Matthew 4:12-23
February 1, 2026
In her newest book, A Beautiful
Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance, theologian Diana
Butler Bass writes about the calling of the first disciples. When Bass was a
student in a Christian college, she heard a sermon during the school’s Mission
Week about Jesus’ call to follow. The sermon emphasized the sacrifice that the
disciples made, leaving their nets, their livelihood, their families,
everything to follow Jesus and go fish for people. The goal of the sermon, as
Bass wrote, was to inspire those young Christian men and women to make the
great sacrifice and follow Jesus into the mission field where they would also
“fish for people.”
Bass writes that while the story was
inspiring – these brothers, Simon and Andrew, and then James and John left
everything behind to follow Jesus – it also left her feeling inadequate. Her
thought was, “I could never do that.”
How many times have you heard a
sermon preached on Jesus’ call to these first disciples, whether from Matthew’s
gospel or from Mark or Luke, and thought the same thing? I could never do that.
How many times have I preached on
this text, or from the other gospels, and wondered the same thing? I could
never do that. I don’t know what your answer is, but I can say honestly, that I
have felt that deep sense of inadequacy every time I’ve preached this. It might
be true that as a Teaching Elder in our denomination, I have moved to new
places and new calls a few times now, but I haven’t left everything. I haven’t
just dropped my nets and walked away. So, yes, this story leaves me feeling
inadequate, just as Bass describes.
But then Bass’s essay takes a
surprising turn. She writes about what these brothers were actually leaving.
Fishing at that time was a state run and state owned enterprise, meaning that
in the Roman Empire. Caesar owned everything. Even if the brothers might have
owned their boats and nets, Caesar owned everything else – the land, the lake,
and the fish. What they caught did not belong to them. It went to the state.
What they might take home to their families was minimal. This was subsistence
work at best. They were like sharecroppers or tenement farmers. They did not
own or benefit from the fruits of their labor – Caesar did. In fact, Bass
points out, that everything they did was for Caesar. Everything their families
did was for Caesar. They did not choose a career or a vocation in that
empirical system. They did the work their place in the society dictated. These
people were overtaxed and overworked and at the end of the day they had almost
nothing to show for it.
So, knowing this, Bass encourages
her readers to read Jesus’ call again.
“’Follow me, and I will make you
fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”
Maybe it wasn’t that great of a
sacrifice after all? Maybe Jesus’ call was a welcome interruption? Maybe they
threw down their nets and leapt out their boats with joy because following this
man, fishing for people, sounded like a much better option than giving Caesar
anymore of their blood, sweat, and toil. And if word had been spreading about
this new rabbi, and I suspect that it had, then they would have already heard
that he was proclaiming to people that the kingdom of heaven was drawing near. Isn’t
that what they longed for; for God to show up and show out? Why wouldn’t these
fishermen, these men whose backs were breaking under the yoke of Caesar, want
to walk away from that life and follow this man into the kingdom of God? Why
wouldn’t they jump at the chance to see the new thing God was doing? Maybe leaving
everything was not such a great sacrifice after all.
I guess we could stop there and
celebrate with them, but the truth is that even though they may have been
overjoyed to follow Jesus, answering the call to “Follow me,” means sacrifice.
Maybe it doesn’t mean sacrifice in the beginning, but it will come eventually. Following
Jesus and becoming fishers of people does not mean that there won’t be times
when they will look back the way they came and want to return.
Notice
that Jesus does not tell them what will happen when they follow. I don’t mean
to imply that Jesus is trying to fool the disciples into following him. But in
that first moment of call, he doesn’t give them the full picture either. It
seems to me that the easiest thing about following Jesus was leaving their
boats behind. The real challenge, the real sacrifice would come every day after
that.
Let’s think about what it means to
follow Jesus. When I first discerned my call to ministry, I was thrilled and
awed and humbled and excited. I went into my first year of classes with this,
“I love Jesus! I’ve been called! I’m going to be a minister!” mentality. But
then the day to day work of learning and being pushed and stretched in my every
belief, in my every assumption set in. That’s not just true for seminary
students. It’s true for all of us take this call to follow Jesus seriously. And
it will be true for these new disciples as well.
What did it mean to follow Jesus? It
meant that the disciples witnessed Jesus healing people and feeding people and
sitting at table with not only the religious bigwigs like the pharisees, but
also with the most unsavory and unwelcome of people. They witnessed him
ministering to the margins and loving the vulnerable and the enemy and the
stranger and the strange. Eventually Jesus will tell them, plainly and clearly,
that he is the Messiah, true, but what that means is very different from what
they think it should mean. He will die, but first he will suffer, and he will
hurt and he will be killed. And only after his brutal death will he rise again
to new life. And if they want to follow him, they’re going to have to be
prepared for the same. Dropping their nets and leaving their boats behind was
the easiest part of following him even if they and we might think it was the
hardest.
Because make no mistake, the
disciples make mistake after mistake after mistake while they’re following.
They stumble. They falter. They misunderstand, I think sometimes willfully.
They don’t get what he tells them. And when the end comes, they deny him. They
run away. Their fear overwhelms them.
But the disciples prove that they
are more than the sum of their mistakes. Because with the power of the Holy
Spirit, they do incredible things, and they do fish for people. And I think
they finally understand the sacrifice of following.
Recently I read a statement from the
Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, and I’m paraphrasing his words. He said that
the time has come for clergy to get their affairs in order, to get their wills
written, because we can no longer put only our words between the most
vulnerable and the powers and principalities. It is time to put our bodies into
that breach.
When I read his words, I shook,
literally shook. Because I didn’t just read them on an intellectual level. I
felt them deep in my bones, my heart, and they caused me to shake because I
know them to be true. And I also worry that I won’t have the courage to act on
them if that call comes to me.
Jesus did not call the disciples to
leave their boats and worship him. He did not call them to drop their nets and
intellectually assent to belief in him. Jesus called them to follow. Following
Jesus is risky business. There is no way to get around that, much as I may want
to. There is no guarantee that when we follow we won’t also be asked to put our
lives on the line, to put our bodies into the breach.
And what is most mindboggling of all
is that Jesus called them to follow because the kingdom of heaven had come
near. The kingdom of heaven was now in their midst. And what the kingdom is
built on is love. Love is the foundation of the kingdom, but you’ve heard me
say again and again that the love Jesus called the people to have, to give, to
live, was not warm, sentimental, mushy gushy love. It was love that cares for
the least of these, love that puts its work boots on and does the heavy lifting
of the world. Jesus said follow me and love God and love your neighbor and love
yourself. And what’s most frustrating of all is that following Jesus and loving
as he loved, as he loves, means that you will make some enemies. The powers and
principalities of this world don’t want this kind of love. They are scared, no
terrified, of this kind of love because they think its weakness and they cannot
understand that it is actually strength. But then Jesus made it even harder
because he called us to love our enemies too. And when I think about all of
this, when I think about everything Jesus experienced and everything the
disciples experienced, and everything that comes with following him, I just
want to go back home and curl up under the covers of our bed and stay there.
Because it just all feels like too much and too hard and more than I can do or
give. And I want to cry out to Jesus, where is the good news in all this?!
Where is the good news?!
And yet, maybe this is why Jesus
only called the disciples to follow, just follow, just put one foot after the
other and follow him. The big picture will come. The call to sacrifice will be
there. But just put one foot after another and follow, and when those other
moments come, you will meet them.
And here’s the thing; it may seem
like there is very little good news to be found in this call to follow Jesus,
but I will tell you that in those moments when I have caught a glimpse of the
kingdom of heaven, in those moments when I have experienced the power of the
Holy Spirit, in those moments when I have looked into the eyes of a stranger
and seen Jesus in their eyes, I know just how good the good news is. And so I
answer the call again. I step out of the boat again. And I put one foot after
another and I stumble along behind.
That’s what we are called to do,
just put one foot after another and follow, even if we stumble and fall and
want to give up. We just put one foot after another and keep going because
Jesus calls us, again and again, to follow him, to be fishers of people,
because the kingdom of heaven draws near.
Let all of God’s children say,
“Alleluia.”
Amen.
