Isaiah 9:1-4  1 Corinthians 1:10-18  Matthew 4:12-23  Psalm 27:1, 5-13

Three years ago, as a monthly mission here at the Church of the Advent, our parish collected school supplies for children in Honduras.  These were kindergarteners who had been attending class in a sparsely supplied tiny firetrap of a room attached to the rear of a home in the little mountain village of San Antonio, Cortes, Honduras.  Our Friends of Honduras USA foundation had recently completed the construction of a spacious building that was to be their school as well as a community-gathering place.

That January, my husband, daughter, and I travelled to Honduras to deliver the school supplies you had contributed and to be a part of the community celebration of the opening of the school.  We spent our first few days there doing the final cleaning and painting the interior and exterior walls, and setting up the desks and chairs.

On Sunday, we returned to the school with the generous boxes of supplies from the people of the Church of the Advent – ordinary supplies that our children enjoy daily – storybooks, crayons, drawing tablets, activity books, glue sticks, flash cards.  We laid the supplies on each table, hung some colorful displays of ABC’s and numbers on the walls, and waited for the children to arrive.

They arrived in their Sunday best, polished and groomed, not a hair out of place.  And, we were taken aback by their reaction.  We expected them to charge into the room and grab the colorful supplies.  Instead, they crept in just barely beyond the entrance door; eyeing the bright and cheerful environment, their big dark eyes growing wider and wider, amazed at the thought that these gifts could be for them, hesitant to consider the thought.  We essentially had to beg them to come in, sit at the tables, and begin enjoying the crayons and coloring books.  Clearly, they had rarely seen such a sight.  Their pure innocent amazement and gratitude was overflowing.

These children had no idea that their gift to us had a greater impact than our gifts to them.  In that moment, those ordinary crayons and coloring books became sacred – a vessel of love from thousands of miles away – from you to them.  It was a holy moment.  In holy moments, God breaks into our lives unexpectedly; the ordinary earthly things of our lives become sacred.  Your simple gifts had touched these lives in profound unforgettable ways.

In our Gospel lesson ordinary, fishermen become followers of Jesus Christ – ordinary unsuspecting men become saints whose names and legacies will be handed down through centuries of Christendom.  Ordinary earthlings made sacred.

It is an ordinary day in the lives of Peter, Andrew, James, and John as described for us in Matthew’s Gospel.  What did Jesus see in these four fishermen?  Typically, fishermen have rough gnarled hands and muscular sunburned arms.  They are covered in fishy slime from head to toe.  Their hair is crusty with salt spray; often their manners and language can be just as crusty.  Fishermen are tough and weather-beaten; they challenge nature; they weather rough cold seas and the brutal heat of the mid-day sun as they haul in their priceless nets filled with bountiful catch.  Without doubt, these fishermen in our Gospel lesson matched this description of typical fishermen on this ordinary day as they were going about their daily livelihood.  We might have wanted to turn away from them, but Jesus didn’t.  What did Jesus see in them?

And, what was in the natures of these four fishermen that made them so readily drop the nets they were right then, at that moment, casting into the sea?  The literal translation of the phrase describing their action indicates a direct response – almost involuntary response.  What was it that transformed these men and this ordinary day into a day most sacred in their lives – and ours?

“Immediately,” Matthew writes, “they left their nets and followed Jesus.”  They left all that was familiar and secure – the sea, their nets, their livelihoods, their families – and followed Jesus into the unknown and the sacred – so sacred that 2,000 years later, lives continue to be affected profoundly by their discipleship – the sacred gift of the inbreaking of God into the otherwise ordinary daily lives of four rough unrefined fishermen who could not resist Jesus’ call.

Our names may not be so famous, or even known at all, by the lives we touch as we become vessels of the inbreaking of God.  Here, at the Church of the Advent, victims of alcohol addiction know our building as a place to come to gather in comfort and receive support from others experiencing the same challenges.  Hundreds of children and adults are fed by the food distributed through our food pantry each week and their souls are fed through the ministry of our compassionate volunteers and prayer partners.  Our clothes closet patrons not only receive much needed clothing, but respect and fashion advice; they go away with a boost to their appearance and their spirits.

Our Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts are becoming an integral part of our parish.  Though most are members of other churches, these young people and their leaders will remember the welcoming spirit of our parish that provides a familiar, safe, and comfortable space for their meetings.  Many of you have come to know and respect Dr. May who comes here weekly to provide psychological counseling for a growing number of clients.  Through our monthly missions, we address needs of worthy charitable causes such as the Barry Robinson Center, the SPCA, Boys’ Home, and others; our spring and fall fundraisers provide financial contributions to numerous efforts.

On an average of seven times a year, we reach out to families who have lost loved ones, providing the comforts of Christian burial and emotional support to parishioners and extended family.  Sunday after Sunday, guest worshipers of all descriptions know they are welcome to join us for worship.

Through this parish, you are ministers to all of these.  Your ordinary lives become sacred as you become vessels of the inbreaking of God for all of these who come with these wide-ranging needs.  And, each discovers the inbreaking of God, the ordinary made sacred in each of their lives in ways that only God can measure.

It is this inbreaking of God that we come to celebrate today as we gather for our annual parish meeting.  Perhaps we think our parish membership is small and our financial resources inadequate, and certainly we can use some expansion in these numbers, but we cannot measure and we cannot underestimate the impact that our ministries make on the lives of those who come into our midst.

Each of you is an unexpected vessel for the inbreaking of God into the life of an ordinary person in need of experiencing the sacred.  Jesus sees that in each of us and Jesus says, “Follow me.”