January 22 2023

Fr. Pat’s Sermon Notes

Your "YES" Costs; but "NO" Cost more!   

Do you ever feel like your hopes and dreams are focused on one thing while most of your time and energy are invested in something else?  We want to be better spouses, better siblings, better parents, better sons and daughters, better students, better leaders, better employees, better citizens, better parishioners, better followers of Jesus.  We want all of these things yet find ourselves doing little to nothing to become better.  For many if not most people life is about being in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction and disappointment!  But it doesn't have to be this way.  God meant for your life to be so much more.

Like the land and Zebulon and Naphtali, a land described as being in a perpetual state of anguish, gloom, darkness and distress, God has in mind a very different future for you than the present state of things.  The same was true of Simon Peter, his brother Andrew and the two sons of the fisherman, Zebedee.  But in order for them to discover and experience what life could really be; the life God had in mind for them, they would have to let go of the life they were currently clinging to.  Their nets, their boats, and their ties to family would have to take a back seat to a new life in service to God and His Kingdom!

But most people don't feel free to leave certain things behind because those things have come to define them.  Others aren't free to leave their comfort zones or to take the risk of stepping into the unknown of what following Jesus will actually entail.  Yet in today's Gospel we see that some do exactly that after meeting Jesus for themselves.  Simon Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee immediately dropped their nets believing that not to do so would result in them missing out on an opportunity of a lifetime.  Even Jesus left Nazareth, his home town and his life as a carpenter, and would never return there to live.  Your salvation and mine mattered too much to him.  Saving our lives was worth losing his own.  For in the end when it comes to deciding whether to answer the call to follow Jesus, the most important question is not what will I lose if I say "yes", but what do I forfeit if I say "no"!