Jesus calls…you

This is a great story – the one about where Jesus tells the fisherman to go fish after they caught nothing all night. We as ‘flies on the wall’ anticipate the moment when the Peter, Andrew, James and John are shown how to fish by the rabbi from Nazareth!

What delight when the penny drops for Peter that the fish are actually obeying their maker (who is the only one who can command fish!) and therefore rough-as-guts ‘trady’ Peter is stuck on a boat with the Messiah! How he feel his sinfulness and all his short comings. How exposed he feels. He even blurts out “Go away!” to the Messiah.

But Jesus loves him too much to leave him in that state! He calms Peter’s fears of being judged and invites him and the others to join Jesus in his mission- “I will make you fishers of men!”

So far you and I have enjoyed a great faith story about how some of the 12 became apostles but if you think that then you have missed the entire point of this story. This is not about apostles, this is all about disciples. That means this calling of Jesus to be a fisher of men is not a specialist role for specialist clergy but a normal way of life for all who follow Jesus.

Jesus reemphasises this at the end of Luke to make sure all his disciples/Christians would get it …

He told them, “This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷ and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. ⁴⁸ You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹ I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” When he had led them out to the vicinity of Bethany, he lifted up his hands and blessed them. ⁵¹ While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Lk 24 (Mt 28:16-20 ends the same way, as does Mk 16: 9-20)

But if Jesus’ purpose is for all Christians and their churches to share the good news about Jesus with non-Christians and let God bring about change in people’s live like a cool refreshing rain after a heat wave, then what happened? How is that almost no churches in Western society do this?

How could it be that nearly every church and the vast majority of Christians in every Western nation do not “fish for men” when it is Jesus’ purpose that we do?

The main reason for this is that for 600 years everyone in Europe were considered to be Christian and therefore faith sharing was considered unnecessary. The whole of Europe was called “Christendom” and any mission field was far away overseas from the local church. So local church life forgot how to share faith and everyone became comfortable with ignoring Jesus’ teaching about it and refocussed only on Jesus’ teachings about helping those in physical need.

But times have changed. The mission field is not in Africa, it is now all around us. We, the church, have got to learn again how to be “fishers of men”. Jesus calls us to it. Jesus equips us for it.

Graeme H.