Between Sundays for the Week of January 26, 2026
I’m often distracted in the story of Jesus calling his first disciples by how faithful James and John seem to be. Jesus says, “Follow me!” and immediately they drop their nets to follow. Immediately! No excuses, no questions, no explanations.
But this story is not just about how James and John and the others come to follow Jesus. This story also describes how Jesus begins his public ministry.
Jesus has come to share the good news that the kingdom of God has come near. When he calls the disciples, He is not asking them to do something so much as notice what He is already doing. Jesus is the light in the darkness that Isaiah foretold. Jesus is a beacon of love, hope, healing, and freedom to a people held captive by the ruling powers of the world.
This is the good news.
The kingdom of heaven has come near in our God who is not content to stay light years away but who leaves his heavenly throne to occupy this broken world.
And Jesus leaves his own earthly hometown of Nazareth to begin his ministry, to bring this good news to all people, not just his own family and friends. He leaves Nazareth to begin his life’s work of showing us what the kingdom of heaven is all about. And here are two really important things to notice:
First, Jesus doesn’t do this work alone. He recruits others to work with him.
And second, there’s a place for everyone in the kingdom of heaven. There’s no test you must pass, no documents you must present, no standards you must meet. Anyone who hears the invitation is welcome.
And what we end up with is community. It’s not a community defined by people who share a passion for a particular hobby. It’s not a community of people who all look alike or act alike. It’s a community made up of all people. It’s a community of people who are defined not by who they are but by whose they are. That’s what it looks like to have the kingdom of heaven come near.
May we discover the kingdom of heaven has indeed come near in the community of people caught in God’s net of unending love, mercy and grace.
Faith Connection at Home
12-13 What I’m getting at, friends, is that you should simply keep on doing what you’ve done from the beginning. When I was living among you, you lived in responsive obedience. Now that I’m separated from you, keep it up. Better yet, redouble your efforts. Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure.
14-16 Do everything readily and cheerfully—no bickering, no second-guessing allowed! Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night so I’ll have good cause to be proud of you on the day that Christ returns. You’ll be living proof that I didn’t go to all this work for nothing.
17-18 Even if I am executed here and now, I’ll rejoice in being an element in the offering of your faith that you make on Christ’s altar, a part of your rejoicing. But turnabout’s fair play—you must join me in my rejoicing. Whatever you do, don’t feel sorry for me.
Ponderings
If followers are to become “fishers of people” (Matt. 4:19), what is the bait to draw others into the movement? In an interview with On Being, originally aired in March 2013, the late Congressman John Lewis reflects that what first attracted him to the civil rights movement was love: “It’s one of the highest forms of love. That you beat me, you arrest me, you take me to jail, you almost kill me, but in spite of that, I’m going to still love you. I know Dr. King used to joke sometimes and say things like, ‘Just love the hell outta everybody. Just love ’em.’”e worth going or that we have what it takes to go there, something of whoever it is that every once in a while seems to lean toward us out of the shadows.