were people with little means, little power. Or, even worse, Jesus and the disciples spent time with people who were considered to be damaging to their communities: sex workers and tax collectors. Immoral, irredeemable people. “Sinners.”

And again, it wasn’t just that these were the people that Jesus attracted, although that was clearly true. But Jesus says that he’s specifically pursuing such people. He has come to “seek and save the lost,” he says. He’s looking for all these nobodies. He wants to be spending his time healing and feeding and restoring and forgiving and helping the people most in need, what he calls “the least of these.” That’s the whole point, Jesus says!

Do you think those fishermen knew when they dropped their nets that they’d spend all their time serving in this way? Do you think they’d have gone with Jesus if they had known? Until the end, some of the disciples thought they were called to follow Jesus in order to win They’d get places of honor in his throne room. They’d inherit riches from his kingship. That’s where they thought this was heading!

As it became clearer and clearer they were following Jesus to lose, they resisted. Some tried to outright prevent it. Think of Simon Peter telling Jesus he can’t allow himself to suffer or, later, drawing his sword to hold off the soldiers who come to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane. And when Jesus was arrested, many of the disciples just fled altogether. How could this be the mission, they wondered? How could this be the fate of the Messiah? They did something we are awfully familiar with these days: they hid inside and locked the doors in fear.

Didn’t I tell you Christianity isn’t a religion for winners? Jesus is killed on the cross. Not just any death but death at the hands of an oppressive empire. A death that involved torture. A death that was designed to humiliate, to subjugate others into fearful submission.

And Jesus says his followers are on the same path. Jesus says, “Anyone who would follow me needs to take up their own cross, needs to be ready to lose their own life for the sake of love.” “Take up your cross” is not nearly so clever or cute a call to discipleship, is it? But that’s what those fishermen were in for.

When I said we focus too much on the second half of Jesus’ line, “I will make you fishers of people,” I mean we don’t focus enough on the first half: “I will make you.” Not as in “I will force you.” Jesus is inviting, not coercing. What he means by “I will make you fishers of people” is “I will transform you into fully equipped disciples.” “I will strengthen you to be up for the task ahead of you.” “I will enable you to do what is needed.”

What skills did these ordinary fishermen have to be part of the revolutionary movement of ushering in the kingdom of God? Well, they had fishing skills. Had they been builders, Jesus would have told them, “I will make you builders of the kingdom.” Had they been teachers, Jesus would have told them, “I will make you teachers of the Gospel.” Had they been parents or grandparents, Jesus would have told them, “I will make you caretakers for all God’s children.”

You only have to bring to this work the skills that you have. It will never feel like enough. Because you will always feel too ordinary and unimportant for something as momentous as ushering in the kingdom of God! That’s why you need to listen to the “I will make you” part of the phrase. God will give you the strength and courage to apply whatever meager skills you have to the all important work of embodying the good news of Jesus.

None of this is about winning. All of this is about loving. It is about loving with what you have where you are right now. It is about loving the people that are in front of you, whether friends or strangers or even enemies. It is about being so deeply invested in the work of that love that any loss it costs you is pointless next to the gain of the good and abundant life that is shared in Christ for all. You are called to be only who you are – fisherman, tradesman, teacher, caretaker. You are called to do only what you can as long as you’re doing it in love.

And this is the thing I want to say about that love. It will go with you into the darkest of times. It will go with you into the depths of human suffering. God has already shown that through Christ on the cross. This is a religion made for people who hurt, people who mess up, people who lack. It was always about that: Jesus went right toward that in his ministry, and he never wavered all the way to the cross, where he himself suffered and hurt. Christ shows us God’s deep solidarity with humanity’s suffering. Anytime you are brokenhearted, you are drawn all the closer to the heart of God. You are drawn all the closer to the suffering of Jesus.

But that love, which we have been given… that love, to which we are called… it has the power to break through darkness. God has already shown that, too, in the empty grave. Sunrise comes. A new day breaks. The stone is rolled away, and death has not held him. Evil has not defeated him. Anyone who thought love wouldn’t win was wrong.

When those disciples were huddled in fear behind those locked doors, the risen Jesus came to them, and said, “Peace be with you. As I was sent to you, so I send you to the world.”

Don’t be afraid. Not because there’s nothing to fear, but because there’s work to be done. And you are the ones to do it. You, the ordinary, unimportant disciples of Jesus. You, the fully-equipped, God-powered disciples of Jesus. You are the ones to do it. The love of Christ is your work now, and you don’t need to be anything other than what you are to do it. God has made sure of that. Amen.