January 25, 2026

"Following Midst of Fear"

The News We've Been Hearing "When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison..." That's how Matthew begins this story of Jesus' public ministry. Not with a sermon. Not with a miracle. With news. Bad news. The kind of news that changes everything. John, the one who baptized Jesus, the one who announced what was coming, has been silenced. The powers have flexed. And Jesus hears about it.

We've been hearing news this week too. I suspect all of you have seen the headlines from the Twin Cities. Raids. Families separated. People taken from their homes, schools or work. A five-year-old boy named Liam, coming home from preschool with his Spider Man backpack, taken along with his father. A family seeking asylum, following the legal process, and now in a detention center in Texas. Hundreds have been taken across Minnesota this week, including at least five children. And yesterday, Alex Pretti was shot and killed. The third shooting. The second death. All in the Twin Cities in less than a month. We hear news like that, and something tightens in us. Fear. Uncertainty. The sense that the world is more fragile than we thought.

Following Jesus doesn't mean conquering our fear. It means answering his call in the midst of it. He Went Toward, Not Away So what does Jesus do when he hears the news about John? He could retreat. He could hide. He could wait for things to settle down. Instead: "He went away to Galilee." And Matthew wants us to notice where he goes. Not to Jerusalem, the center of power. Not to safety. He goes to Galilee. And Matthew quotes Isaiah to make sure we don't miss it: "Galilee, land of the Gentiles. The people who live in darkness will see a great light." Galilee was the margins. The borderlands. The place where foreigners lived. It was looked down on by the religious establishment: "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" It was the edge, not the center. And that's exactly where Jesus goes. Toward the margins. Toward the people in the shadows.

And here's the thing about Galilee: it's home. For the disciples Jesus is about to call, this is where people know them. To follow Jesus here, in Galilee, means facing the people who know you better than you know yourself, and saying, "Something has changed." There's no anonymity in discipleship. It happens in front of your neighbors, your family, your community. The Call in the Midst And here's the part that stops me every time. Jesus doesn't wait for the political situation to stabilize. Right there, in the shadow of John's arrest, in Galilee of the Gentiles, he starts calling people. "Come with me, and I will teach you to catch people." He sees Simon and Andrew with their nets. He sees James and John in the boat with their father. And he says: Come. Follow me. This is the same Jesus who will later say: "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." It's the same invitation.

Come. Not "figure it out first." Not "wait until you're not afraid." Just: come. Following Jesus is the rest. Not because it's easy, but because we're not carrying it alone. This is the invitation: following Jesus doesn't mean conquering our fear first. It means answering his call in the midst of it. They Left at Once And what do the disciples do? "At once they left their nets and went with him." They're not paralyzed. They're not frozen by fear. Something in that call frees them to move. Bishop Loya, in a pastoral letter this week, names this distinction perfectly. He writes that when the disciples responded to Jesus' call, it was not the urgency of anxiety, of panic, of fear. It was the urgency of clarity. This invitation had what their souls were longing for. And that same clarity is available to us. We do not act with the urgency of anxiety. We act with the urgency of clarity. Jesus' call is clear: follow me to the margins, to the vulnerable, to the broken places. And notice what Jesus does with them. He doesn't ask them to become something else first. He takes what's already in their hands, their nets, their ordinary work, and stretches it into something new. "I will teach you to catch people."

Whatever your gift, your skill, your profession, even your sense of lack of skill: this is what has uniquely prepared you for mission. I think that's what the call of Jesus does. It doesn't make fear disappear, but it breaks its grip. It gives us someone to follow when we don't know what to do. It frees us to act, to show up, to love our neighbors, not because we've conquered our anxiety, but because we're following someone who already walked toward the margins and faced down fear on the cross. Last Sunday at my home parish, Messiah Church in St. Paul, the congregation saw what fear can do. For the first time in almost twenty years, not a single person of color came to worship. They were too afraid. They watched the livestream from home instead. And the congregation's response? Not paralysis. Messiah is now training lay leaders to monitor the doors. They are starting a ministry to bring food and essentials to neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes. They are launching a 24/7 prayer ministry. The whole congregation is rising up, not because the fear has passed, but in the midst of it. This is what Christians have always done. In the second and third centuries, when plagues swept through the Roman Empire, people fled cities to avoid contagion. But Christians stayed. They nursed the sick, their own and their pagan neighbors alike. They showed up when everyone else ran away.

The historian Rodney Stark argues this is one of the main reasons Christianity grew: people saw that Christians didn't flee from suffering. They walked toward it. The Work Continues And here in Red Wing, we're not standing still either. Last night, people gathered at 7:00 for a vigil for Alex Pretti. Christ Church is joining with our Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian neighbors around Central Park for candlelight vigils each Friday evening at 5:00, a time to pray together for our state, our country, and our neighbors. This is one way we answer the call, not alone, but together with our neighbors.

The gospel reading ends with this: "Jesus went all over Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the Good News about the Kingdom, and healing people who had all kinds of disease and sickness." (v. 23) Jesus is still at it through the church, through his disciples today. Teaching. Preaching good news. Healing. The work doesn't stop because the world is frightening. The work continues because the world is frightening. Our collect today asks God to "give us grace to answer readily the call of our Savior and proclaim the good news of his salvation to all the world." That's the invitation for us. Not to have it all figured out. Not to be unafraid. But to answer readily. To follow. Following Jesus has never meant waiting until we're unafraid. It means answering his call in the midst of it. To proclaim, with our words, with our presence, with our lives, that there is light in the darkness. That God is at work in the margins. That no one is forgotten. Today, families across Minnesota and our nation are living in fear. Children are being separated from parents. Neighbors are afraid to leave their homes, to go to work, to take their kids to school. And still, Jesus is saying "Come follow me," calling us toward the margins, toward the forgotten, toward the work of healing and hope. May we have the grace to answer Jesus' call.

Amen.

For the Prayers of the People Almighty God, who does not wait for the world to be safe before showing up, we pray for all who live in fear today: for immigrants and asylum seekers, for families separated and detained, for children taken from their homes, for all who do not know what tomorrow holds. Be their light and their salvation. Shelter them in this time of trouble. Amen