Epiphany 3A - 2026

Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year A
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty

There are seasons in life when everything feels like it is piling up at once. Projects stack on top of projects. Emails beget meetings, meetings beget more work, and even our best and most precious responsibilities begin to feel heavy. Anxiety hums in the background. Exhaustion grows, until one day you realize you are running on fumes. And somewhere in the midst of all that, a still, small voice suggests the thing you need most: rest.

But rest is hard. Sometimes it feels like it takes more effort to take a break than to just keep pushing. Planning a retreat, taking a holiday, stepping away—even briefly—can feel impossible when there is so much to do. And yet, Scripture insists that retreat is not a luxury. It is part of faithful living.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins his public ministry by the Sea of Galilee. He sees Simon Peter and Andrew casting their nets, doing the work they have done day after day. He calls them with: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately, they leave their nets and follow him.

Often, we paint this narrative as a dramatic call to action (and I suppose it is), but today I want us to imagine it as a story of interruption. Jesus interrupts their labor. He interrupts the rhythm of work that defined their days. And in that interruption, there is a kind of release. Leaving the nets is not only about starting a mission; it is also about letting go of what binds, exhausts, and limits them.

Jesus himself regularly withdrew to quiet places. He retreated to pray. He rested with friends in Bethany. He stepped away from the crowds, even when the crowds were pressing in. Jesus did not treat retreat as failure or avoidance. He treated it as obedience, obedience to the truth that human beings, even the Son of God, need restoration.

I wonder if something like that flickered through the minds of Andrew and Peter. I wonder if, beneath the suddenness of Jesus’ call, there was also relief. Relief at stepping away from the cycle of casting and mending nets; perhaps relief for different rhythm of life centered not on productivity, but on presence.

Epiphany is a season of revelation—of light dawning in unexpected places. And one of the revelations of this season is that God does not only call us to work. God also calls us away from work. God calls us into rhythms of engagement and retreat, of giving and receiving, of labor and rest.

For those of us who are weary, anxious, or over-scheduled, this Gospel is not a demand to do more. It is an invitation to listen for the voice of Jesus amid the noise, calling us to follow him into deeper life, not over exhaustion. Sometimes following Jesus means laying down the nets, trusting that the world will not end if we stop for a while, and believing that in rest, God is still very much at work.