This is the day of our Charge Conference, the annual meeting of this congregation when we evaluate and celebrate the past year. And indeed, we can give thanks to God for all that has happened during this past year, and look forward to the future to what God has in store for us, particularly as we look forward to a new millennium.

So it is appropriate that on this Sunday the gospel lesson be Matthew's version of the call of the disciples. That is what I want us to look at this morning. There are two classic interpretations of this scene. One is by John Greenleaf Whittier, and the other by Albert Schweitzer.

We can find Whittier's interpretation in the second verse of the hymn that we have just sung, "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind."

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
Beside the Syri…