Can We Follow Jesus Christ Today?

Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets." When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!" For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people." When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

Would you say that most of our days are ordinary days? We get up in the morning, go about our business through the day, and we come home in the evening and go to bed only to get up the next day and do the same? Monday is a great deal like Tuesday and Wednesday like Thursday. But in the midst of these ordinary days of ours there are on occasions extraordinary days, days that mark beginnings or endings or new creations, days that we don’t plan for or create. These days happen now and then, and here and there, and they become markers in our memories.

I think the text of the morning describes that kind of day for Peter. (Read Text)

Do you see how this day became a marker day for Peter, an extraordinary day? Two events broke the ordinariness of the day. First, he had fished all night and had caught nothing. He was a fisherman and usually caught enough for his family and had leftovers for sale. A failed night of fishing was not ordinary.

But another happening broke the ordinariness of the day—the entrance of Jesus into his work-a-day world. Jesus was standing by the sea near Peter’s house teaching the people when the crowd grew and pressed in upon him. He noticed two boats pulled up on the beach, neither being used at the moment. There, just beyond the boats, the fishermen were washing nets and he asked if he might use one of the boats. With permission granted, Peter put out a bit from land and Jesus taught the people. While he taught, the fishermen who were mending nets overheard his message.

When he had finished teaching, he invited the fishermen who had labored all night with no results, to put out into the deeper water and drop their nets yet again. Peter began to argue, “But Master we have fished here all night and . . . nevertheless, at your command we will obey.” Immediately, they filled their nets and required assistance from the men still on the shore.

The catch of fish struck Peter with awe! All night, no fish! A few minutes and his boat is filled and also that of his partners! An extraordinary experience. The awareness of what had happened shocked his consciousness; it broke the grip of his routine way of seeing; it broke his habitual way of judging things. He saw in Jesus a revelation of the Transcendent, the Holy, and he fell at his knees praying, “Depart from me, O Lord, for I am an sinful man!” Jesus did depart but with his arms around Peter. And on that extraordinary day Peter became a follower of Jesus, the Christ.

As I read this story again in preparation for speaking to you this morning, I found myself wondering why the early church had preserved this particular story. Why do you think? I think that they recalled it because it lay at the heart of the inception of their community. The call of Jesus to these fishermen marked the beginning of the church. These fishermen then went around the Galilee telling the story of how one night they caught no fish and along came Jesus who directed their catching a boatload of fish. This feat was indeed miraculous to them. And as they told this amazing story their listeners heard Jesus calling them and they, too, became followers.

But that is not the end of the story. This little community kept telling the story of Jesus entering into an ordinary day and speaking to ordinary people and calling them to be his disciples. They told it long after the original fishermen were dead but the story did not lose its power to shake the consciousness of the listeners and open them up to the world of the Spirit, and to enable them to hear Jesus calling them also.

So, when they came to the point years later of writing the story of Jesus and the church, they set down this incident for a thousand generations to read. And you know what? A thousand generations have read this story and have heard the Voice speak to them as surely as it spoke to those men by the sea. And the invitation of that Voice has set them on a journey as marvelous and miraculous as the Voice set those fishermen on theirs.

I read this story to us all today in the hope that through its words and images we also might hear him speak to us, that we might be awakened from our ordinariness by an extraordinary word, event, or encounter that would change our lives. Perhaps, if we could hear it again, if we could feel ourselves being confronted by him and called forth to a new kind of life or more deeply into one that we have already chosen, it would be a grand Rally Day, a Rally Day that we would never forget.

No modern person has spoken more strikingly or clearer of Christ’s call in our time as my hero, my mentor, and my saint, Carlo Carretto. Brother Carlo headed the Catholic Action Movement in Italy until he was 44 years old. At that point of maturity he was called by Christ to go to the desert, which he learned later, was to learn to pray. To explain to his friends about his abrupt departure from the movement, he wrote a book entitled, Letters from the Desert. In the introduction he speaks of this call in words that justify my affirmation of him.

“God’s call is mysterious; it comes in the darkness of faith. It is so fine, so subtle, that it is only with the deepest silence within us that we can hear it.

And yet nothing is so decisive and over-powering for a man or woman on this earth, nothing surer or stronger.

This call is uninterrupted: God is always calling us! But there are distinctive moments in this call of his, moments which leave a permanent mark on us--moments which we never forget.”

Notice that Carlo says that this call of Christ comes in “mysterious.” We can never quite explain it any more than the fishermen could explain Jesus’ call to them, not even those of us who have experienced it. His call is decisive and overpowering – life changing, like leaving everything for Jesus sake. He says there are “distinctive moment in this call of his, moments that leave a permanent mark on us.” Did that day not mark Peter and his associates for the remainder of their lives? Can you recall a moment or moments like that, a moment that has left a mark as permanent as the water of baptism?

A few Januaries ago I was leading a pilgrimage to Israel when such a memory came forcefully to me. We had spent a few days in the environs of Jerusalem and then by way of Caesarea and Carmel had made our way up into the Galilee. It was evening after a long day and we were quietly settled at the Scottish Hospice on the Sea of Galilee. The sun was setting over the sea and filling the sky with a rainbow of colors.

Then the memory struck me. “Just over that hill in the city of Nazareth 2000 years ago there lived a Jewish boy who grew up, was baptized, and walked around this sea calling disciples to follow him. He transformed their lives. And these followers told their story and those who heard it told it again and again. Eventually, someone told it to me. And many years later through that story he invited me to be his follower, too. And for 50 years he has been the chief influence in my life, the center around which my life is organized. Everything that I am and have and have accomplished has been because he asked me to be his follower. Nothing has been so decisive and overpowering in my life.” And we ask, “Can we follow Jesus Christ today?” Why yes! He is alive. He is present. He is still calling followers!

Just as surely as he called those fishermen to follow him, he calls men and women and youth in our day to be his disciples. Yes, he calls through the retelling of this original call and in a thousand other ways. He calls with the certitude that sent Brother Carlo to the desert for 10 years. He still calls with the decisiveness that marks off the day with unforgettable clarity. Yes, he calls with such mysterious power that it takes a lifetime to understand it. I want to speak with you about two are three aspects of that call for you and me.

1. Jesus calls us to be disciples, learners. He does not expect us to immediately understand his way any more than a first grade student can comprehends Shakespeare. He calls us to enroll in an apprenticeship and learn of him. As students in his school there are no failing grades, but there are always other opportunities to learn what we missed the first time around.

Discipleship is about learning what it means to follow Jesus today. We gather to study his message. We share our insights and yearnings with each other. We discern the needs of the community. All these things are part of being a disciple today. And today we hope to rally people to the challenge of being informed, committed, and engaged disciples.

` 2. Jesus calls us to be servants. When he met with his disciples in the Upper Room for that final meal, he began with washing their feet. When he had finished, he said, “You are to do unto others as I have done to you.”

I recall the vivid picture in my mind as a fellow minister, Joanna Adams, described the scene at Central Presbyterian Church. There the people of the street gathered for a morsel of bread and a taste of pure water at the end of a long day on the streets. Some of the members of the church came to the shelter to take a little salve and massage the feet of these broken, marginalized, and lonely people. Through the touching there was a connection, a healing, and encouragement enough to make it through one more day. Jesus calls us both figuratively and literally to wash to the feet of the world.

3, Jesus calls us to be witnesses. After all, how did the second generation know about Jesus except through the story of those he called beside the sea? How did we hear the story except by those who heard it and passed it on to us? You see this story is never more than one generation from extinction. Yet, we find it so difficult to tell our story of his calling, our story of his presence with us. Even ministers sometimes have difficulty speaking the story, especially to strangers.

Some years ago now, I was invited to conduct a seminar on faith sharing at Princeton Seminary. I suppose a dozen or so ministers gathered for the class. They came for different reasons, I suppose. Some needed a break. Others knew me. Still others were interested in enlarging their congregations. The third day of the seminary I assigned them the task of speaking with a stranger about the faith – it’s about the hardest thing to do because the thought of it evokes all our Presbyterian reserve. I figured that if they could do that, the rest would be easy.

One of the ministers in the class said, “I can’t do that.” I had heard that response before, so I sought to be gentle as I could. I said, “Do the best you can.” He left the class doubtful.

Sometime between that day and the day when we would report on our experiences, he found the courage to approach the bartender at Dooley’s Inn – a small bar on the graduate school campus. To his utter amazement he discovered that when he mentioned the religious arena, the bartender began to pour out the story of his pain and anguish. For more than an hour between beers, the conversation went on.

I don’t know all that that minister learned that evening, nor the day when he told the story to all of us in the seminar, but I do know that week he became a friend and through his friendship I have been blessed. Through that friendship I have experienced the power of love, the generous gift of trust, and the delight in seeing a minister be greatly used of God. And that minister in my seminar is the minister of your church today. Thank you, Al Butzer for all your gifts to me.

In all my remarks today I have sought to answer in a variety of ways the question, “Can we follow Jesus Christ today?” I hope you have heard more than my answer to this question. I hope that you have heard his voice speaking to you, inviting you into an authentic relationship with him and journey of mystery and wonder. Here is one more description

Listen to the words of Albert Schweitzer taken from the last page of In Quest of the Historical Jesus:

He comes to us as one unknown as of old he came to those men by the Lakeside. He speaks the same words, “Follow thou me” and he sets us about the tasks he has to fulfill in our time. He commands and to those who obey him, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, suffering, and sacrifice they shall pass through in his fellowship. And as an ineffable mystery they shall learn in their own experience who he is.

And now today I invite you to listen for his call: Follow thou me! Follow thou me! Follow thou me! Now. Today.

Is it possible that today, this day, might be extraordinary for some of us, if not all of us? Did you come here today half-hoping that it might be that kind of special day for you?