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We give a lot of weight to the power of our choice. Obviously choices matter—where we live, what work or career we pursue, who our friends are, how we treat people, of course these choices matter. But I notice that when we obsess over our choices, we start to imagine that if we just make the right decisions, if we just do the right things, we will be able to per-fect life or, in a sense, even save ourselves from the worst. For some of us, this can even look like, if we just give enough money, if we just volunteer for this organization, if we just pray clearly enough, God will smile on us, love us, grant our every wish, save us.
In 1843 Senator Henry Clay used the phrase “self-made man” to describe people whose success lay within them and didn’t come from outside sources. It has become sort of an archetype. (We’re challenging this in society, but the psychology of it still runs deep). In the 1950s, some historians say that the definition of success was a successful businessman who had made it.
We do have an awful lot of control over our lives—or we think we do until someone gets an unexpected diagnosis or laid off or something in life goes off the rails.
In today’s bible story, Jesus runs into four guys on the beach--fishermen—and they are presented with a choice. It’s one with pretty life altering possibilities. Jesus says to them, “follow me. And I will make you fishers of people.” “Immediately.” The story says, “They left everything and followed him.”
How immediate does immediately mean? Did they take five minutes or even an hour to think it through? Whatever it was, it seems like they all made the right choice. After all, they come up all over the gospels as disciples and as key players in the story so they must have done the right thing.
As we look at how it all this played out, we wonder, yikes, could we do that? Drop our nets, drop it all and leave everything? I read this story in a bible study with some members from here at church about a few weeks ago and one of the questions in the resource I was using was “do you think you could have dropped everything and followed Jesus?” Needless to say, no one jumped in with a resounding YES!
All four of the brothers jumped on the Jesus’ bandwagon and followed that day at the beach. And many of us give them a lot of credit for being so bold and courageous. So extraordinary. “I couldn’t do that…” we think. “They gave up so much.” Especially James and John.
While Peter and Andrew were probably more economically stretched—they threw their nets into the water from the beach hoping to catch something--James and John had a boat that they took out to work on the sea. And fancy nets. And a dad, Zebedee, who worked with them and who was probably set to give them the family business some day. That was a lot to walk away from. But they just did it, there’s no analysis of their decision. There’s no circling back a few chapters later in the story to see if any of them had followers-remorse. In fact, one has to wonder if there was actually much choice in the story or not. Maybe instead, it was more that something happened in that moment.
Some people call this a miracle story. In this story, it’s not that the fishermen did the right thing and made this heroic and sacrificial decision to follow, it’s that God walked up to a group of dudes and pulled off a miracle.
Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes about this. She says that “this isn’t a story about us but it’s a story about God, and about God’s ability not only to call us but also to create us as people who are able to follow.”
But how does that happen? How does God make us into people who are able to follow? Jesus says to the brothers, “I will make you…into fishers of men.”
German theologian and activist, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who worked in the underground resistance movement during World War II said that one of the most striking things about this call Jesus sets out is that it is “void of all content.” It is so simple. Jesus doesn’t present his followers with a stump speech or a checklist or say, here is the game plan, here are the rules. Are you in? sign here if you agree. He just says “follow me.”
Could it be that, while the things we choose to believe and the way we choose to behave are important, they’re not actually at the heart of discipleship? In fact, the heart is following. It’s listening to the teachings, thinking about them, learning, talking it through with folks, putting into practice together, messing it up, reflecting, trying again. There’s movement in that journey. Sacred movement.
When I look at the stories in the gospels or at the stories of the faithful people around me or even my own practice in following Jesus, I see that this call isn’t one and done—dropping the nets on the sand and taking off. It’s a practice that we fine tune again and again. Jesus will challenge these brothers withal sorts of hard question about generosity, love and justice.
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Have you ever used a pair of binoculars and noticed that you’re seeing double? There are two identical robins sitting next to each other in the tree. This can happen with a telescope too. Sometimes, the lenses and mirrors get out of alignment. (This could also be the product of having some very cheap kids binoculars in your house.) If your binoculars or telescope are fancy enough, you can fix this problem. Sometimes there is a little dial on the binoculars that will adjust the lenses and slowly bring the two robins into one. Aligning the two images into one single image is called collimation.
Maybe, in that moment when Jesus called the disciples on the beach, there was a moment of collimation where God’s call and their lives were in alignment. It’s more than just their lives harmonizing with God’s essence, it was a one-ness. The kingdom came. And that was utterly miraculous.
I think that can happen in our lives, but I think that more often, the images drift out of unity, we merge and then deviate we have a moment of clarity and then things are fuzzy. We place so much weight on our choice and while sure, it’s there, God’s call to participate in the struggle for love, justice, mercy, grace is itself magnetic and it pulls us into focus. It synchronizes us. I think one of the cool things is that while choice is an individual thing we wrestle with, the call of God is a community thing that pulls us together. Believe me, there are other magnetic forces around us that pull us far from this vision of grace, but God is continually fine tuning us and working on us and bringing us back into focus.
Sometimes following looks like the pairs of brothers (Andrew and Peter, James and John) who set out to journey with Jesus. Sometimes it looks like James and John’s sisters who stayed home to take care of Zebedee. And then learned how to fish themselves. And then organized all of the folks who were sitting on the dock with a single fishing pole barely making ends meet into a fishing cooperative. Sometimes following is working out the problem with the fisherman on the next boat who kept tangling their nets with yours (or were you the one tangling with them??). Sometimes following is listening to old Zebedee and his elderly siblings who gather in the dusky evenings to tell stories by the firelight while the children played in grass.
How is God fine tuning you and pulling you towards that vision? For following God is nothing short of miraculous.
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