Fishers of People, Troublers of Empire

This sermon was originally preached on January 25, 2026 at both Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church and Trinity Ingleside Lutheran Church.

Relevant lectionary readings can be found here.

“The church should stay out of politics!”

That’s something I heard a lot growing up. For some people, I think, it was an opinion that was rooted in their understanding of the first amendment and the importance of the separation between Church and State. For others – for the majority of us, really if we’re honest – “the church should stay out of politics” – mainly came from a place of discomfort with tension. It was the same reason we were told it was uncouthe to talk about money or sex or any other number of things – it was not the topic of polite dinner conversation.

The problem, though, with “the church should stay out of politics” is that it is a major misunderstanding of both faith and politics.

Because politics, at its core, is not just about elections and parties and policies. Politics is about our public life together. It’s about who gets protected. Who gets sacrificed. Who belongs. Whose bodies are valued. Whose voices are heard. Whose needs get funded and whose lives get cut.

These are political questions because they are questions about how we live together in community.

And because politics is concerned about our life together as a community, our faith is inherently political – whether we like it or not. White Western Christianity has tried to turn Jesus into a floating, spiritualized savior — here to rescue souls for heaven while leaving bodies behind on earth.

But the Jesus we meet in the gospels heals bodies.
Feeds hungry people.
Touches the sick.
Casts out demons.
Restores dignity.
Rebuilds community.

The gospel is not just good news for when we die.
It is good news for flesh.
It is good news for people under crushing systems right now.
It is good news for the vulnerable, the hunted, the disposable.

We also forget sometimes that Jesus was a real person, who came to earth embodied in a real time and real place. A time and place with pressures and soldiers and prisons and a government and power struggles and political dynamics. Jesus did not arrive above history. He stepped straight into it.

This is made obvious in Matthew from the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, which we read in our Gospel reading from today. The catalyst for Jesus’ ministry is an overtly political act – the arrest of John the Baptist.

John was arrested as a political dissident. He was a radical itinerant preacher — a prophet — who spoke out against empire and against the religious leaders who had cozied up to Roman power. Rome ruled through puppet kings installed to crush resistance, and Herod was one of them. And John had particularly sharp words for Herod.

John would not shut up.
John would not comply.
John would not stop telling the truth about a corrupt king.

So Herod did what insecure tyrants always do when they are publicly challenged: he sent his agents to shut him up.

John was thrown into prison. And if you know the story, you know that Herod later had him killed — all to avoid embarrassment, to save face, to maintain control.

Jailing political opponents.
Silencing dissidents.
Crushing resistance.
There are incredibly political acts.

And for Jesus, this was not just political — it was deeply personal.

John was his cousin. His kin. His mentor. The one who recognized him before either of them were born. The one who baptized him in the Jordan and launched him into this movement of renewal and resistance.

So when Herod had John disappeared into a cell, Jesus felt it in his bones.

Jesus’ reaction to John’s arrest really tells something about who Jesus is and how he moves. The English translation of Matthew here says that Jesus “withdrew” to Galilee. But that is a little bit misleading if you don’t understand the politics and geography of the region. Just prior to John’s arrest Jesus had been in the Judean wilderness. But after learning of John’s arrest by Herod, Jesus goes to Galilee. Galilee. The region that is ruled over….by Herod.

Galilee is Herod’s territory.

So when Jesus hears that his cousin, mentor, comrade, friend, has been snatched up by Herod’s police and disappeared, Jesus does not run and hide. He does not keep a low profile. Jesus goes directly to the region that Herod rules.

And what does he do? He starts out his public ministry by proclaiming, “Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven has come near!”

Repent. The kingdom of Heaven has come near.

The exact words John had been using. Word for word.

Jesus quotes John the Baptist. “Repent, the kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

Jesus hears that Herod has kidnapped, abducted, disappeared John for speaking out. And Jesus goes right to Herod’s home turf, right up in his face. And says the exact same thing John did.

So Herod silences one prophet — and another steps forward, louder, in his own backyard.

That is how Jesus starts out his public ministry. In open defiance of a puffed up tyrant king who is desperately trying to silence those who resist him.

Jesus is not apathetic or apolitical in this situation. Jesus is not deferent to unjust authority. Jesus does not comply.

Jesus does not let Herod’s show of force scare him off but instead gets to work, picking up right where John left off, and begins building a movement of love and liberation.

And I saw that same faithful defiance this week in Minneapolis — in striking workers, shuttered businesses, and thousands of people flooding the streets to protect their neighbors. Clergy arrested while praying the Lord’s Prayer. Bodies placed between the state and the vulnerable.

In the midst of violence – of raids, kidnapping, abductions, tear gas, assasinations, people showed up in droves to put their bodies on the line in below zero temperatures and say “This is our home. And we will not let you take our neighbors and terrorize our neighborhoods. Not without a fight.”

That is Gospel.

It is the exact thing Jesus meant when he called disciples and said “come follow me and I will make you fishers of people.”

I always thought this was a strange invitation. And even more strange is the fact that the disciples left their entire lives behind and followed him so immediately.

What I learned, from theologian Ched Meyers, is that the image “fishers of people” is an image that was used throughout the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. In the words of the prophets, like Jeremiah, like Amos, like Ezekiel, the fishing metaphor is used in a very particular way.
In the words of the prophets, fishing is what God does to empires.

Fishing is how God pulls the powerful out of their hiding places and drags injustice into the open.

So when Jesus looks at working-class Galilean fishermen and says, “Follow me,” he is not making them evangelists – he is making them co-conspirators in a revolution that pushes back against the tyranny of the Herods of his day.

Jesus is saying, “You know how to haul heavy things out of deep water. Now help me haul a whole crooked system into the daylight.”

This was about more than just saving souls. He was asking them to join the movement – to be part of God’s plan to turn the world upside down and free us all: spirit yes but also mind and body.

Every day more and more people are joining this movement of love and liberation. They are raising their voices. They are taking to the streets. But they are also organizing care for one another in quiet ways. They are walking each other’s children to school. They are delivering groceries to people who are afraid to leave their homes. They are showing up.

But as Jesus knew, it was not without risk and it was not without cost.

Jesus and those first disciples knew what happened to political dissidents.

Empires then and now will do anything to control people and control the narrative.

They will pepper spray you, beat you, shoot you in the street and then lie about what happened and call you the terrorist.

Over the course of their lifetimes, Jesus and the disicples had seen multiple uprisings against Rome squashed, insurrections put down, activists wiped out.

Jesus saw what happened to John for speaking out against Herod. He knew the road he was traveling.

And yet Jesus also knew that it was worth it. That there is no higher calling than love. That in the midst of state violence and repression, nothing is stronger than God’s love for God’s people and nothing will stop God’s people from getting free.

So when we hear Jesus say, “Follow me,” we should hear it the way those Galilean fishermen did – not merely as a gentle religious invitation, but as a summons into the middle of the world’s ache and struggle.

It is a call to step into the places where fear has been weaponized, where neighbors are being taken, where truth is being buried, and to refuse to look away.

To follow Jesus is to cross into Herod’s territory with love on our lips and justice in our hands.

It is to become fishers of people – not by pulling them into churches, but by pulling them out of cages, out of silence, out of despair.

And we do this not because it is safe, but because it is holy.

Because the kingdom of heaven is not far off or someday – it is near, breaking open right here in the streets, in our bodies, in our fierce, stubborn, courageous love.

And nothing – not empires, not prisons, not bullets, not lies – will ever be strong enough to stop it.

Thanks be to God.