Mark 1:14-20
Last Sunday we heard about the calling of Andrew. Remember? He was a follower of John the Baptist, who called Jesus “Lamb of God” and Andrew and another disciple followed Jesus. Later, Andrew went and found his brother Peter and told him about Jesus. Today we hear about the calling of four apostles, and the story doesn’t seem to match the one from the Gospel of John. There may be an explanation for this, though, if you read between the lines and use your imagination
First, let me tell you about my own situation. During my third year in college, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was a good student and whether it was philosophy or physics or history, I was getting mostly A’s. I’m not bragging. If you had known me, you would know I was a nerd. I wanted to do something to help people, and becoming a psychologist seemed like a possibility. But then I learned that psychologists could not prescribe medicine, you had to be a psychiatrist for that. So I applied to medical school intending to be a psychiatrist. Time went on and I took my psychiatry clerkship. I spent it on the wards with a bunch of patients who had many different psychiatric illnesses, all too far gone to be out on their own, and yet most of them could talk and interact to an extent. After my month, I realized I did not under any circumstances want to be a psychiatrist. So I tried other things. Finally during my residency in Internal Medicine, I took a rotation on the cancer service. Cancer treatment was mostly unsuccessful and very primitive, but we had just started using chemotherapy. An elderly lady with breast cancer became my patient. She could not open one eye because of her disease. She consented to receive a new drug, which I administered. She became deathly ill with nausea and vomiting. We finally quieted her down. The next day I came by to see her. She was ecstatic because she could open her eye. It was at that moment that I knew what I wanted to do -- become a chemotherapist, become a medical oncologist. In my training I got to know oncologists, and wanted to be one of them.
And that, I think may be what is behind the story in John and the story in Mark, which we heard today. I suspect the four fishermen had met Jesus before. Maybe that was what John was describing. And they watched as Jesus preached, performed miracles, confronted the authorities with logic that couldn’t be argued with. And they probably got to know him as a friend, sitting around talking with him when the nets had been put away. And these fishermen had a good thing going -- we know the fish caught in the lake were salted and sent all over the near east. Peter owned a boat; James and John were part of a significant business which could hire men to help with the work.
And then one day their friend, Jesus, came by and told them to follow him -- and by then they knew that he was more than a carpenter, more than a wandering teacher, more than a very charismatic man who drew people to him like honey draws flies. And when he told them to follow him, it awakened something in them -- “I want to be like Jesus”. Because that was the promise -- “I will make you fishers of men.”
And after Jesus ascended into heaven, they had become like Jesus -- we read about how the apostles would preach and people would be converted. We read about miracles worked by Peter and Paul and undoubtedly the other apostles as well; and we see the church growing by leaps and bounds, and when a Christian went to his or her death with a smile on their face and a song on their lips, some people saw this and said, “I want to be like that.” And down through the ages it continued. Saint Agustine heard Saint Ambrose preach and said “I want to be like that”. Saint Therese of Liseaux chose to imitate her namesake, Saint Theresa of Avila, because she wanted to be like that.
The world is still in need of fishers of men, people who look at Jesus, not only as God to be worshiped, but as an example to be followed, And Jesus is still telling people “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men”. And just as he did with the apostles, he can still do with you and I; if we follow him, he can make more fishers of men.
I have to close with a story, a true story. A non-Catholic man married a Catholic woman, and they got along very well, well enough to have five children before the man announced one day out of the blue that he was going to become a Catholic. And not just a card-carrying Catholic, but a very serious one, whose life’s purpose was to get his children to heaven. And everyone rejoiced. And his mother in law later told someone that she had been sleeping on the floor every night as a way of begging God to bring her son in law into the Church, and now that it had happened, she was looking forward to sleeping in her bed again. Fishers of men are still at it, and you and I can be as well. Don’t you want to be like that?
