Jesus Calls

(From Matthew 4)

We’ve all been called to something at one time or another. Maybe it’s nothing more than a call from a friend to join a party or take a trip. Or perhaps it’s something much more serious, like a calling to a lifelong task or career, one that you may (or may not) feel qualified to perform. When the call comes, how do you respond? How do you decide?

Over time, we may become wary of too many calls, wanting to sort them out and evaluate them carefully before committing. And we can, if need be, invent any number of reasons not to answer them, to either put them off or just say no. And most of us, we must admit, have at times said yes when we should have said no.

I’ve been called to many things. Some important and some not. But this call, this call was special. Why? Because this call came from Jesus himself. It was a very serious call, a call to follow him, to put aside all that I was doing and to be his disciple, one of his twelve closest followers.

And I have to say that, looking at it objectively, answering the call to follow Jesus made no sense whatsoever. My friends said as much. My family, too. They said I was crazy. They said that I needed to know more. They said that following Jesus would sooner or later surely get me in trouble (and surely, it did). 

But you know what? Answering the call from Jesus was life changing. Truly. I have never looked back, and I consider answering his call to be the most important decision I’ve ever made. But admittedly, maybe not the easiest!

You must know that I was not seeking to be called. I was not looking for Jesus, he was looking for me. And yet, down deep, I knew that I was looking for something. I felt it, a longing for a deeper sense of meaning in my life. I couldn’t put a name to it, this deep yearning. But it was there. And I have to say that, in some amazing way, in his calling, Jesus touched that deep-seated longing. Yes, he did. Somehow, he knew.

You may be wondering why I said yes to Jesus. And why so quickly, with so little information?

You may even be wondering how it went, I mean, exactly how did Jesus call me? And what did he say? You might think that he explained a lot. That he answered all of my questions. Maybe you can even imagine that he checked me out in advance and interviewed me before inviting me to follow him. He could have even asked me to follow him for just a short time, a sort of trial period, to see how I worked out before making a final commitment. 

Well, as you know from reading the Gospels, Jesus did none of that. 

What did I know of Jesus? Not a lot, really. He was new. He was different. He did not present himself as a commanding person or as a strong, proud leader, but instead as humble, very humble. He even looked humble and he had no real credentials as a rabbi. He spoke and acted with great humility, always crediting his father for his miracles of healing, and regularly commenting that all he said and did were directed from above.

But there was something special about Jesus, something that doesn’t translate so well into words. I could feel it. There was a depth to him that is hard to describe. His eyes seemed to look deep into me, to speak heart to heart, no words required. Something about him made me realize that he knew things other rabbis didn’t know. This man was special. He was like no other rabbi I ever heard. He seemed to know what was going on inside my head and heart.

And his calling was not like the other rabbis, who were trailed by crowds of followers. Those rabbis were dispensing wisdom, the wisdom of our long-held Jewish traditions, the law and the prophets. 

But not Jesus. Nothing like it. Jesus, you see, was calling me, not to the wisdom of our Jewish traditions, but to something so new, and so amazing, that the old wineskins of our longstanding traditions could not hold it. You see, Jesus was calling me to nothing less than bringing the kingdom of heaven to earth.

The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, 1603/1606, Caravaggio

Following Jesus meant that I would need to give up my previous life. Yes, all of it. And you should know that my life, if not spectacular, was at least solid and predictable. I had a vocation that provided a good living. A wife and family were likely in my future. And I have to say that I was not ambitious. No one in my ancestry had ever done anything great or noble. My destiny, it seemed, was to live a life that would, by most folks, be considered predictable and ordinary. And I was content with that. All except for that longing that I felt deep inside.

But I discovered that Jesus saw things in me that I had not yet seen. He peeled back my comfort with the predictable life that was expected of me. And even though I knew that losing my comfortable life might not always be pleasant, I saw in Jesus a glimpse of something special that I simply could not pass up. What was that something? I couldn’t name it but inside I knew that the call from Jesus would answer the yearning that I was feeling.

And there was more. You see, even with his few words of explanation, Jesus somehow communicated to me a confidence that I myself had never felt. He believed in me! After all, I was ordinary in every way imaginable. But he believed so much in me, that I began to think that through him, I really could change the world. No one had ever expressed so much confidence in me. Not ever!

I will confess to you that, as I considered his call, I did have some doubts. It’s true, he told me so little of what it would be like to follow him, I mean what we would be doing day to day. And to tell you the truth, had he said more, I might have turned him down.

But I didn’t turn him down. I said yes. Purely on faith. And you should know, there were times over the next three years when I wondered about this calling.  In fact, all twelve of us had our doubts from time to time. Yes, we did.

But Jesus never gave up on us. We wavered, we questioned, and one of us even betrayed him. In a critical situation, another of us denied even knowing him. Still, Jesus believed in us. He stuck by us, even when we didn’t stick by him. No one had ever been that loyal to me. No one had ever believed in me like that. We weren’t required to earn his trust, he freely gave it to us.

And so, we, those of us whom he called, followed Jesus. We followed him all over Galilee. We followed him outside our Jewish homeland, and we followed him even to Jerusalem, where he met his destiny on a cross. We followed him every day. And every day, each one of us had to decide if we would stick with him. And every day, despite our doubts and fears, every day we said yes. Jesus took care of the rest. And really, that’s all Jesus asks of any of us, to say yes to him. Yes to following him, yes to loving him, yes to obeying him. Of course, even when we say yes to Jesus, we follow him imperfectly. We never get it quite right. But Jesus, in his great grace and mercy, takes our imperfections and he perfects them.

In a way, the calling from Jesus captured me. I have to say that it was a sweet captivity. His confidence in me fed my confidence in myself. If Jesus could believe in an ordinary man like me, perhaps I could believe in myself, that my life might be more than the ordinary life that I had been led to expect.

And yes, I am sure you know that nothing about following Jesus was ordinary. Those who followed the other rabbis learned the law, down to the very smallest detail. The followers of those rabbis would be known by their knowledge. 

Did Jesus expect that of us? Knowledge? No. Jesus told us that we would be known, not by our knowledge, but by our love. Yes, our love. Our love for him, for one another, for the world, and even for our enemies.

Isn’t it odd? Isn’t it odd that Jesus, the Son of the Living God, chose someone like me, an ordinary man, a man with no real ambition, with no outstanding position or abilities, to become one of his closest followers? And isn’t it odd that he trusted ordinary me, along with eleven other ordinary men, to do nothing less than serve him in bringing the kingdom of heaven to the world?

So, watch out! Jesus may call you, too. And you, like me, may think yourself ordinary, and utterly unqualified. But let Jesus call you anyway. Let him breathe his confidence into you, like he did for me. Let him stand by you, even when you want to run and hide. 

And when he does call you, and I know that he will, I hope that you will, like me, say yes.