“Come and Follow: A Call For Every Body”

Celebration of RIC: Baptism of Our Lord

January 11, 2026

Message by Rev. Keats Miles-Wallace

Psalm 27:1, 4-9

Matthew 4:12-23

In most areas of our lives, it would be a strange thing for a stranger to come to our work, our home, etc., and say, “I know you’re doing great out here, but it’d really be great if you left all that behind and went on a trip with me.” In most cases, we would think that is completely absurd. Surely, whoever this person is has completely lost their mind. Leave my work and paycheck? Leave my family and the people that I love? Leave everything that I’ve ever known to follow around someone I’ve never met? Forget about it! No way! And yet, this is an experience that LGBTQIA2S+ people and our reconciling allies share.

As queer people, most of us have lived the first part of our lives under the presumption of heterosexuality and cisgender identity. We’re trained to perform these things well, perhaps not consciously by anyone in particular, but simply because the world prefers those social locations, similar perhaps to the way that Simon, Andrew, James, and John were raised as fishermen, because it was the family business. I can imagine that their parents would have run their tiny fingers over slick fish scales, rough, seaworn nets, and the tight fabric of a sail. In the same way that we were given pinks and blues, and taught that the things we liked would say things about us to others. And, like Simon, Andrew, James, and John, we queer folks are visited one day - not by some groomer trying to make more queer people – but by a sense of self that can only really be delivered by the Spirit. Whether all at once or over time, the Spirit whispers to us, “Come and follow me,” luring us into truths and realizations offered by God – fruit forbidden by society but full of knowledge gifted to us by our creator. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, we pursue that knowledge and the call of the Spirit, and we find ourselves over and over again, ever unfolding into who God created us to be.

Similarly, Reconciling communities and allied individuals go from a community or person raised and developed in a certain context until that darn Holy Spirit walks by and says, “Come and follow me.” And, just like Simon, Andrew, James, and John, you have followed. And being Reconciling isn’t just about saying ‘yes’ to queer folks. It’s about saying ‘yes’ to God’s insistence that our community reflect the wide welcome of Christ. It’s about refusing to settle for the world’s divisions, and instead, learning to live as a people who actually practice reconciliation. You’ve dropped everything, you’ve risked it all. And it’s no secret that, whether queer or reconciling, these sorts of “follow me” moments often face the same questions as the fishermen. “Will I be able to survive if I risk the finances?” “Will I still be considered a part of my family?” “I don’t have any skills for this, I don’tknow what I’m doing. How will I know what I’m doing?”

And this is a scene that I think we never really truly escape. This is not failure, friends — it’s discipleship. The life of faith is not a straight line of progress but a spiral, always circling back to the beginning, always hearing the Spirit whisper, ‘Follow me’ again. Each time we’re drawn into that cycle, we find ourselves a little stronger, a little wiser, a little more ready to love with abandon. Just as soon as we think we have it all figured out, we find ourselves in the boat again, but at the beginning of the scene this time. Jesus of Nazareth has come to Galilee and, in doing so, has fulfilled the prophet Isaiah’s words, “The people who lived in the dark have seen a great light, and a light has come upon those who lived in the region and in shadow of death.”

It is no secret in our tradition that following the way of Jesus will gain you some enemies, that people are made uncomfortable by Jesus’s way of flipping the world upside down. And we find ourselves, queer folks and allies, battling the words of people who are made uncomfortable by a full and expansive welcome. “Why do you have to shove it in our faces?” they say. “You’re wolves in sheep’s clothing, false prophets.” Or my personal favorite, “read your Bible,” as though the Bible didn’t lead me here. We might find ourselves exhausted, mending fish nets in a boat as we pray for a savior. And one arrives! Maybe not the warring king that we hope for, the one that breaks down all the walls and silences our enemies and oppressors. Instead, we get a gentle messiah, one who conquers by critique and clever example, who reveals truth and untwists constructed realities, who doesn’t just disappear the discomfort but offers us such sweet relief that the discomfort is now more manageable. A savior who says, “Come and follow me, and I will show you a different way.”

And in this new wave, we find some success. We join with others of like minds again, we support and uplift, or at least commiserate with one another for as long as we can, until this way of Jesus has drawn our enemies too close once more, and we need a new way yet again.

Friends, if you take a quick peek at history, we are in this cycle now, somewhere in the “your enemies draw near” portion. Just as we began to realize that not only was it important to recognize the great variety of God’s creation in gender and sexuality, but also in race and ethnicity, in ability, in language, and all sorts of other diverse aspects of human life and existence, our enemies have closed in around us once more. Some seek to separate off those who are the source of the greatest discomfort for our enemies, breaking our community. Others seek the warring path, seeking to bring the same energy to our enemies that they bring to us.

I have good and bad news. The bad news: The savior that’s going to find their feet on the shores of a metaphoric Galilee this time is not a warring King nor even really one that will work on our enemies directly. But the good news? This savior remains one of wit and truth who comes to work within our community to give us the strength to re-collect ourselves and persevere. Jesus is not going to show up riding on a white horse and tell the bad guys to leave us alone. Rather, Jesus calls us to be better together, to love our siblings in Christ with even more depth, compassion, and wild abandon than ever before. Jesus calls us to love our black, brown, and other-hued siblings. Jesus calls us to love those whose bodies appear or function differently than we might expect. Jesus calls us to appreciate the stunning beauty of the spectrum of neurodivergent minds and the unique ways that contribute to the world around them.

This is the time to double down, dear ones, not for clout or to stick it to the man, but because it is what Jesus calls us to do together, as queer folk, as reconciling churches, as allies, because holding together in the light of Christ is the way that we will survive no matter what comes our way, no matter what shadow of death we might find ourselves in. The way we follow Jesus together is not by fighting harder than our enemies, but by loving bolder than they can imagine.