True Calling
So Jesus just walks along the shore calling James and John,
Peter and Andrew, who immediately drop their nets, leave their livelihood
behind, and follow Him boldly into the unknown. If only every change of career
were so readily accomplished! ...
This morning’s Gospel reading is a call story, and a rather
abrupt one at that. People tend to enjoy call stories: how Apostles were
plucked from obscurity to become saints and heroes known to us from later
legend. Here are four of the most famous Apostles—two pair of brothers—who
quite dramatically and literally drop what they’re doing in order to follow the
Christ. That sort of example can be both inspiring and intimidating. We get the
impression that James and John in particular abandon their poor old father back
in the fishing boat. But things seem a little more relatable, a little more
manageable, when we understand background of this story and the culture of that
time.
Judaism has long emphasized study. Having received the Holy
Scriptures from God through the hands of Moses, it became incumbent upon
faithful Israelites to be literate, to be able to read and to understand the
history of God’s people and the moral precepts of God’s Law. In Jesus’ day, any
Jewish boy of means could expect to go to school. There he would learn Hebrew,
the language of the Bible, and use it to memorize the Torah, the first five
books of Holy Scripture. And this they did between ages five and 10. After the
completion of such elementary instruction, the best and brightest students would
be chosen for advanced study. The rest would go home and learn a trade from
their fathers or uncles. High school, as it were, wasn’t for everybody.
At the end of these advanced studies, again, most students
would return home to continue the family business, whatever that happened to
be. Their further years of learning would enable them to be leaders in the community
and in the synagogue. But the best of the best—those who had shown extreme
aptitude even at this higher level of academia—might be selected as apprentices
not to a common trade, but to a learned rabbi. This we could consider the
college or graduate level of ancient education, and it was truly a rare and
precious honor. If a rabbi selected you as his apprentice, as his disciple, you
didn’t say no! You left everything behind and ran off to learn at the feet of
your master, and this brought not disappointment but great prestige and
opportunity to your family. Everybody wanted to become a rabbi because teaching
was the most respected of careers.
Now, we don’t know what Jesus’ formal education was like. He
grew up not far from Sepphoris, a known center of learning, and that’s where He
might well have walked as a child for basic instruction, along with all the
other boys. We read in the Bible that by the age of 12 Jesus amazed the most
learned of scholars at the Temple with the depth of His knowledge and the
authority of His teaching. Having such question-and-answer sessions with elders
indicates an advanced student apprenticed to a rabbi, but we have no indication
of this. Jesus doesn’t have a rabbi; He is the Rabbi. When people hear Him
preach at the beginning of His career, they are baffled as to how He grew so
wise. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” they ask. Joseph was a righteous man in
a respected career, but he was a craftsman, not a rabbi. Jesus’ mother was said
to have served in the Temple, but only when she was young. Where did Jesus
learn all this?
It doesn’t seem to matter. Despite His apparent lack of formal
schooling, Jesus arrives on the world stage like a thunderbolt, causing quite
the stir right from His public baptism and earliest sermons. Crowds immediately
gather and marvel at His teachings. He is given the explicit endorsement of
John the Baptist, a famous prophet who had his own inner circle of
disciples—including, we should recall, Peter and Andrew. As Jesus travels from
town to town throughout the Galilee, people begin to wonder if He might not be
the Messiah, the Christ, so long expected and so soon anticipated. Others begin
to wonder if He might not be even more than this.
The plot thickens. After the smashing success of His young
career, Jesus is hailed as a returning hero by the denizens of His hometown,
Nazareth. The Natzoreans trace their ancestry to David, and so know that the
Messiah is to come from their clan. When they see Jesus’ fame they welcome Him
as a local boy made good! Yet when Jesus insists that His mission will extend
beyond Israel even to the Gentiles and pagans of this world, Nazareth is
outraged. Claims of divinity they can stomach, but not claims of inclusivity.
And so they drive Him out, even attempting to throw Him off a cliff. Soon
thereafter Jesus hears that John the Baptist has been arrested. He withdraws to
Capernaum, a lakeside town on a busy trade route just perfect for a preacher,
healer, and wonderworker.
This all brings us to our Gospel reading. Jesus shows up in
Capernaum, the big city of the Galilee, and on the lake He recognizes Peter and
Andrew out fishing. These are the now-leaderless disciples of John the Baptist,
so recently imprisoned. “Follow Me,” Jesus famously announces, “and I will make
you fishers of men.” Shocked and excited to see Jesus in Capernaum, they drop
everything and run to follow Him. They do so because He is a famous and well-known
rabbi; because John pointed to Jesus as the Messiah; and because they are
professional disciples! James and John, the sons of Zebedee, hop out to do the
same. Whether they were disciples of the Baptist or not, I do not know. But
when a rabbi calls, you answer.
Now please don’t think that these men abandoned their
commitments as sons or husbands or fathers. We know that several of the
Apostles had families. We also know that while He preaches and heals in
Capernaum, Jesus lives with Peter in the house of Peter’s mother-in-law, whom
Jesus heals of a serious illness. That doesn’t make the call of these Apostles
any less dramatic or remarkable. But it does explain their confidence, the
immediacy of their reaction. They in no way abandon their loved ones. They go
because they know exactly Who it is Who’s calling them; they have been
preparing to serve the Messiah for their entire lives.
Such is the calling of James and John, Peter and Andrew. But
we have callings of our own, do we not? Each of us has a vocation—several, in
fact—and vocation quite literally means a calling, a summons, the hailing of a
voice. It’s more than a job. We talk a lot about vocation in our culture:
vocational training, vocational aptitude, vocational discernment, vocational
schools. But there’s something about vocation that we often get wrong. We tend
to think that vocation is all about what we do,
but it’s not. Vocation is not about what we do. It’s about what we become.
Here’s what I mean. We’re generally pretty lucky, you and I.
Many of us—most, I’d wager—had opportunity to choose our careers. We examined
our abilities, our desires, our passions, and we chose employment based on what
fit us the best. Most people who are teachers wanted to become teachers, chose
to be teachers. It’s hard to accidentally become a cop, or a lawyer, or a
pastor. This opportunity is a very rare privilege. The vast majority of
humanity through the vast majority of history never got to choose their jobs. They
were born into them.
But because we have this choice, we’ve confused what we do
with who we are. Our jobs become our identities. We think that life has meaning
or purpose or joy stemming from our careers. Take this too far and things get turned
around backwards: we expect our families to support our careers rather than
vice versa. We start to imagine that there’s only one vocation, one true calling
just for us, and if we can just find that perfect niche, that dream job, then
we’ll be happy and fulfilled and life will have purpose. But it doesn’t really
work that way. And lots of people grow frustrated with life because they can’t
seem to discern their vocation.
So let’s be clear on this: God does not necessarily call you
to some specific job. Your true calling is not to be a teacher or a cop or a
lawyer or a pastor. God willing, you are very good at those things and they
bring you joy, but they aren’t who you are. God doesn’t call us to be
professionals. God calls us to be saints.
No matter where we are, no matter what our situation, we are
called to be Christians. We are called to love God with everything we’ve got and
to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are called to make peace, to seek
forgiveness, and to pray. We are called to be “little Christs” for one another:
to heal, to forgive, to instruct, to welcome, to correct, and to love, with
humility and with grace and with frank acknowledgement of our own sin. That’s
your vocation. That’s your true calling.
You are not your job. You are not your paycheck. You are not
your quarterly report. Rather, you are baptized. You are a child of God and
co-heir of Christ. You are a sinner whom God calls to be His saint. Peter was a
fisherman. Paul made tents. And those were the least important aspects of
either of their lives. So whatever it is that you do, by all means, do it well.
Yet remember that what’s important about our callings isn’t what we do, but Who
it is Who calls us home.
Thanks be to Christ, Who calls us at times to drop our nets.
In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
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