Mark 1:16-20
“Discipleship Begins”
January 22, 2012 - Third Sunday after Epiphany

         I’m standing in my waders beside a lovely trout stream, rigging up my favorite fly rod. I can see big fish rising in a pool just upstream. My fingers tremble as I try to tie on a matching fly as quickly as possible so as not to miss the moment. Then someone taps me on the shoulder and says, “Put down the rod, take off the waders, and come with me.” No, it’s not the game warden nabbing me for fishing out of season. It’s my image of how the call of Jesus to those Galilean fisherman must have felt to them.

         They just went. That’s the weird thing. They went, “immediately.” That’s the word Mark uses in both verse 18 and verse 20. First Simon, whom we know as Peter, and his brother Andrew, then James and John. Jesus calls and they go—immediately.

         “Immediately” may be Mark’s favorite word. He uses it about forty times in his Gospel. It was in last week’s text where he said the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness immediately after His baptism. It’s part of Mark’s whole clipped style of telling the story. Everything happens for Jesus immediately, boom, boom, boom. He comes, He gathers disciples, He teaches, He does some miracles, He crosses the Jewish authorities, He dies, He rises. Mark is the action flick version of the Gospel.

         Yet there’s truth in Mark’s style. Jesus’ whole public ministry was three short years. All those events which changed the world, and which change the lives of anyone who believes in them, happened in a brief span of time in a very small corner of the world. It was all very fast. And so, it seems, was the call and response of those first disciples.

         Picture it however it fits for you. You are sitting at your desk working on a report due tomorrow morning. Jesus walks by and says over His shoulder, “Come on.” You’re in your car a at stoplight when He walks up, taps on your window, opens the door and tells you, “Let’s go.” Or you’re mopping the kitchen floor and Jesus puts His dusty sandals right in the middle of it and says, “Follow me.”

         Would you leave the papers on your desk, the keys in the ignition, the mop in the middle of the floor, and just go? It’s pretty hard to imagine, isn’t it? We have jobs, families, responsibilities. We can’t just up and leave in the middle of all that, even if it is the Lord of the universe asking us to go.

         It was hard for those fishermen too. Peter and Andrew were casting nets. They were knee deep in the water, watching intently for silvery shapes of fish to swim by. Then they would fling their circular webs of rope out over them with a practiced flourish, holding tight to the cord they would use to draw back their catch. We know that at least Peter had a wife. Mark mentions his mother-in-law in verse 29. They had families depending on them for something to eat that night, for the money they would make selling those fish. How could they possibly just walk off and leave it all behind?

         James and John were getting ready for a better catch than they could get with hand nets along the shore. They were in the family boat. Perhaps they were more successful fishermen than Simon and Andrew. We know from Luke that Peter had a boat too, but James and John’s boat was large enough to carry them, their father Zebedee, and some hired men. They were repairing larger nets that could be let down in deep water to surround great schools of fish. The boat and the nets represented a big investment for the Zebedee family. How could the two brothers just crawl over the side, leave their father alone to manage the business, and walk away down the shore behind Jesus?

         Maybe it wasn’t quite as quick and abrupt as Mark makes it seem. We have four Gospels, and two of them, Luke and John, fill in background here. John chapter 1 shows us that Andrew and Peter had already met Jesus. Andrew had actually been a disciple of John the Baptist. But when Jesus came along, Andrew followed Him and also brought his brother Peter along.

         In Luke chapter 5 we learn that this encounter along the seaside wasn’t as short and sweet as Mark tells it. We learn that Jesus actually got into Peter’s boat, used it as a platform to preach a sermon, and then went fishing with these men. He gave them a miraculously huge catch of fish at a time of day when, in their professional opinion, there would be nothing to catch. Peter was impressed and frightened.

         The scene we read here today in these few verses from Mark (and by the way, in this case, Matthew tells it in almost exactly the same words) has some history. It’s a bit like our text from Jonah 3 this morning. Read just that and it sounds like when God told Jonah to get up and go to Nineveh, he just got up and went. But of course there’s the whole back story of the first two chapters, when Jonah tried to run away and God caught up with him in the middle of the ocean. It was only after becoming whale lunch and then whale vomit that Jonah was ready to go when God said go.

         So those four men may have history to make them ready for Jesus to show up. A little like Jonah, Peter had already been scared out of his wits by Jesus. So maybe Peter and Andrew were casting the hand nets because they had already beached and stowed their boat. James and John might have had the hired men there just because they knew they would be going soon with Jesus and didn’t want to leave their father to handle all the fishing tackle alone.

         In other words, we could suppose that these four first disciples got up and went when Jesus called because they had been prepared to get up and go. And maybe that’s true. But remember that Mark is the first Gospel to be written. No one could compare Luke and John when this story was told by Mark the first time. So let’s ask ourselves, why did Mark tell it this way?

         Why would Mark choose to leave out almost any suggestion that Peter, Andrew, James and John had any prior acquaintance with Jesus? Why did he write it in a way that makes it look like the call to discipleship and the decision to follow all happened instantly? What was Mark trying to say to us?

         Mark is the action Gospel, as I said. Events around Jesus happen fast and furious, in a way that might make Tom Cruise or Vin Diesel’s heads spin. Right at the beginning Mark wants us to understand that faith in Jesus means action, decisive action. Mark knows nothing of a faith which is just a cozy warm feeling in your mind or heart. For him, trusting in Jesus means getting on your feet and going wherever Jesus leads.

         The issue then, that Mark raises for us, is when and how you and I will get up and follow Jesus Christ. Where is our Lord asking us to follow Him? And what will we need to leave behind to go there? What action will we take in this story?

         It was graphic and concrete for the fishermen. Mark wants us to feel it. They were to leave behind their jobs, some of their possessions, and even family. It’s a pretty high bar for Christian discipleship. How are you and I possibly going to do anything like that? Hardly any of us would even be here today if we thought following Jesus meant a radical departure from some of the basic elements of our lives. How are we going to understand this?

         Maybe we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. I’ve focused on how the first four disciples responded to Jesus, but I’ve skipped over something fundamental. We’ve been worrying about what the disciples left behind, but let’s talk for a bit about what Jesus asked them to do. Why did He ask them to follow? It’s right there in verse 17, after saying, “Follow me,” Jesus said those famous words we’ve put into a children’s song, “and I will make you fishers of men.” Or as good inclusive language puts it now, “of people.”

         Whatever Jesus wanted of Peter, Andrew, James and John, whatever He wants of us, it has to do with this, with going out and joining in an enterprise that draws in people the way a net draws in fish. Jesus obviously liked this image. In Matthew 13 He compared God’s kingdom to a net catching all sorts of fish. Which ties this all together. As we said last week as we read verses 14 and 15, the good news Jesus preached is the Good News of the Kingdom of God. God is making His kingdom on earth, in the hearts and lives of people. The work, the call of Jesus’ disciples is to draw men, women and children of every age and race and color into that kingdom.

         To put it bluntly, Christian discipleship is not about you. It’s not about your personal, individual salvation. That’s in there, of course. If you follow Jesus, like those fishermen did, you will have a wonderful new life. You will be caught up in God’s net of love and grace and forgiveness. You will receive the promise of eternal life. But following Jesus is bigger than that. It’s not just about whether you land in the net. It’s about taking hold of the net yourself and helping draw together a whole wild, wriggling catch of a community of people who are loved and forgiven by God.

         So when we ask, “How am I going to respond like those first disciples?” or “How will I leave behind what needs to be left behind and follow Jesus?” what we’re really asking is “What do I need to do to join in the kingdom community God is drawing together?” It’s not just about getting our own lives saved in God’s fishing net, it’s about entering into relationship with the rest of the fish, the people of God, the kingdom of God.

         That’s why those guys had to leave their nets and boats and parents and walk on down the beach with Jesus. The Lord meant them to meet and teach and minister to all sorts of people they would never encounter if they stayed home and just kept fishing for fish.

         One of the hazards of being a pastor is that people sometimes feel the need to justify themselves to you. So occasionally I meet someone and hear something like this, “So you’re the pastor of a church. You know, that’s just fine with me, but I don’t really need to go anywhere special to worship God. I have deep spiritual experiences just meditating or praying in my own home.” There are variations on that theme, maybe making a golf course, or a garden, or a sports event the place where an individual can feel personally and privately very close to God, without any need for a church, thank you very much.

         That expression of private and individual spirituality completely misses Mark’s message and point here about discipleship. It’s not about you, at least not about you by yourself. It’s about joining in God’s kingdom, about being part of a community which God is drawing to Himself. It’s about sharing in God’s love for others and connecting with them in a way which pulls them into that love along with you.

         To follow Jesus means to follow Him into relationship with other people. It means following Him to places where your life gets all mixed up with those other lives in ways that are both wonderful and difficult. It means following Him out to where people are alone and hurting, and finding a way to connect with them and draw them into God’s love. And we cannot do that at home or anywhere else alone and by ourselves.

         Which all means that what you or I might be asked to leave behind when Jesus calls may at first be as simple as our own beds or easy chairs. Each of you followed Him this morning by walking out of your house or apartment and closing the door behind you. You left your private fishing spot to come here where God is fishing. That’s discipleship.

         And for some of you, like for James and John who left their father, it was even harder. You didn’t just leave the comforts of your home, you left someone behind, a family member, a friend. You wished they would come with you, but they wouldn’t. Maybe they didn’t even want you to come here today, but you came anyway. You followed Jesus to be with His people, to be in His kingdom. That’s discipleship.

         During our worship service, many of us dropped an offering into one of those maroon bags we hand around. You just put it in and left it there. That money might have been your safety net for this month, during hard times. But you just left it and when we’re done, you will get up and leave it behind for the sake of Jesus, for the sake of His kingdom. That’s discipleship.

         At the end of March, four men from Valley Covenant, like those four disciples long ago, are going to leave their jobs and schools and homes and families to get on a bus and go to Mexico for ten days. They’re doing it to meet poor people in a little town and cast a net of Christ’s love around them. That’s discipleship.

         You may not be able to hear the actual voice of Jesus or trail behind His sandals down a lakeshore, but you are following Jesus when you do these things, when you leave home and family and possessions for His sake and for the sake of the people He loves and is fishing for.

         I didn’t want to say this next part too soon. It’s important that we hear the call of Jesus like Mark wanted, fast and furious and demanding. But not all our leaving behind is literal. That’s the gist of our lesson from I Corinthians 7:29-31 today. Paul tells us we can leave and give up what we have, for the sake of Jesus, by our attitude, by the disposition of our hearts. So he teaches that our families, our personal griefs and joys, our possessions, and all our business dealings in this world should be things that we have, but hold as if we did not have them; that we possess, but as if they did not fully and completely belong to us.

         You don’t have to walk away from your house forever in order to leave it behind for Jesus. Use your home to host a fellowship group, or entertain neighbors who need Christ, or shelter a Christian friend who needs refuge and you are giving it up for Jesus even though you still own it. Make your job a place where you behave like a Christian and open yourself to opportunities to share Christ with people you know, and you have put your nets to work fishing for God even while you’ve kept your job. Invest your money in a project that does good in the world, and you’ve offered it to God, even while you’ve saved it.

         I think it’s a combination of both, actually. Mark’s story of how Christian discipleship begins won’t let us get away with imagining that we can follow Jesus without actually and literally leaving some things behind. If we haven’t left something for Jesus, we aren’t following Him yet. But we can also follow by leaving everything else we have behind in our hearts, turning people and possessions and work over to Him and His kingdom.

         Jesus Christ is still walking through this world. His voice is still calling, “Come, follow me.” Let’s leave our boats and nets and learn how little they matter. Let’s follow Him and join in the good fishing He will bring us. Let’s get caught by the greatest Fisherman of all.

         Amen.

Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2012 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj