Year B

Mark 1:14-20

The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn

Let You Net Down and Follow

A couple of years ago, I heard about an American Christian historical drama named The Chosen. It is the first, multi-season series about the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. Primarily set in Judaea and Galilee in the 1st century, the series centers on Jesus and the different people who met and followed or otherwise interacted with him. When I first stated watching, I could only watch on the Angel Studios app that had to be downloaded to my phone. Now TBN or Trinity Broadcasting Network has picked it up and the series will be starting its fourth season soon. The first season is set in 1st century Galilee where Jesus starts to build a group for his ministry.

The scene from today’s gospel when Jesus calls Peter, Andrew, James & John can be watched on YouTube. The title of the scene is Jesus Calls Four Disciples. It is a powerful moving scene that brings tears to my eyes every time I’ve watched it. Peter, Andrew, James and John have been out fishing all night and have caught nothing. Jesus, from the shore, calls out to Peter & Andrew to put down their net for a catch. After a bit of reluctance on Peter’s part, as they had not caught anything all night, he does and the net fills with so many fish of all kinds that they yell to James & John who are in another boat to help them. The four of them can hardly get the full net of fish into the boat.

Peter comes ashore, falls to his knees at Jesus’ feet and asks him if he is the one they have been waiting and praying for; the Lamb of God. Jesus tells Peter yes and Peter says, depart from me Rabbi for I am a sinful man. You do not know what I have done. I am sorry and I believe. Jesus says to Peter lift up your head and Peter says to Jesus, anything you ask I will do. Jesus then falls to his knees looks Peter in the eyes and says, “Follow me”. Peter says, I will. Jesus then calls the other three to follow him. They leave their boats and he says to them, from now on you will be fishers of men. You are to gather all kinds and off they go.     

Mark’s story of this scene is not as elaborate. It is short and to the point. Jesus returns to Galilee following his forty days in the wilderness, ready to begin his mission to proclaim the “good news.” He announces the beginning of his ministry by saying, the moment has finally come for the kingdom of God to come near; repent and believe in the good news. He then begins to call those who will believe and commit to the Jesus movement. There is a certain note of adventure as the four men called in our text today leave their fishing business to go with Jesus. But what the story today does not tell us about is what those men were getting themselves in for by following Jesus and becoming his disciples.

To find out, we have to keep reading the gospels or watching the Chosen and what we discover not only in Mark’s version of the call but in the other three gospels is being a disciple is not an easy task. I love how Priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor tells this story in her book Home by Another Way. She writes “Most people hear it and right away start worrying whether they have what it takes to be a disciple. Could you do it? If a clear call were to come to you tomorrow afternoon, could you get from your chair and walk out the door, without taking your keys or turning off the lights? Could you abandon your grocery cart in the frozen food case at the Winn-Dixie and set off for parts unknown without stopping to call home? That is more or less what they did, those first four disciples. Someone they had heard about but had never seen before in their lives said, “Follow me,” and they did, leaving their families, their jobs, their homes in order to go with him.”

“Not one of them or two of them, but all of them. He called and they followed. If you ask me she says this is not a hero story but a miracle story, as full of God’s power as the feeding of the five thousand or the raising of the dead. Listen to the language of the miracle stories in Mark:  Stand up, take your mat and go to your home,” Jesus said to the paralyzed man, and the man stood up and immediately took his mat and went home. He said to the blind man, “Go, your faith as made you well,” and immediately he regained his sight. “Follow me, Jesus said, and immediately they left their nets and followed him”.

There is no doubt that this is a story about God and people who allowed themselves to fall in love with Jesus. Jesus shows up, God acts and the rest is history. And we won’t all have the same story as the disciples but we are all called to follow Jesus. God is counting on us to be fishers of people. Gathering all along the way, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Jonah heard God’s call to follow. His was a call to deliver God’s message to the people of Israel to repent and to return to righteousness. Despite the fact that he was not in the beginning happy about the job, he delivers a message of impending destruction to the Gentile Ninevites. They believed God. They repented. God shows mercy and they rejoice at their mission.

The apostle Paul believing that “the time had grown short”, that the full realization of the reign of God would come soon, in the lifetime of some of those living at that time. Paul said: Let those who deal with this world be as those who have no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. Paul is reminding the Corinthian followers that God’s grace in Christ has been given them to strengthen them and keep them blameless as they await the day of the Lord. Paul lived in a state urgent anticipation of this event, and felt this urgency ought to shape all aspects of Christian life.

Only when we grasp the urgency of Paul’s message and understand the shortness of the time we have and the greatness of the hope to which God has called us, can we accept this call to radical devotion to leave it all for the mission of God. Jesus may or may not have been fully aware of the shortness of time he had to fulfill the mission to which God called him, but he understood the urgency as he called and healed many to immediately accept the healing or call to follow and believe. It’s called “a leap of faith.” This means trust and reliance and placing our lives in God’s hands, as those first disciples did. That’s the kind of change which the gospel produces and what makes us different. There’s no turning back despite what is ahead. The disciples went and it was a blessing despite what they encountered along the way. They were a part of the greatest change of all, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which is the center of our faith because we know that our mortal bodies will be changed into an immortal body.

This is what happens when we allow ourselves to be swept into the flow of God’s will and give ourselves over to it. Our calls will not all be the same. But the God who calls us will give each of us what we need to follow. Let your down your net for a catch and allow yourself to fall at Jesus’ knees and however our wills are spilled into the will of God, time is fulfilled-immediately!-and the kingdom of God is at hand.