Normally it’s Mark’s gospel that’s characterized as the saga of expediency—to Mark there appears to be only one moment in time: “immediately.” His point is that the moment of decision is now. If you’re going to make a choice, make sure you can live with it!

The Gospel of Matthew changes a lot of details when borrowing material from Mark’s narrative, written a decade or two earlier, but when it comes to the call of the disciples, Matthew embraces the creed of immediacy as well, retaining that sharp and edgy feel these stories have. “Come,” Jesus says, to people who are busy, plying their trade, making a living, providing for their families, and serving their communities. “Come,” Jesus says, and they come.

As the story goes, Peter and Andrew had just cast a net into the sea. Come on; seriously. How sensible is it to cast your net and then just walk away from it? Who’s going to gather it in? Who’s going to mind the boat, for heaven’s sake? Yet it’s precisely for heaven’s sake that these men abandoned their livelihood and resources.

In the next scene the action was even more poignant. James and John were in another boat. Like Peter and Andrew, they’re brothers, but unlike the first two they seem to be younger men, still working with their father, all mending nets together. When Jesus called to them, they left the nets and boat—and even Dad—behind. You can imagine what old man Zebedee thought about that!

Choosing Jesus is like that, you’re to understand. When the call comes, it’s now or never. “Seek the Lord while he may be found,” as Isaiah said elsewhere. You have to choose Jesus as your first priority: over work, family, personal advantage, and social networks. You have to choose Jesus over your weaknesses and shame, too, as sick women and blind men and prostitutes and tax collectors did when they heard of his approach. You can’t let fear keep you away nor the bother of trying to get his attention when you’re paralyzed by circumstances, lame and unable to move. If you’re lepers and outcasts and sinners by any other name, if people tell you that you’re no good and God won’t accept you, all the more reason to run to Jesus and grasp his clothes and drain the blessing out of him if need be!

Immediacy in these stories is no accident. Today is the day, now is the time; there’s not a minute to lose. Discipleship isn’t something to put off until retirement or retain in cold storage for a more convenient time. Yes, you’re busy; of course you’re busy, but Jesus is here now and his invitation is short and simple. “Come!”

Related scripture links

Flaws of the great Christian teachers: Mark 10:28; 14:29-31, 37; Acts 18:24-28; 2 Cor. 11:30-12:10
Now until the end of the age: Matt. 28:20

Catechism links

Discipleship: CCC 425-429; 541-542; 618; 787-789; 878; 1816; 1989
Christian joy: CCC 1720-1724

IF YOU HAVE ever seen the Sea of Galilee at sunrise, you would never have wanted to leave it. I woke up in Tiberias every morning for a whole week last summer, and the golden light on the water was so lovely it rendered me speechless. The rising sun actually turned the normally bright blue sea into a shimmering pool of liquid gold. It was like waking to the dawn of creation each time. Belief in a benevolent and beautiful God was beyond question in that favored place.

Each time I rose to see that magnificence, I wondered: How did they do it? How did Peter and Andrew, James and John walk away not only from their families, their boats, their livelihood, and their secure futures but also leave the side of that gentle, majestic, and maternal sea?

The whole region of the Galilee is unquestionably the most blessed part of Israel in terms of natural resources. No wonder the Gentiles, from the time of the Assyrian invasion in Isaiah’s lifetime until Roman rule (when Herod Antipas built Tiberias to honor the emperor), chose to hunker down and trade by the sea rather than venture south into the dusty desert where Jerusalem stood on its lonely hill of Zion. The Jews of David’s city might disparage Galileans for being culturally goyim, non-Jewish, just as the folks of nearby Nazareth were considered ne’er-do-wells. But citizens of Galilee knew the truth: Their territory flowed with the biblically promised milk and honey, while Jerusalem flowed mostly with the blood of Israel’s prophets.

When Jesus left Nazareth he might have headed due south and intercepted his destiny in the heart of Jewish territory expediently. Instead he took the short northern route to the seaside, into the rich mix of commercially crucial Galilee. The renewed Jewish presence there was only 100 years old and would last another century. Even today Christians and Muslims outnumber Jews in many northern cities—the point being that Capernaum was not the obvious choice, Galilee not the most desirable breeding ground for a Jewish prophet intent on religious reform. If Jerusalem was and is the boiling point of all things God-related, then Galilee was a rather tepid place to begin.

But not for Isaiah. The seer from nine centuries earlier envisioned the redemption of this region “degraded” by the Gentile presence. While Messiah-watchers might focus on pivotal Jerusalem or even Davidically significant Bethlehem, only careful students of prophecy would think twice about some northern fishing and farming towns. Yet in Galilee Jesus reaps the images of his parables, works the bulk of his miracles, and harvests his 12 closest followers. Maybe only folks who’ve walked in darkness can appreciate the light when it dawns.

Related scripture links

Just Jesus: Rom. 2:9; 1 Cor. 2:2
The need for unity: Rom. 14:1-15:13, 16:17-20; 1 Cor. 12:1-31
Faith rooted in Christ: Rom. 1:4; 1 Cor. 3:21-22; Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:13-22; Col. 1:15-20, 3:11

Catechism links

Discipleship: CCC 425-429; 541-542; 618; 787-789; 878; 1816; 1989
Christian joy: CCC 1720-1724

Sometimes we can’t hear the truth the first time it comes around. Maybe it arrives as an inconvenient fact in a scientific survey. It simply can’t be true that our favorite food or pastime is bad for us! We reject the report. We prefer the truth to be otherwise. Then, we hear it from another source, as our doctor holds up a lab test full of numbers that bode ill. Finally, we experience that truth more potently, when something goes wrong and we wind up in the ER. The third time is usually the charm: the once-suspect idea is now ready to be incorporated as the real deal.

Maybe the three-punch effectiveness of truth is why Jesus didn’t come into the world as simply the great guru many of his admirers prefer him to be. Matthew the gospel writer, for example, sees the teaching aspect of Jesus’ ministry as central to his identity. Jesus is the new Moses in Matthew’s account. The Sermon on the Mount mirrors the Sinai event as the new law for Israel to live by. This gospel was the early church’s instruction manual as it presents how to pray, govern family life, maintain a just society, and live as church together. The church fathers quoted it most frequently of the four. Augustine insisted it be placed at the head of the New Testament even though Mark’s version of the story is obviously the earliest.

Jesus’ role as rabbi-teacher is still vital for us today. But he’s more than that, as Mark and John both emphasize. Jesus also makes claims about himself that are stunning, challenging, and game-changing. Early manuscripts of Mark contain the audacious heading: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” No mere rabbi here! The declaration of truth with unprecedented authority, the proclamation of the Kingdom, the I AM statements Jesus uses to identify himself in unity with his Father—all of these are revelations of a supernatural essence that fill his friends with admiration and his opponents with dread.

And of course, Jesus is more than a divine proclaimer. The healing stories, which appear in every gospel but are concentrated in Luke above all, present the restorative aspect of Jesus’ ministry. If teaching doesn’t inspire you, if proclamation doesn’t startle you, how about the caring touch that makes the wounded whole? Matthew puts it plainly in his best summary of what Jesus did in Galilee: “He went around teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people.” One of these activities alone may not move you. But three together just might give you cause for wonder.

Related scripture links

Flaws of the great Christian teachers: Mark 10:28; 14:29-31, 37; Acts 18:24-28; 2 Cor. 11:30-12:10
Now until the end of the age: Matt. 28:20

Catechism links

Discipleship: CCC 425-429; 541-542; 618; 787-789; 878; 1816; 1989
Christian joy: CCC 1720-1724

We know that we live in a divided nation. Politically we are not all on the same page. Economically, racially, ethnically, and religiously, Americans do not share the same perspective or the same reality. Some live in gated communities, others sleep on subway grates. One man dines at fancy restaurants, another takes his supper out of a paper sack from McDonald’s. One woman faces a lifetime of sexist or racist putdowns, while another’s privileged status allows her to ride along on a sense of entitlement. One of us is reading Proust. Another can’t read at all.

The religious divide has become among the greatest chasms we face. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have had centuries of antagonism and aggression between them according to the history books, but present-day conflicts and hostilities make the historical horror very immediate and tangible to all of us.

But perhaps what ought to concern us as much or even more is the apparent lack of cooperation and outright feuding between one set of Christians and another. Fundamentalists can’t dialogue with evangelicals, and high church rarely stoops to talk to low church.

Just Jesus

Recently, a neighbor of mine took ill with some form of cancer. I did not know her at all—she and her husband keep to themselves. But shortly after her illness was disclosed to the neighborhood through the usual grapevine, a notice appeared in all of our mailboxes inviting us to a prayer meeting at the home where illness had taken residence. “No dogma, no arguments,” it promised. “Just Jesus.”

I did not attend. No one from the neighborhood did. A few cars showed up on the designated night, presumably from the couple’s church, wherever and whatever that might be. I felt bad, peeking out the curtains at the activity across the street that night. I wondered why going to an unspecific Christian prayer event seemed so intimidating.

Like most people, I’ve had a peek at lots of different faith perspectives due to weddings, funerals, and good old-fashioned curiosity. I’ve sat through services that were unfamiliar and uncomfortable, as well as fascinating and agreeable. (That’s been true in Catholic churches as well.) Attending worship that is interdenominational or even interfaith has been enriching to my understanding and added new perspective on my own tradition by way of comparison. But each time is a departure by night in a boat so fragile that it does not invite confidence.

Come follow—who?

Jesus walked along the shore of Galilee and called some folk to follow him. We know that at least some of them did: Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John. Did they know whom it was they were following? It’s not likely. Jesus’ ministry had barely begun, and in Matthew’s account, so far Jesus’ greatest achievements were growing to adulthood and wrestling down the devil alone in the desert. The fact that these four men dropped everything to follow Jesus says more about the prospects of Galilean fishermen than it makes a faith statement about this crew. 

They followed a virtual stranger. And so do we all, in the beginning of our journey in faith. This Christ in whose name we were baptized is not our brother or our friend—much less our Lord—when we start out. He’s just an invitation, and maybe we are bored or dissatisfied or curious or desperate enough to accept it. What happens after that depends on how the relationship develops from there, or if it does.

Paul saw full well what happens when the relationship goes awry, as it did in Corinth. Some who heard about Jesus from Paul thought they were following Paul! And others followed their own messengers, Apollos or Peter (Cephas). Some of us, it should be admitted, are still following dearly departed Monsignor Hart, old Sister Amandine from the fifth grade, the RCIA director who brought us into the church, the pastor before this one, or whoever it was with whom we were first spiritually smitten. Yet whomever we follow, however admirable, is the wrong guide unless we follow Jesus first and foremost.

Applying the word

Dispelled is darkness

After the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, the desire for Christian unity seemed fresh and acute throughout the churches. The hope of getting back to “just Jesus” seemed newly possible, as if structures and schisms and mutual condemnations could be swept away by the sheer force of goodwill. We visited each other’s churches. And we went back to our own. A half-century and more later, the conversation appears to have reached an epic lull. Is there nothing more to say to each other, and is this as good as it gets?

The late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago identified the scary absence of common ground even within the ranks of Catholics, and how our internal conversation was descending into ever greater suspicion, accusation, and disavowal. Both chasms opened up for the same reason, one might suggest: We have taken our eyes off Jesus. We have chosen instead to follow this leader or that ideology, and we’ve lost sight of the stranger who once walked along the shores of our life and invited us to fall in behind him. When Christianity gets separated from Jesus, as Paul was the first to grasp, it quickly becomes a mutant thing, easily manipulated by worldly concerns and losing its focus from the central to the merely incidental. We may not know fully who Jesus is, but we do all agree that he is the one we are following, right? Maybe. I hope so. It is the only way through.

Related scripture links

Just Jesus: Rom. 2:9; 1 Cor. 2:2
The need for unity: Rom. 14:1-15:13, 16:17-20; 1 Cor. 12:1-31
Faith rooted in Christ: Rom. 1:4; 1 Cor. 3:21-22; Gal. 3:28; Eph. 2:13-22; Col. 1:15-20, 3:11

In these days of heightened political partisanship, our loyalties are always courted and often divided. Do we champion the rights of the unborn over our opposition to wars of aggression? Do we vote to aid the homeless or to leave no child behind? Do we support a just immigration policy or the security of our country’s borders? And why do we have to choose between one good thing and another, as if they were mutually exclusive?

When it comes to the matter of faith and politics, most of us at least give lip service to the notion of separation of church and state. We want the government to keep its nose out of our houses of worship. And we’d also prefer that everyone else’s religious ideas be kept out of our government. At the same time, the largest percentage of our fellow citizens also insist that a candidate’s religious convictions are essential components to the kind of leadership he or she will exercise. Handing the reins of power to an atheist, a Mormon, a Jew, or, yes, a Catholic is a serious consideration for most voters. Wanting church and state to stay separate while acknowledging that individuals are and should be influenced by their beliefs in politics above all seems a hopeless muddle. Try as we might, it’s hard to keep our allegiances pure.

“I belong to Christ”

What did it mean in the first generation of the church to pledge allegiance to Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or Christ? Obviously a basic misunderstanding lay at the bottom of such categories, because the first three at least had already pledged themselves to the fourth. The Corinthians, however, were not known for their ecclesiological brilliance. They found it simpler, perhaps even stylish, to champion their human mentors and to overlook the Lord in whose Body all were members.

As a leader, Paul was a great reconciler of opposites and contradictions: Jews and Gentiles, women and men, slaves and those at liberty. He may have appealed to the “tolerance” plank of the Christian party. Apollos, schooled by John the Baptist’s disciples, certainly emphasized the hellfire-and-brimstone repentance platform, which always has its takers. Peter doubtless appealed to centrists, traditionalists, and Jewish Christians who wanted to keep the “Jewish” part of their identity in the forefront. To say “I belong” to any one of these charismatic personalities was to make the politics of your religious position quite lucid.

Those who said, “I belong to Christ,” of course, scored the right answer, but not necessarily for the right reasons if they saw Jesus as one candidate among many. Paul insists that these divisions are pointless, wrongheaded, and dangerous. Those who put their faith in any human agent were bound to be disappointed sooner or later. Paul had a terrible temper (just ask the Galatians). Apollos had gaps in his education; he was still baptizing with the formula of John the Baptist until corrected. Peter had a history of impetuous acts and speeches, not all of them Spirit-led. The only name that truly unites church members is the one that is reliable “now until the end of the age.”

No divided loyalties

How do we signal we belong to Christ? The classic portrait of discipleship is offered along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Here are two sets of brothers, all fishermen. Peter and Andrew are in the act of casting their nets, beginning the work of the day ahead. John and James are with their father, mending their nets. Perhaps they are just getting off the night shift, or are taking the morning to fix their equipment. All of these folks are involved in familiar routines that benefit their families and keep food on the table. They aren’t wasting time or looking for trouble. They are all presented as responsible, reliable fellows who are just taking care of business.

And then Jesus walks by and says something inscrutable to these strangers. He calls to them quite deliberately and says he has work for them. But it’s not fishing as usual. It’s fishing as decidedly unusual: They will be the bait, and they will catch people.

And what do these responsible, reliable sets of brothers do? They leave their boats, their nets, and old man Zebedee behind. They walk away “at once” and “immediately.” They don’t discuss the proposal as they eat their lunch or ask for more information concerning Jesus’ proposition and his credentials. They see something in his face, or hear something in his voice, or experience something in his presence that can only be described as authority. You don’t ignore this man, or question him, or argue with him. You accept his offer or you don’t, as is. And you live with the consequences of your choice.

Christians in every generation have had this same experience: the call, followed by the instinctive decision to surrender in obedience and to fall in behind Jesus. Paul did it, under the most unlikely of circumstances while pursuing the precise opposite agenda. Saint Francis of Assisi found perfect joy and Lady Poverty when he did it.

I talked some years ago with a woman who works as a missionary in Haiti, a very normal and attractive person who used to work for an insurance agency in the States. “I had the car, the clothes, the good salary,” she admits. “And then one day while I was praying, Jesus said to me, ‘I choose you.’ His words were audible, unforgettable. Right after that, I got a call from an organization that had my resume on its desk. I didn’t send it; they got it by inquiring around for a person who spoke English and French and had my skill set. They offered me this position in Haiti. I’ve been there ever since, for almost a decade.”

When Jesus makes his proposal, you either accept it or you don’t. Maybe more of us would hear the call if our lives weren’t so cluttered and full of distractions.

Applying the word

Dispelled is darkness

How many today dwell in Isaiah’s “land of gloom,” when a light already shines in the darkness? The preacher’s heart, like the prophet’s, bears the urgency to wake up those who are sleeping and to see humanity’s anguish “take wing” in the light of God’s joyful service. Those who fish for people and those successfully “fished” likewise share the benefit when our allegiances are no longer divided like a pie cut in ever-thinner slices. Being caught is a wonderful thing when it means that you belong entirely now to Jesus.

Related scripture links

Flaws of the great Christian teachers: Mark 10:28; 14:29-31, 37; Acts 18:24-28; 2 Cor. 11:30-12:10
Now until the end of the age: Matt. 28:20

Catechism links

Discipleship: CCC 425-429; 541-542; 618; 787-789; 878; 1816; 1989
Christian joy: CCC 1720-1724