Grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text on which this morning's message is based comes from our Gospel lesson (Matthew 4: 12-23) read earlier.

When a new head football coach takes over a failing football program, as coach Snyder did at KSU about a dozen years ago, the first, most critical thing he does is begin hiring his staff. One of the most critical things he can do is attract and hire the most skilled and knowledgeable assistant coaches he can find. The head coach cannot possibly do all the coaching and teaching by himself. These assistant coaches will make or break his success in his career. They will make or break his reputation as a coach. These assistant coaches will attract (or repel) future athletes to the program. These assistant coaches will motivate and teach these players, or they won't. These assistant coaches will make strategy decisions and suggestions during games that will result in either victory or defeat. The assistant coaches make or break the head coach. It is imperative that he hire the best possible staff he can attract. Coach Snyder has been very adept at this, so adept at attracting good staff, it has actually worked against him to a degree. Several of his former assistant coaches are now head coaches and assistant coaches coaching against him.

But this necessity to attract the best possible staff is not only true in football. Those of you who are in business for yourselves or managers of a business, you know how important it is to attract and interview and hire the best possible employees. Imagine how long you would stay in business if you interviewed people and consistently hired not the best candidate you interviewed, but the worst. Let's say you typically interview 10 people for a position, and consistently hired the 8th, 9th, or 10th (worst) candidates for the job. How long do you think you would stay in business or keep your own job. Not long, huh?

In our Gospel text, Jesus is attracting his staff, that is, he is calling his closest disciples, his apostles. Human logic would suggest that Jesus would work hard to attract the best possible staff he could find. Human logic would suggest that Jesus, the all-knowing Son of God, would be the best possible "head coach", a man with ability to discern and attract the strongest of candidates for his staff of closest followers. Human logic would suggest that Jesus could have gone an interviewed the brightest and best candidates at the local Rabbi-training institutes, and called only the most knowledgeable, the most motivating, the most pure, honest, and sinless candidates he could find. Human logic would suggest that Jesus, above everyone else, would understand how important it was to select the best possible disciples/apostles he could find in order that His ministry, both before and after his time on earth, would have the greatest chance at success. Human logic would suggest that Jesu s, above everyone else, would know the dangers of selecting the 8th, 9th, and 10th best persons for a job. Human logic would suggest that. Human logic would be wrong.

We hear in our Gospel text how Jesus went about calling and choosing his disciples. He didn't go to the best Rabbi-training institutes, of which there were many, to select his apostles. He didn't go to Jerusalem, the center of religious instruction, where many of the experts of the law and experts-in-training would have been. He went first to the shore around the Sea of Galilee. He first went to the Sea of Galilee and selected four fishermen. Fishermen? Fishermen. Why didn't he go and choose some Synagogue rulers like Jairus. Or influential laymen, believing Pharisees like Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathea. These men had listened to Jesus and been influenced by his miracles.   

Surely they would have been higher on the staff talent scale than fishermen, men with limited experience and aptitude for what Jesus was calling them to.

Well, maybe Jesus knew diamonds in the rough when he saw them? Maybe he knew that these fishermen, while untrained and limited in experience, maybe they had some inherent personality traits that would enable them to be better core staff members than we might first expect. Then again, maybe not.

John and his brother James, were called the Sons of Thunder, probably indicating that they were known for their hot tempers. And they were both proud men, sinfully proud, who asked Jesus if they could sit at his right and left when he came into his kingdom. These attributes hot temper and pride were strong negative indicators for the job.

And Peter, Peter. He was so impetuous it often got him into trouble. He would show great bursts of promise, for example confessing Jesus to be the Christ before all the others. But then he would show great lack of understanding in the game plan of his "head coach." After Jesus had explained his surprising lose-win game plan to his assistants, that (Matthew 16) "he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. 22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"

23 Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in m ind the things of God, but the things of men."

How many of us have ever had a boss become so disenchanted with our job performance that he or she called us "Satan" and "a stumbling block." Probably not many. Not many of us would hold a job if our boss called us those names.

But Jesus was a very unique selector of assistants. He chose not to look for the brightest and best of the talent pool for his disciples. He chose the most unlikely. His game plan was not to surround himself with assistants who were the most deserving. He instead surrounded himself with people he knew to be incompetent, backward, erring, in other words, sinful.

He surrounded himself with "people who were living in darkness" and He was their light. He came to those people and proclaimed "Repent, (and keep on repenting throughout your life) for the kingdom of heaven is near". "Keep on turning to me to see the light." Jesus did not go to his first disciples and say to them "Come, help me coach these people because I need your help and skills to be successful." No, Jesus said "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." And they did. They followed Jesus, for 3 years, to his cross. For 3 years they did not understand his lose-win game plan. They couldn't comprehend how the Messiah, the Christ, God's Anointed one could do anything but win. But yet they followed him, clueless to the end, to the cross, to watch his suffering and death, his "lose" part of the plan.

What of us? Did Jesus choose you to be his follower because he knew you would be a really competent follower, disciple? Did He call you by name at your baptism because He knew that you were among the brightest and best that He could call upon to further his game plan? No, just like his first disciples, He didn't call us into his kingdom because we were deserving, or bright, or competent. He called us to be His present assistants, his followers because he loves us. He has called us to a life of repentance, continual repentance for our incompetency, for our sin. He called us to follow him to the cross, to let the light of his forgiveness and healing shine on us.

When my family and I visited here about two years ago, while I was still at the seminary and before you had called me as your vicar and then pastor, the Interim Pastor Rath was here preaching on Acts 1 where the Apostles were selecting a replacement for Judas Iscariot. They chose two men as possible candidates, but they didn't mention anything about the skills or competencies of these men. These were the qualifications: "it is necessary to choose one of the men who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us. For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection."

The qualifications for being selected by Jesus have never been talent or competency. Jesus doesn't NEED our skills to insure His success. Jesus simply wants us to follow him, to trust in his cross throughout our lives. Jesus doesn't need skillful lawyers or judges to make his case before the world. He simply wants loving witnesses, people who hear his teaching and preaching, who know their need for repentance, who know the strength of his forgiveness, who have sensed the power of his resurrection in their lives. Jesus simply wants those people who know that they are walking through the shadow of death to see His great light and to come and follow him. Jesus wants you. Come, follow Him.

The grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which leads to the desire to follow him, be with you always.

Amen.