Follow Me and I will make you Fishers of Men

As children we all had to study for and take a "vocabulary tests" - learning a new list of words, their spelling and definitions, every week. As we continued on in school, read more books and studied more subjects, our vocabulary naturally expanded.

The great thing and the hard thing about a truly "living language"; like English, is that it is always changing, adopting, adapting, and adding new words, new concepts, new elements. 

How many words do you use in everyday discussions in 2014 that a few years ago would have had no meaning whatsoever? When did you first learn to speak "coffee"; so that you could communicate your beverage choice with the barista. Phrases such as "venti, black-eye, half-cap, mocha frappuchino"; that would have been complete gibberish a couple decades ago now come tripping off the tongue without need for an interpreter.

In 1998 a new Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan movie made a big deal of an emerging concept. "You've Got Mail"; highlighted the strange new world of "e-mail"; created by the expansion of the Internet. ln 2006 another snazzy word was reconfigured when "Twitter" was born. By 2012 there were over 34 million "tweets" sent per day. Technospeak is a language that continues to expand exponentially. We used to increase our vocabulary by reading "the classics". Now we can only increase our new and necessary vocabulary for living in the twenty-first century by reading our "emails, tweets and blogs". It seems we will all need to pass weekly vocab tests throughout our lives; not to mention selfies, twerking and who knows what else.

Yet for all the words we add, we always lose a few to the historical dustbin. There are now thousands of "apps" we can download onto our smartphones and tablets. But try asking anyone under the age of 25 what "app" stands for and you will probably get a blank look. After all, an "app" is . . . an "app".

But an "app" is really shorthand for "application" that is, "a use to which something is put". An "app" isn't a "thing". An "app" is an activity. An "app" is not a noun. An "app" is a verb. As we struggle to keep up with a language and a lifestyle that is ever changing, we should keep in mind this original definition of "app" because application makes a world of difference between the "real" and the "hypothetical".

Disciples of Jesus are called to give application to, that is, to actually "apply" our faith to our life and our lifestyles...

Follow Me...
"FolIow me, and I will make you fishers" said Jesus. Fishing takes practice, preparation, discipline. One must learn how to best throw the net, how to make the mouth of the net come open too. l can throw the actual cast net a long way, but I can't always make the net come open so that it will actually form a circle around the fish. One must learn how to cast the line on a rod. Again, some folks can cast a long way, but their accuracy is awful. There may be fish on the right, but they know only how to cast the line to the left. There may be fish on the left, but they keep casting to the right. Casting, like discipleship, is an acquired habit. It rewards practice.

Fishing is noticing the weather, watching the wind and the clouds. Fishing, like the gospel, dear friends, like the gospel, fishing is always practiced in context. It does no good to sit at one lake and wish I was on some other lake. it does no good to stand at the ocean and wish the weather were different. On that day, in that place, I fish in context according to what the conditions are. 

So it is with the proclamation and the living out of the Christian gospel. It does little good wishing that we were somewhere else, in a different time or in a different country perhaps. Our context is this time and this place. Know where the wind blows. Watch the clouds. 

Perhaps we might re-imagine just what it is that Jesus is calling these first disciples to be and do: fishers of people. And that implies relationships. Jesus, that is, calls these first disciples into relationship - with himself, with each other, and with all the various people they will meet over the next few years and, indeed, the rest of their lives. This Gospel ends, keep in mind, with another invitation to relationship: make disciples by baptizing them (into the name of the relational God, by the way) and teaching them what Jesus had taught them.

Jesus issues the same call to us - to be in genuine and real relationships with the people around us, and to be in those relationships the way Jesus was and is in relationship with his disciples and with us: bearing each other's burdens, caring for each other and especially the vulnerable, holding onto each other through thick and thin, always with the hope and promise of God's abundant grace. Sometimes that call - to be in Christ-shaped relationship with others - will take us far from home and sometimes it will take shape in and among the persons right around us. But it will always involves persons - not simply a mission or a ministry or a movement, but actual, flesh-and-blood persons. 

So maybe I should re-state the theme l started with this way: Jesus called ordinary people right in the middle of their ordinary lives to be in relationship with the ordinary people all around them and through that did extraordinary things....and he still does.

MPC