“Come, follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men”
The path of following is complicated. Following invokes with in us a list of skeptical questions: “Do you deserve my following? Are you sure I fit the task? What benefit will this following give me? Where will I follow you? What will our destination be.”
The biggest of course is the first. Are you worthy of my apprenticeship?
Cynicism advertises enlightenment but, instead, offers a survival technique against those who offer us life only devour to devour our lives. By the time you hear Jesus’ “follow me” you’ve been let down by similar invocations. Work for me, and I’ll build your resume. Marry me, and you’ll be happy. Do religious work, and you’ll be satisfied. Be a good kid, and you’ll belong. Be my friend, and you won’t be lonely. Join my church, and you’ll have spiritual vitality! Don’t have sex now and then your marriage will automatically thrive later.
I don’t have to articulate the unkept callings to follow. The soil of cynicism is fertilized by invitations and let downs.
We’ve learned to not take these callings seriously and certainly not to take them whole. We might accept them half-heartedly while always giving ourselves an opportunity flake: Sure, I’ll see you there…if I’m feeling well. Yes, you can count on me…maybe. I do, I’ll love you for the rest of my love for you.
Our standard response to following is “maybe”.
The promise of cynicism is to never be led, but always to lead: if my life is going to be disappointing, at least I’ll be in charge.
Jesus says, within the chorus of many voices: “follow me.”
Peter, Andrew, James and John follow. Fully without maybe.
It’s nearly cringeworthy, are they sure? What did they hear that made them so sure?
The calling of Jesus echos the beginning of all things. The Scriptures start with a duality of activity: the words of God and the making of things. God speaks, light. God speaks, plants. God speaks, animals. God speaks, water and land. Until God says these words, “Let us make a-dam”, humanity. This is the dialogue of the creation: “Let us make” and at its making, “This is good.”
In Genesis two, we get another poem that describes God crouching low into the soil and breathing life into Adam. Out of the dust God makes the image of God. God speaks, God makes. Out of nothing, out of dust, God breathes into life.
Jesus speaks and Jesus makes. “Follow me and I will make.”
The calling of Jesus also echoes the promise of Israel. God first goes to a sheepherding couple, Abraham and Sarah, saying: “Go to the land I’ll show you and I will make you into a blessed family that blesses all the people of the world.” The convent was simple: “follow me and I will make you into a blessing family.”
God led them, we’re told in Genesis, around the Middle East. They were a barren urban couple living out a life on the fertile rivers of modern day Iran. God spoke, God led them to a new land and they arrived to give birth to an unlikely child. God spoke and God made. God made Abraham and Sarah’s descendants into a family that blessed the known world amidst a global famine, through the stewardship of dreams.
Jesus speaks and Jesus makes: “Follow me and I will make.”
The Israelites became bound in slavery to the Pharaohs of Egypt. Egypt crushed the psyche and God-family identity out of God’s family. They bore the pains of infanticide, rape, slave labor, and racism. The phrase the Bible crafted to summarize this pain was “making bricks without straw”. In other words, the carried the demands of life without the presence of the necessities to live.
God, in the clearest picture of his character, liberated the Israelites from centuries of oppression and led them out of Egypt and they followed through the Red Sea and into the dessert. There, God spoke and made again. To the former Pyramid construction workers he spoke: “I have taken you out of Egypt and saved you. You will be my people and I will be your God. I will make you a holy nation, a kingdom of priests.” God spoke the promise of becoming a people that demonstrates the otherness of God, a protected people all on their own, and a people with a central role in God’s grand endeavor of kingdom. God promised to make them participants in the restoration of the world.
In the wilderness dessert, God’s new kingdom was born in the lives of slaves-made priests. Each day they awoke dependent on his bread, his water, and his presence. In a pillar of smoke and fire, they followed him. He led them. They became a holy nation belonging to God. God spoke, God promised, God made.
This is the operation and vocabulary of God in our world. He speaks and makes himself known to the dust, to the wanderer, to the captive, and to the burned out.
Jesus speaks and Jesus makes: “Follow me and I will make.”
He speaks into the life that’s fallen short of the glory of human existence and he says: “become alive!” He speaks into the emptiness that’s forsaken the knowledge of God for man-made things and says: “I will lead you and I will make you!” He enters the soul of the oppressed says: “Be free and be mine!” To the least resourced, like newly freed slaves in a dessert, he says: “become the centerpiece of my vision for the world!”
When the Peter, Andrew, James, and John heard Jesus say: “Come, follow me and I will make,” they heard the voice of God, in the cadence of God, with the syntax of God, accomplishing the substance of God’s work.
They weren’t hearing a sales-pitch from a start-up, they were hearing the voice that made them. This isn’t a voice of campaign promise, it’s the voice of creation. Instead of hearing it with stars, bushes, or clouds, they heard it embodied in Jesus—by whom and from whom all creation has found its meaning and existence. They left everything and followed with the expectation of being made, because, as Peter would later say to Jesus: “Where else would we go, you alone have the words of eternal life.”
Like all the times before, Jesus’ promise of making was into a new identity—a fisher of people.
Our ears struggle to comprehend this orientation of identity that flows from the words and actions of God.
Who we are is what we do. Our favorite question to ask people who they are is: “What do you do?” In their answer, we’ve accounted for most of their identity: engineer, accountant, waiter, carpenter, actress. If we’re still not satisfied with only knowing most of who they are, we might ask “Where are you from?” Here we get almost the entire picture of the human we’re talking to.
If we’re extremely curious we might round out the full picture with a few details: where did you study, what hobbies do you do, who do you have sex with, and who do you vote for. This is what makes a person. A person is found in active verbs: doing, working, winning, learning, moving, sleeping, voting, and playing. The better you do those verbs the better you are.
It’s exhausting proving to yourself and others who you are by the work you do and the manner in which you do it.
The men Jesus talks with are fishermen, because they fish. To them and to us, Jesus corrects: I will make you become. In his speaking and his doing, he’s going to make our identity—nothing earned and worked for. No action verbs from us. Instead of becoming through our jobs, achievements, and aspirations, we become through him.
The “follow and become” of Jesus is deeper than any career path or platform. He will make us become who we were always intended to be.
The Prophet Jeremiah, gives us a picture of Jesus’ work (Jer. 18). One day, the Lord led him a potter’s work bench. In those days, pottery sustained cultures, towns, and civilizations. Pottery carried water, stored grain, preserved seed, held light in lamps, and made daily life possible. Also, it was the canvas of creative storytelling. A pot for grain was a work of art fashioned from clay. The Ancient world of pottery was the original utilitarian art form.
On this day, Jeremiah came to observe the potter and on his arrival he saw the potter, hands covered in the water and mud, at his wheel making. His hands creating; the clay becoming. The potter noticed the clay wasn’t yielding to his creative intention and he remade until the potter could step back and steal the vocabulary of the Genesis by declaring: “It is good.” The potter re-made it to become.
Michael Angelo famously described his methodology for sculpting this way: every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the sculptures task to find it.
Jesus calls us to yield, and he will make us become. Jesus calls out the image of God within us. He sees a child of God within us. He sees humanity lurking on the inside. He sees more, not less. He sees riches, not rags. He sees the design of our destiny and he says, I will make you become who you were intended to be.
Becoming is process, longevity, and commitment. Stand close to me, over the course of days, weeks, years, and lifetime. As you do, you’ll experience an apprenticeship in abundant life that will make you. While your commitment will wain, his will not. The commitment to his followers is as sure as the potter’s work in that shed 800 years ago: I will make you until you become.
It’s not all at once. Jesus doesn’t promise a “when you finally land that project, you’ll finally feel like you belong”. He doesn’t offer a six month personal development plan that will leave you certified for what’s next. Jesus’ invitation to follow and be made, comes without expiration or deadline. The “become” of Jesus is never ending and it’s never divorced from his daily stewardship. He envelops your existence exactly where it is and the midst of all your activity. But, it isn’t just you. It’s your brother and your sister. It’s the neighbor. It’s the friend. It’s an incremental remaking of humanity into his original intention.
When Jesus calls these brothers, he tells them exactly who they will become: Fishers of People
In all our creative work, we start with the name of our end. Every house begins with a whole in the ground, a pile of wood and stone, plans on paper, and a chest of tools. But when you arrive to the work site; you know you are not working on wood, stone, or dirt. No, you’re building a house. When you sit down to paper and pen you are not working on paper or pen, but a poem.
In the same way, Jesus tells us what he is making them become. He renames them where they are and and within their work. Just as in our making, calls this not in an expectation of what they will make of themselves, but what he intends to make out of them.
He plays with words to demonstrate what he’s changing in who we are. This is how God works. He took Abram, which means father, and made him become Abraham, which is father of many nations. Jesus will take men who fish and make them fishers of men.
They were fishermen. Their work was vital for the community: catch fish and feed people. Fix nets. Catch fish. Day by day, these men woke before the rising of the sun and came to their father, and worked for him in the pursuit of fresh fish. If they were lucky, they would have access to the boats and business when their father died. While some of us might look down on such an occupation, fishing provided, fishing was worthy, and fishing sustained generations. As long as there have been humans on the shore, there have been fishermen fishing for their fathers. For Peter, Andrew, James, and John, this was their job.
They will become fishers of men. Jesus’ speaking and making is a new reality and a new name in their old place. A new name for what was clay, a new name for what was once a career. A personal name for what was purely material usefulness. We see stone, he sees sons. We see our doing, he sees daughters. We see men focused on fish, he sees men he will orient around others.
If they follow, Jesus will alter their ontological purpose from what they can produce to how they relate. He will make them compassionate. He will make them just. He will make them loving. He will make them gracious. He will make them unifiers and peacemakers. He will make the ambassadors for wholeness. No longer will their concern end with nets, but will extend to neighbors.
Ghandi said, "we must be the change we want to see in the world.” Jesus said, “I will make you become the change I will create in this world.”
This is what happens when we find the hope of Jesus in us. He doesn’t just make us whole; he make us ministers of hope. He makes good vessels—beautifully crafted—to bring water to the thirsty.
If Jesus gave an inspiring message for high school graduates, he would say: “Oh, the people you will become through me! Oh, the people I will love through you!” His rousing speech would plead: “Your humanity can’t be reduced to what you can produce. My dream is bigger than your dream. My view of you is deeper than your view. Come, follow me and I will make you become."
Returning to our cynicism, will you follow Jesus and listen to his words and watch him make you become?
As Ernest Hemingway said:
“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
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