Follow Me

It was a warm day. Most of the men who fished along the Sea of Galilee – which was actually a freshwater lake – had come in from their night’s work. They had eaten some breakfast and caught a little shuteye. Now they were mending any tears in their nets made by the previous night’s catch and beginning to think about tonight’s catch. None of these men was in a position of power. They weren’t at the bottom of the social scale, like the poor-as-dirt shepherds or beggars – or worse. But neither were they among the learned or priestly elites. They were hard-working people, who paid all of Herod’s taxes, got around his endless regulations as best they could, and had as little to do as possible with the Roman soldiers prowling around. And they had families to support, wives and children and in-laws. Their lives weren’t easy, but then whose were?

Onto the shore that morning walked an itinerant rabbi, Yehoshua ha-Notsri, the former carpenter Jesus from that little village some miles inland. He stopped first at Simon and Andrew’s boat – they were late coming in. What on earth did he want? Usually these rabbis waited for prospective students to approach them. He looked intently at Simon and Andrew and said, almost commanded, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.” Now what did that mean? Was he turning them into a volunteer rescue squad, or what? Simon and Andrew beached the boat, gave some instructions to the hired hands, and followed after Jesus. Jesus walked on down the shore to old Zebedee’s boat. He said to the brothers James and John, “C’mon, come help me fish for people.” The brothers dropped the nets they were mending, leapt up, and immediately trailed after him.

Didn’t anyone ask the obvious questions? “Catch people?” Who’ll look after the family? Who’ll keep the business going? Who’ll help out Dad? What was the urgency? Seemingly, without another thought – did they even pack provisions or take extra clothes – Simon, Andrew, James, and John, left their old lives behind. Hearing Jesus’ call, they let their lives be turned upside down, as they left the shore and trudged after Jesus. He had called, and they followed. They soon discovered that he had not called them to a life of sitting at his feet studying Torah, or of standing before the sacrificial fires reciting long prayers. He had called them to an active life: walking with him up and down the hills of Galilee, and eventually to Jerusalem. He had called them to help him proclaim that God was fulfilling God’s promises, and that a transformation of the whole world was about to take place. He asked them to accompany him as he preached, taught, and healed. He asked them to help him welcome those on the margins of society into his embrace of love.

Sarah Grimké also heard Jesus call. It took her a little longer to respond than it had Simon, Andrew, James, and John. Sarah was born in 1792 into an aristocratic planter family in South Carolina. With a plantation inland and a mansion in Charleston, the family owned over one hundred slaves. On her eleventh birthday Sarah was presented with a ten-year old slave, who was to sleep on the floor outside her bedroom door and be her personal maid. Having witnessed as a younger child the severe punishment of a slave, Sarah hated slavery even then. In front of all the guests, she disavowed the gift. Despite her uneasiness about slavery, and her growing desire to distinguish herself in the family profession of law – a road that was firmly closed to her as woman – when she was twelve, Sarah persuaded her mother to make her the godmother of her then newborn sister Angelina, the last of the Grimké’s children.

Like virtually every other southern church at the time, the Episcopal Church in South Carolina condoned slavery. Sarah dutifully attended St. Philip’s church with her family but more than once argued with its rector. In her late teens, she heard Jesus ask for her heart, while she was attending a Presbyterian church service with a friend. Thereafter, she dedicated herself to following Jesus wherever he might lead her. Surprisingly, Jesus led her north. Her father, a well-known jurist, had been diagnosed with a seemingly incurable wasting disease. A specialist in Philadelphia was recommended, and Sarah was asked to accompany her progressively weakening father. Unable to cure her father, the specialist recommended the sea air at Long Branch, New Jersey, where her father died a few weeks after arriving.

Having experienced a different way of life in the north, with blacks and whites on a more equal footing, Sarah was not eager to return to Charleston. After a brief visit home, she returned to Philadelphia, where she heard God’s call once again, this time to the Society of Friends and active work for abolition. After living and working for more than a decade with the Friends, Sarah was joined by sister Angelina. Although most of the Quakers were gradualists rather than abolitionists, Sarah and Angelina heard the call to produce anti-slavery pamphlets. Their writings attracted the attention of prominent abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Weld. Weld trained both sisters as speakers, and thereafter they traveled the east speaking to women’s groups in favor of abolition. Soon their talks attracted men, but prominent preachers began to denounce them for speaking publicly to men. So the Grimkés also began speaking about the rights of women. They were ardent abolitionists and feminists for the rest of their lives, consistently grounding their writings and speeches in God’s call to them. They “fished for people,” calling others to a deeper recognition of the wrongness of slavery and of the fundamental goodness and equality of all people.

Do we also hear Jesus’ call? Jesus rarely waits for us to seek him out, to ask politely if we may sit devotedly out his feet. Jesus is still on the move, still seeking to bring near the reign of God. Jesus doesn’t wait for us: he actively seeks us out, knowing the part each of us must play in the bringing in of the kingdom. As he called Simon, Andrew, James, and John, he actively calls each of us to work together with the rest of his friends for the good of all. We may not be able to leave behind our occupations, the nets and boats we need to sustain our daily lives and meet our obligations to those near and dear to us. But we can, by God’s grace, lay aside the pre-conceptions, petty disagreements and dislikes, perfectionism, lack of self-confidence, distractions, and anything else that blocks out God’s call or keeps us from responding to it. Ultimately, we realize that discipleship is not cheap, and that Jesus’ claim on us surpasses the claims of family, occupation, ethnicity, country, and even church. We can acknowledge that all of us, all of us, are called to be God’s instruments.

A Presbyterian pastor serving on the US border in Arizona tells a wonderful story from his time as a youth minister. At a summer camp, he was leading a session on the church with some children.1 He asked each child to draw a picture of the church. He assumed that they would draw pictures of church buildings. However, one child was way ahead of him. She had drawn five pictures on her paper. In the upper left corner, there was a picture of a woman in bed surrounded by people. This was her grandmother, she said, and the people were her pastor and church members praying. In the upper right corner, there was a picture of a can. This was the food that church people shared with those who are hungry, because God does not want people to go hungry. In the bottom right corner, there was a group of children playing. In the bottom left corner, there were musical notes, with people of different sizes and colors. She said that God loves all people, and that the people come to the church to sing their “thank you” to God. In the middle of the paper there was a big heart, a heart that took up all the space and drew the smaller pictures together. God is love, she said, and God asks us to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the church into which Jesus invites us.

Do you hear Jesus’ call to join his team, fish for people, and proclaim the good news? If so, then hear the challenge given us by Methodist bishop Will Willimon.2 “I challenge you,” Willlimon says, “this next week to do a little fishing, to attempt to share your faith, perhaps even using words, with one person whom you know. Try to express why you are here. Invite someone to come here next Sunday…. Do one visible act of Christian charity to someone in need in the name of Jesus. See where it gets you.”

1. Mark S. Adams, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Gospel (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 66.
2. Quoted in Synthesis, January 26, 2014, p.4.