3rd Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

I wonder about these fisherman who so suddenly up and follow Jesus, leaving everything behind.

Today’s passage occurs very early in Matthew’s gospel, and early in Jesus’ ministry.  In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is born, the Magi visit, his family moves.  Then Jesus is an adult, he’s baptized by John, he goes to the wilderness for 40 days where he’s tempted by Satan.  Then today’s passage happens.  

So we wonder what’s going on with these two pairs of fishermen brothers.  How much do they know of Jesus?  What exactly happens in the minds and souls of Peter and Andrew when Jesus says, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” and they go.  Matthew is not particularly interested in telling us about any of that information.  Instead, Matthew says, “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  Immediately.  And as if to emphasize that this is not an anomaly but a pattern, Jesus sees James and John in the boat mending their nets with their father, and calls them, and Matthew tells us, “Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.”  Immediately.  

It's not just the fishermen, either.  Matthew’s gospel also presents the same thing happening when Jesus sees a man called Matthew sitting in a tax office and calls him, and he gets up and follows him. As I wonder about these episodes, I like what the author and preacher  Frederick Buechner says about them, “If we think its simplicity sounds a little improbable—if we are inclined to question whether [he] would have made such an overwhelming decision so instantaneously and on the basis of what looks like such meager incentive—then we are forgetting that this is the way that [people] almost always make their overwhelming decisions.  

It is the comparatively minor decisions that take all the time and fuss.  Do we take our vacation in the summer or in the fall?  Do we ask the Smiths or do we ask the Browns?  On ones like these, we do not go one way or the other until we have taken plenty of time to weigh all the pros and cons on both sides, and then we ask our [spouses] what they think and toss the coin a few times, and only then—with what is now considerably less than burning conviction—we ask the Browns, let us say, but not without a number of long backward glances directed over our shoulders at the Smiths.”  [all Buechner quotes are from “Follow Me” in The Magnificent Defeat]

But, Buechner says, “on the really crucial decisions of life—Do I love her enough to marry her?  Is it worth dying for?  Can I give my life to this?—when it comes to decisions like these, it is not just the pro-and-con listing part of me or the coin-tossing and advice-seeking parts that are involved.  It is all of me, heart, mind, will, and when the moment comes and I find myself moving out for good and all, one way or another, there is a kind of relentless spontaneity about it, a kind of terrific sense of conviction, so that if you are Matthew in the tax office, you lay down your slide rule and your pencil, do not even finish the form you happened to be working on at the moment, but just push back your chair and start heading for the door without even bothering to pick up your coat hanging over by the water cooler.”

I think Buechner is right about that.  And maybe the reason today’s gospel doesn’t explain what’s going on inside these fisherman is that it’s not an explainable thought process even to them.  It’s one of those times you feel something good tugging at you so you reach for it.  Your action simply moves rather than taking the long way around to analyze it.

Buechner also considers what these choices look like in retrospect, saying, “And if the choice is right (whatever that means exactly), you get the feeling not that you acted on blind impulse without any preparation, but that this is the moment, the crisis, that somehow your whole life has been preparing you for. ‘Yes, I love—this one.  For that I would be willing perhaps even to die.’ And the voice you heard over your shoulder as you sat there working on form 6321B was not so much the cause of your decision as the occasion for it.  The bow had already been drawn tight, the arrow already set in place and aimed for Lord knows how long.  The voice just made it possible to let it fly, to give it wings.”

Jesus says “follow me” to the fishermen and tax collectors and others who become his followers while he’s in his earthly body.  And Jesus continues to say “follow me” to each of us.  

The “follow me” invitations come as an audible voice to some people.  Other times they can be more subtle or more internal.  As Buechner points out, “’Follow me’…these are words that do not even need a voice to make them heard.  The eyes can speak them, or a pair of hands.  Even silence will do.  But we always answer them with our feet.  We get up and start following.  Or we do not.  Maybe we just plant our feet squarely on the ground and pretend we did not hear.  Or we move them, all right, but in another direction—to the movies, to the board-of-directors meeting, to the little room where we think our most fascinating thoughts.”  

I thank God for the people who don’t pretend they didn’t hear.  I thank God for the people who don’t reach for the nearest distraction.  I thank God for the people who don’t endlessly wait until later to make a decision.  I thank God for the people who follow.

We all have questions.  

My favourite part of what Buechner says is this: “Who is this who asks us to follow?  We want to know who he is before we follow him, and that is understandable enough except that the truth of the matter is that it is only by first following him that we can begin to find out who he is.  You do not come first to understand a person fully and then to love him, but love comes first, and then it is out of the love that understanding is born.  And I choose the analogy carefully because it is precisely love that set this whole scene in the tax office on fire; and once we see that, we see that Jesus told Matthew to follow him not just for his own sake but for the sake of Matthew, whom he loved.  And it is because Matthew knew this that he did not stop to ask any questions but merely got up and followed faithfully.  Faith is the word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved.  Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp.” 

Buechner’s description of faith rings true with my own experience.  There is still plenty that I don’t understand, but love is what leads me forward in faith, as I gradually understand more in some ways, and in other ways start asking different questions as my relationship with Christ develops.  

We don’t have to be “ready” to follow or even “good.” Buechner points out that the voice we hear never says “First be sure that your motives are pure and selfless and then follow me’ If it did, we could none of us follow.  So when later on the voice says ‘take up your cross and follow me’ at least part of what is meant by ‘cross’ is our realization that we are seldom any less than nine parts fake.  Yet we go on…”

“How far? As far as the hill where the three shadows fall and the women stand weeping beside them, only weeping not because we are to be crucified with him, but because we are not to be crucified, because we guess in advance that we lack the courage unto death yet go on anyway, as far as we can, and maybe our shame, our regret, is crucifixion enough.”

“And finally, who is he?  All that we know is the sound of his voice and maybe the lightest touch of his hands on our shoulders.  He is the one we are free to follow or not to follow, this one we begin to know fully only by following.  As we follow, we become, such as we are, his church, which is to say, his body—a weak thing in most ways, half-hearted and of little faith, but full of hope for all that—and the only body he has in this world, the only hands and feet to do his work.  And such is his power that even through us others may be led to follow too.”

The gospels are honest about the fact that these fishermen can’t possibly know what they are getting themselves into when they up and follow Jesus.  The gospels are also honest about the fact that these fishermen don’t always understand what Jesus is saying or doing while they’re following him.  Even while they’re following, they’ve all got their flaws, their jealousies, their complaints, their doubts, their quarrels, their misunderstandings.  They have trouble understanding the crucifixion, and the resurrection throws them.  And at the same time, the Holy Spirit is at work in them, doing in them more than they could ask for or imagine.  Following Jesus transforms them.  

What Jesus is calling them into is not a life focused on their own comforts; it is a life of discipleship in which they serve God and they serve those who need them.  It is a life of faith in which they love God and love those who need love.

Jesus says “follow me” to Peter and Andrew, James and John, to Matthew.  Jesus speaks to each of us in this gospel passage today, and Jesus says “follow me” to each of us.  I encourage each of you, if you have not already made a decision to follow Jesus, to respond to him this morning, and to tell him in prayer that you will follow him.  I encourage each of you, if you have already made a decision to follow Jesus, to reaffirm that decision this morning, and to tell him in prayer that you will continue to follow him.

And I encourage you to do that even if you have questions, even if you have doubts.  If we wait for every doubt to vanish and every question to be 100% answered, we will be stuck in inertia forever.  One of the things I admire about Buechner is the way he shares his faith with honesty and vulnerability while acknowledging the doubts and questions that remain in him.  There are other preachers who either never have any doubts or never admit that they do, and some of them are effective in fishing for people.  Some people.  Other people just don’t relate to that kind of preaching, but they do relate to preaching that acknowledges the questions and doubts, that wrestles with them in some ways, and that acknowledges the inadequacies in the church and in ourselves, that wrestles with them in some ways, and that continues forward in following Jesus, step by step.  Some of those preachers, Buechner among them, are effective in fishing for people too.  The same is true of laypeople speaking to friends and neighbours.  What you assume makes you not good at sharing your faith might turn out to be exactly the authenticity your neighbour is longing to hear.

The twelve that Jesus called to follow him were not perfect people and they were not perfect disciples, yet divine love flowed through them and the Holy Spirit inspired them as they followed Jesus.  We are not perfect people and we are not perfect disciples, and yet Jesus calls us to follow him, so that divine love will flow through us and the Holy Spirit inspire us.  I pray that all of us will move our feet and follow him.