A little further down the shore Jesus saw two other brothers, James and his brother, John, the sons of Zededee and they were with their father mending their nets. Jesus called them and immediately they left the boat, their father still in it, and followed Him.”
This is how Matthew chapter four (18 – 21) tells us of the calling of the first disciples. These men heard the call, left their day jobs, their lives, their family and their homes and followed Jesus. Excellent stuff. This is what discipleship is all about – being close to the Master. Now as much as I see this as the ultimate example of commitment to Jesus I have to be honest and say that I have struggled with this whole area.
I assume that as in Matthew this story follows the earliest episodes of Jesus preaching that He was pretty much an ‘unknown’. How would I have responded to a bloke who was getting a bit of a reputation as a preacher and teacher knocking on the door of my workplace and asking me to leave it all to be part of his travelling circus? Moving the focus onto my life twenty-five years ago when I knew who He was and I claimed to be a ‘Christian’ how did I respond when Jesus called me to drop everything and follow Him? I ran away. I found reasons for it, Not to be the right time!”
Jesus did this to me and to the fishermen. He didn’t wait until the ‘faithful’ came to the place where teaching was to be found, He didn’t hang around at the back of Church looking for some likely candidates to become His pupils. This was the way other Rabbis picked up their followers, they did their stuff and picked the people who appeared to be most enamoured and most taken up with them. They’d select the people who looked like they’d make it so that they could have key people in many places who were looked up to and who in turn looked up to them – a pyramid selling form of theological education. Still happens – even to this very day.
Jesus, as usual, does it differently. He goes to the place where the blokes work and calls them there and then. And this is what he does to this very day. He doesn’t pick the public school types but picks the people that meet what he sees with His spiritual eye. No ‘A stars’ or good grades needed here – just the calling upon your life. I would imagine that the fishermen were actually a little more than the working class plebs that many portray them as. After all, they owned their own boats and they had hired labourers so they must have been doing pretty well. Then again, working in the boat alongside the others I don’t think they were the most refined sorts either; A sort of middle-class perhaps?
So, Jesus stops them in the middle of what they’re doing and calls them – and they come – immediately. Now He wasn’t an unknown but He wasn’t the superstar he was to become – it was early days. But He called them where they were, doing whatever it was that they were doing – and they responded. So what about us?
Last week we discussed what it was to be a disciple, to be someone who followed and was with the master all the time, learning from Him and copying, doing it again and revisiting it until it was right – the apprentice who lives, eats and sleeps in the same place as the Master. Has Jesus called us to ‘Follow Him’ and although we’re Christians we’ve ignored the call. There are people here who God wants to use in ministry areas and yet the call has been too frightening and we’ve given our reasons for doing it later. Some of here have responded and having done so, have been told that we’re just not ready for that role or just aren’t right or the right person.
Jesus is issuing that same call that He gave to the fishermen to many of us today. He doesn’t expect you to be able to do the job right now, but he wants you to follow Him and learn how to be fishers of men. He’s calling some of your to be prophets within our congregation. He’s calling some of you to be intercessors and to be involved in pastoral things, healing, evangelism and even administration (heaven forbid). And the call is individual – the call is personal. It comes to each of us in the voice that we recognise in the place in which we find ourselves.
The problem is of course that this call is not cheap, mind you it comes to us at an incredibly great price, the cost of which was paid by Christ on the cross. We are being asked to give up our Sundays, to forego Eastenders or some of our other favourite television. To speak to people about the hope that we have in Jesus (1 Peter 3:15), not from a pulpit or standing in the square outside St Editha’s but on a one to one basis. To have the courage to pray for people who need a touch from God knowing that it’s not about us but about Him – all we need to do is to be willing to drop what we know and are safe with and to ‘Follow Him’.
Many years back we used to sing a song about those called to a wedding banquet, it had the chorus:
I cannot come, I cannot come to the banquet, don't trouble me now, I have married a wife, I have bought me a cow,
I have fields and commitments that cost a pretty sum, pray, hold me excused, I cannot come!
Are the words of the chorus the same sort of words you’ve used when you’ve realized that there is a calling from God on your life? God is calling you to be a Christian in the place where you work. Perhaps He’s calling you to be a Christian in the middle of your friends and family. After all, what on earth with they think? Actually, Jesus isn’t asking you to give up anything today to respond to His call on your life. He’s asking you, first and foremost to take up your own Cross (Mathew 16: 24 – 27):
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.”
Would the fishermen have been so quick to ‘follow Him’ had they known where the path led? I don’t know, that’s something we might just have to wait and ask them when we get to meet them. All I can tell you is that they had times which were obviously a great blessing, times which were obviously frightening and times when they must have counted themselves the most blessed of people. This is what you’re called to this morning. Whether you’re educated or barely went to school, working, retired or unemployed for some reason, and there are so many reasons! So often people lean on their ideas rather than the reality.
I’d like to give you a passage from the Proverbs (3: 1 – 18) to help you with your calling:
My child, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commands in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you prosperity.
Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favour and a good name in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil. This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones.
Honour the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.
And do not despise the LORD’s discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.
Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gains understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honour. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who embrace her; those who lay hold of her will be blessed.
Wendy and I watched a programme on television together, one of those rare times when the whole family had managed to pile onto the settee and chill together. There was a man who had a girlfriend and he didn’t want her to take a job and leave him. He wanted her to stay and be with him. But she asked him to leave and be with her in a new place instead. He had to think about leaving his football team, his favourite pubs and places he hung out with his friends, his family and his job. “Go on,” we shouted, “Do it! Make the right choice – go with her.” And he did, he chose relationship over being comfortable in familiar things.
This is what God is calling you to do (and be) today as a disciple of Christ. To drop the things, which make us comfortable and content with who, what and where we are and to ‘Follow Him.’
As we respond, Jesus stands, beckoning, with the words, "In this world you will have trouble, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world and you too are called to be 'overcomers'. This is the key – the kingdom of God has come close to us, something that is a realised reality, especially during this season of Epiphany and calls us through His Son to follow Him and be disciples.
Will you answer this call?
Something to do - Read 1 Peter 1: 13 -23:
“Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” Since you call on a Father who judges each man’s work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God. Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God”
So what do we do when we're called?
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