I’m standing in my waders beside a lovely trout stream rigging up my favorite fly rod. I can see big fish rising in a pool just upstream. My fingers tremble as I try to tie on a matching fly as quickly as possible so as not to miss the moment. Then someone taps me on the shoulder and says, “Put down the rod, take off the waders, and come with me.” No, it’s not the game warden nabbing me for fishing out of season. It’s my image of how the call of Jesus to those Galilean fisherman must have felt to them.
Mark’s narrative is generally more compressed than Matthew’s or Luke’s. Although this week’s text, Mark 1:16-20, appears almost the same in Matthew 4:18-22. But that compression may make the disciples’ call and departure seem more abrupt than it actually was. John records a meeting that’s likely prior to this encounter by the sea, and Luke 5:1-11 adds a fishing miracle to Jesus’ meeting with Peter there by the shore. I might welcome my imagined tap on the shoulder more if it were accompanied by casting directions which produced a couple of giant fish.
Nonetheless, Mark makes it very clear that these first four disciples were abandoning just about everything they might have valued in order to follow Jesus. They left means of livelihood (their nets and boats), and family (James and John’s father) in order to become Jesus’ disciples. The text forces us to ask what we have left for Jesus’ sake.
“Disciple” and “discipline” obviously derive from the same root. We are quite comfortable with the idea of being “disciples,” and not so comfortable with the thought of discipline, especially discipline which may cost us.
May our Lord show us both what we may yet need to leave behind along the shore AND what blessings and joys await us if we turn from what we thought was valuable and seek His way.