Fishing With Jesus: Fishing by
Being a Blessing
February 13, 2022
Dear brothers and sisters, grace and
peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, Amen.
Today, we will possibly witness
history being made, as the possibility of the Bengals winning their very first Super
Bowl ever is well within reach!
In fact, the way commentators,
pundits, and regular news reporting seem to be talking, the Bengals are
definitely favored to win, and not just the way people in Ohio are talking. If
reports are to be believed, a good majority of people in many places want the
Bengals to win. Bengals fans can also be found in many unexpected places. For
example, I have a good longtime friend who is a lifetime Bengals fan and who
currently lives in New York, who was able to travel all the way from there to
Los Angeles to be at the game. I’ve even seen people posting on Facebook in the
past few days about people rooting for the Bengals where they live in the world
– the UK, for example, seems to have a large number of people, probably the majority
there, rooting for the Bengals to win. But, let’s ask: why do so many people
want the Bengals to win? Obviously a lot of people here want the Bengals to win
because they’re the local team, but why are the Bengals suddenly getting
support from many different places? It’s because they’re the underdog
team. The team hardly anyone expected to make it this far, but they have. And
so, because they’ve also never won a Super Bowl up to this point, they’ve
gained a lot more support than they ever have before. People want them to
succeed because they’ve come this far, after having been in a losing underdog
position for so long. It is – and I mean this with all sincerity – a real
blessing for the Bengals, that so many people are rooting for the Bengals, and
wanting them to win.
However, if you think about it,
the fact that so many people are rooting for the Bengals actually runs counter
to how we normally think. Usually, when we have to choose one person, team, or
the other, to support, we go for the person or team we think will have the
better chance of winning. We tend to choose who think are going to be winners,
instead of losers. We don’t always root for the underdog – we try to support
who we think are going to come out on top. We want to identify with success,
and we think that identifying with people who we think are successful will
help us feel successful as well. We don’t like losers – and we have our own
ideas of what a winner and a loser is. More often than not, people who don’t
fit our personal ideas of what someone who can dominate, who can run other
people, who have the kind of personality to be able to attract other people, who
is in a position of power or advantage, who don’t have any of these kind of
characteristics, are people we consider losers. The idea of competition
has unfortunately pervaded every part of our lives: numbers, figures, results,
wins, successes have become what dominate our ways of thinking about others,
and what drive us in how we live our own personal lives. We even assume, whether
or not we realize it, that a lack of success means not only personal failure,
but failure to be blessed by God.
And yet, God’s idea of success is
very different from ours. He does not look at personal achievement or ambition
as being any kind of a mark of success. He also does not look at the ability to
dominate others in competition as being any kind of a mark of success. He
certainly does not look at self-promotion or group promotion as being any kind
of a mark of success. In fact, we can say that the more we seek self-promotion,
domination, achievement, or ambition, the farther away we move from God’s
purpose for us. He identifies as much with people we consider to be losers as
much as with people we consider to be winners – He looks at everyone equally. As
we saw in last week’s Gospel reading, Jesus did not choose people who were
considered to be winners in society to be His followers – in fact, He chose people
who were considered the underdogs, losers, people who were considered to be
unsuccessful. They were also considered unsuccessful because they were in a
position of being spiritually unclean, outcast from the community, constantly
breaking the religious laws by being in contact with unclean sea creatures. But
the people we consider to be already successful and qualified, or who were
considered to be successful and qualified by the standards of the day, are not
the people Jesus automatically chose, or chooses, to follow Him. He chose His
first disciples regardless of whether or not everyone else considered them
successful – He chose them precisely to show that His calling, His message, is
not one of success – it is one of following Jesus, becoming more like Him, to
transform lives through His power and love. He also chooses us, unworthy as we might
be considered to be, to follow Him. He calls whomever He chooses to follow Him,
and ignores any qualifications we may want to put on others. Jesus Himself, by
the standards with which we usually measure success, was unsuccessful. He did
not have the kind of dominant, forceful personality we have come to expect from
religious leaders – He was meek, humble, and focused not on promoting Himself or
His own successes to make Himself more important than others, but instead on
helping people, meeting them where they were at, for the purpose of showing
them His Father’s love, and bringing people to a relationship with His Father. He
was considered unsuccessful by religious standards, because He failed to follow
the traditional laws, and regularly associated with those considered sinners,
outcasts, and lawbreakers. He could also be considered unsuccessful in another
way: He was captured and put to death by His enemies. Instead of fighting back,
He allowed Himself to be killed – what we would consider to be a loser. But by
doing so, He did something necessary: He offered Himself as a sacrifice for our
sins, and for the sins of all people, dying on a cross. Then, even though it seemed
like He lost, He actually ended up winning, even defeating His enemies – by rising
again from the dead, and now living victorious, never to die again.
In today’s Gospel reading,
usually known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus further emphasizes . The word “blessed”
means someone who is considered righteous – someone who is favored by God in a
special way, even someone who is considered a winner in His eyes. We may
consider being poor to be the mark of a loser, because we associate having
things with success, but God considers it the mark of a winner. We may consider
being hungry, or lacking anything, to be the mark of a loser, because we
associate hunger with laziness or irresponsibility, but God considers it the
mark of a winner. We may consider mourning or being sad to be the mark of a
loser, because we think we are supposed to be tough and plow on through every sad
situation, but God considers it the mark of a winner. We may consider being humble,
even meek, to be the mark of a loser, because we think some sort of controlling
or dominating personality means being a winner, but God considers it the mark of
a winner. The reason God considers all of these to be marks of winners is
because these are the people who are in the best position to be helped by Him: people
who are helpless, who are considered weak, who are poor, who are unsuccessful,
are the ones He blesses by providing for them in special ways.
The people we look down on, the
people we ignore, the people we consider to be the underdogs, losers, or
unsuccessful, are precisely the people Jesus is sending us to be blessings to.
After all, we ourselves might be in the position of being helpless and
considered unsuccessful, and many of us probably already have been there at
some point or other. We have all been underdogs at some point or other. When we
think about the times we have been in such positions, what we can keep in mind
is we did not get through them by our own effort or hard work – God blessed us
by being with us bringing us through them by His own power. Being a Christian
does not always mean being successful, but it does mean that when we are
struggling, when we are losing in life, God is bringing us through whatever it
is we’re going through to victory. We could say that God roots for us when we
are underdogs, as much as many people are rooting for the Bengals. But God not
only hopes for us to win in those situations, He helps us win. He blesses us by
helping us win. The Prophet Jeremiah encourages us, in today’s First Reading,
to trust God when the situation is hopeless – He will never let us down. He
will never leave us to struggle on our own. He will bring us to victory.
It also means that just as we have
been blessed in this way, by God helping us through these times of being unsuccessful
and struggling, God wants us to be blessings to all who are struggling – we are
the instruments He uses to help others. Even though our instinct is to pull
away from people who are struggling or losing, we are instead to be drawn towards
them, because Jesus is drawn towards them. We are to identify with those we
consider to be losers, because we all have been losers at some time or other. We
are to provide for those who are poor with whatever they need financially or
materially. We are to provide for those who are hungry by giving them food and
access to everything else they need We are to comfort those who mourn by not
letting them alone in their sadness, listening to them, and letting them express
their sadness. We are to befriend those who have no friends. We are to reach
out to those everyone else wants to ignore. We are even to associate with those
we would normally not want to associate with. Just as God is there for us, we
are to be there for everyone – even those we consider underdogs, and even if it
means humbling ourselves and our idea of what success and successful people are.
Being a Christian does not always mean being successful, but it does mean being
blessed by God and being a blessing to others.
Sometimes following where Jesus
leads means going against what everyone else is thinking or doing, and facing
ridicule, even persecution for it. Many of our brothers and sisters in other parts
of the world, where being a Christian is either discouraged or even illegal,
are discriminated against in education, jobs, housing, or other opportunities. Being
a Christian is looked on as being weak, because it is against what the rest of society
and the culture assumes to be the mark of a winner or successful. Being a
Christian means being a loser, being far from successful. Even here, being a
Christian, choosing to follow what God wants, instead of what other people
want, may mean being considered a loser and a failure. But being a Christian
means for our brothers and sisters who are persecuted, as it does for us, means
looking forward to something even greater, to the ultimate victory, which St.
Paul talks about in today’s Second Reading: the victory Jesus has won by rising
from the dead, everyone who believes in Him being able to live forever in
eternal life. Until we reach that day, we will all continue to struggle – we will
all be the underdog at some point or other. So until we reach the day of
ultimate victory, we are to be there for each other, and for others. Just as
many people are being a blessing and rooting for the Bengals today as the underdog
team, we are to blessed to help those who are considered underdogs – being
blessings to everyone, as we have been blessed. In being so, we follow Jesus, we
are like Jesus, and we bring people to Jesus – by blessing others as we have
been blessed.
Now may the peace of God, which
passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord,
Amen.
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