There is something special about watching the sunrise over water that reminds me about today’s gospel reading and a similar story in Luke’s Gospel. The red morning sun shimmering across the ripples of the surging river, or a wind stirred sea, inclines our heart and mind to openness and empathy.
A month ago Raewyn and I went for a walk at dawn on the riverbank through the red zone and had those feelings. The river wasn’t red, but it was certainly shimmering and behind the bulrushes we could hear the splash of paddles and I thought I heard a familiar voice.
Sure enough, as we stepped out from behind the reeds a voice called out ‘Morning Hugh’. Of course, it wasn’t Jesus it was just the Rev Glenn Livingstone in a kayak. He introduced me to his companion who he said knew our Craig and his wife Tina. That is not surprising becase they are all kayak junkies. News of our meeting spread because Glenn took pictures and put them on Facebook.
On that occasion Glenn didn’t ask me to follow him but some years earlier he was the first person to visit us when we moved into our present house. On that occasion he was campaigning for Council so he asked if he could put a sign on our front lawn. In no time he had me knocking on doors for him.
Writing of another early morning meeting Robin Meyers stresses the importance of the call to follow Jesus in his book Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus:
If the church is to survive as a place where head and heart are equal partners in faith, then we will need to commit ourselves once again not to the worship of Christ, but to the invitation of Jesus. His invitation was not to believe, but to follow. [1]
The last sentence of the last verse of our Gospel reading gives Meyers the biblical authority to make that claim:
After this he said to him ‘Follow me’ (John 21:19b).
Calling the fishermen features in all four gospels in various stages of the gospel journey but the call is always to follow.
In the opening chapter of Mark, Jesus sees Simon and Andrew casting their nets into the Sea of Galilee and Jesus says ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’. (Mark 1:17) Matthew picks that up in his fourth chapter using Mark’s words as Jesus says to Peter and Andrew ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ (Matthew 4:19)
Luke carries the same theme of calling the fishermen but within a very similar story to our reading from John’s Gospel. In this incident Jesus uses the boat as a preaching platform then he instructs Simon, along with his partners James and John, to let down the nets and they catch a huge harvest of fish. Jesus then says to Simon Peter ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ (Luke 5:10)
So, the call of the fishermen is featured in all four gospels but in John’s Gospel Simon Peter and Andrew are introduced to Jesus by John the Baptist. Therefore the gospel writer introduces the call of the fishermen at the end of the Gospel. Even more significantly the call is from the Risen Christ.
So, the call to Peter and the call to Paul in our Acts reading are the same. A call from the risen Christ in a mystic moment, a moment of mystery, a spiritual experience. Probably a bit more mystic than a call from the river in the morning light but for the disciples it also had memory of past adventures with a friend.
John invites us to share that memory as he describes Jesus taking the bread and giving it to the disciples and, by also mentioning the fish, he gives an echo of the feeding of the five thousand. A pointer towards the communion service.
Writing at the turn of the first century, possibly in the gentile city of Ephesus, John may well be encouraging us all to meet with the Risen Christ and therefore to follow Jesus. The presence of Christ calls us all to be workers in Christ’s harvest, calls us all to fish for people. That call is clearly an evangelical call. A vital call to the early church as it spread out into a world without Facebook.
In his book Meyers suggests the call to follow is an important call if the church is to survive and in his book, he stresses just what it means to follow Jesus.
To Meyers following Jesus is not just standing in front of a crowd and making claims about Jesus or putting memes on social media. In Meyers’ understanding following Jesus is about living with the compassion Jesus shows to others.
To heal the sick, empower the poor, feed the hungry to welcome everyone and so on. It is as we live as Christ to others that we ‘fish for people’ and bring in the harvest of a vital living Christian Community.
We live in a world where a very few wealthy people continue to seek control of all the world’s wealth. But the advice from the Jesus of the gospels was to cast the nets on the other side, to look at an alternative model, a different way of living than the few dominating the many. Jesus called it ‘the kingdom of God’
For those who were disadvantaged by Roman Imperialism, both Jew and gentile, the Jesus’ way of welcoming and sharing was an alternative way. To be freed of the stigma created by believing that sickness and misfortune was punishment for sin would have been totally liberating. Acceptance into the community of Christ can be just as liberating today, especially if members of the community can help the homeless find a home and the hungry find a meal.
Our Acts reading is the classic Damascus Road episode, that sudden meeting with the Risen Christ which turns Saul’s world view upside down.
It strikes him blind and through the care and compassion of others he recognises the presence of the Risen Christ and metaphorically casts his net on the other side. The change is so dramatic that he changes his name to Paul, and instead of persecuting the emerging church, he organises it.
Although much as the structures of the organised church have frustrated the mission of Christ over the centuries it probably would not have survived without structure. Paul’s travel and writing did much to send Christ’s call through time towards us.
We don’t know exactly what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus or what reignited those disciples who had left Jerusalem to return to their original occupations. But if we read through the imagery and metaphor with our imagination set to open, we can recognise these stories as incidents that happen in our own lives.
These Christ appearances are like meeting a friend while walking on a quiet path as the sun pushes above the horizon and shimmers across the swirling river. Times when a quiet mind processes and rearranges the information stored in our memories and a new perspective comes to us. Times when we take the bread and the drink in memory of a long dead Jesus. Times when our heart feels strangely warmed. Times when we mechanically listen to the words that Paul writes were passed on to him, the traditional communion liturgy. As we listen to those words and eat the bread and drink the drink, memory becomes reality and for a moment, we find ourselves in the presence of the Risen Christ.
In Christ’s presence we can all hear the call, not to believe, not to worship, but to follow.
As Albert Schweitzer wrote;
He comes to us as one unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, he came to those men who did not know who he was. He says the same words, ‘Follow me!’, and sets us to those tasks which he must fulfil in our time. He commands. And to those who hearken to him, whether wise or unwise, he will reveal himself in the peace, the labours, the conflicts and the suffering that they may experience in his fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery they will learn who he is.[2]
The Jesus call to follow is always a call to cast our nets on the other side, a call to an alternative and inclusive way of being human. A call to truly be fishers of people, the call to a life where everyone is fed, everyone is cared for, and we live as Christ to others. To steal one of Marcus Borg’s book titles, it is always a call ‘to meet Jesus again for the first time’.
To meet the Jesus of the Gospels we are called, not so much to worship Christ, but to be Christ to all those who we meet along the way.
[1] Robin R. Meyers, Saving Jesus from the Church: How to Stop Worshiping Christ and Start Following Jesus, (New York: Harper Collins, 2009), p.145
[2] Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, Bowden, John (ed.) (London: SCM Press 2000), p.487.