The Calling of a Disciple
Matthew 4:18-20

In preparation for this sermon I combed my bookshelves, both at home and in the office, and I came up with these books.

Here's an old classic: Paul Little, How to Give Away Your Faith . And this is a book that was a rage among campus groups when I was in College: Becky Pippert, Out of the Salt Shaker and Into the World . Those are oldie goldies. I also have some newer books of the same genre: Becoming a Contagious Christian, Finding Common Ground .

These books share a common theme: They are all meant to help Christians communicate their faith to people who are not Christians. They are manuals in evangelism. How to guides for talk about your faith.

Do you want to know how they make me feel? Like running the other direction. Like escaping from here as fast as I can. They make me feel guilty, and they terrify me. These books are full of stories of people who start conversations about Jesus with every stranger they sit next to. They are full of people doing audacious things to share their faith. The thought of doing such things scares me half to death.

I know that a lot of people feel this way. I know this because if we all felt great and confident about sharing our faith, we wouldn't need this sort of book. But the fact is there is a significant market for such books, and a significant industry in trying to help Christians overcome this fear and reluctance. Evangelism programs like the Alpha program or Evangelism Explosion fit into the same category.

If these books terrify me, why do I buy them and why do I read them. The fact is, I love to hear stories about other people sharing their faith, for much the same reason that I like I like to watch war movies: I'm quite happy for both to be vicarious experiences. It's great to be inspired by people who show great courage in battle; it's great to hear about people who do a great job sharing about Jesus. I know it's a good thing to do. I know that if Jesus is worth worshiping, and worth following, then he's worth talking about. I know that. I just don't want to do it myself.

So I have this conflict of emotions when the subject of talking about Jesus comes up. And it's with that sort of conflict that I come to this brief story in John 4:18-20

Matthew 4:18-22 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men."

This is one of Jesus most memorable figures of speech. It was certainly drilled into me from earlier than I can consciously remember. We had a Sunday School song based on this verse. It was a favorite because it had actions, and songs with actions were a good excuse to hit the person in front of you on the head and make Sunday School more lively. None of us, even at 5 or 6 years old, had any trouble understanding that when Jesus said, "I will make you fishers of men" he meant that we were supposed to go out and catch people for Jesus.

It really is a brilliant metaphor. If you were looking for a sweet coating for the bitter pill of evangelism, what better metaphor than fishing. It brings to mind a relaxing image. You are out on a boat on a lake -- maybe with a friend. The sun is shining. And you are lazily casting your line out and slowly reeling it in. You are safely in the boat. The fish are conveniently under water. Your job is to lure some of those fish into the boat with you.

What a great image for evangelism. We go out into the world. We do our best to make the good news about Jesus attractive -- and we cast our message out into the world hoping that some hungry fish out there will bite, and we can reel him into the boat. It almost makes the idea of evangelism appealing.

Problem: This image of what means to be fishers of men is wrong in just about every way.
For us, fishing is recreation. For Simon and Andrew, James and John, fishing was their life, their livelihood. Fishing was the work they just went out and did every day, whether they felt like it or not. They were fisherman because their fathers were fishermen. It didn't matter much whether they liked it or not. If they didn't do it, they and their families would likely starve.

We romanticize fishing. For them it was just work: hard, dangerous, often unpleasant work. There is not much romantic about a real fishing village, except in movies. Fishing villages reek of rotting fish, and in many of them families live in just about constant anxiety about whether their men will come home alive.

This throws a different light on what it means to be fishers of men. Jesus was calling them to a complete overturning of their life plans and priorities. No longer would fishing for fish be their life work. Jesus was offering them a new job --a job just as demanding than their old one, a job that would require time and skill to learn, and a job that would involve downward mobility. Jesus was not inviting them to an interesting recreational trip. He was calling them to a complete overturning of their priorities in which catching people for the kingdom of God would be their new vocation.

So here's the first lesson I want to emphasize here: Followers of Jesus are called to be just as serious about catching people for God as we are about our jobs. If you are a disciple of Jesus, sharing about Jesus is not a sideline. It is not a part-time job or a recreation -- it is your day job. It is your full-time pursuit, your vocation, and your craft. In fact, the job that earns you money is simply the lake in which God puts you to fish.

But that leaves the question: How? We are to be serious about evangelism. Catching people for God is to be our vocation as disciples. How do we go about it?

Again, our ordinary ways of thinking about fishing get us into trouble. For most of us, fishing is a kind of game in which we try to outsmart the fish. It is a game of wits. So a good fisherman carefully studies what fish like to eat, when they eat, where they eat. Fly fisherman in particular put an enormous amount of skill and effort into creating flies that fish will die for.

It is very tempting to think about fishing for men in the same way. We lure them in. We tie up the message of the Gospel into a neat, attractive package, and we cast it out into the world, hoping some godless fish out there will be hungry for it. The idea is to make Christianity as appealing as possible; let them feel the hook later. Catch them with the attractive parts; leave them to discover the cost later on.

I find two problems with this way of thinking:

1. First, it is directly opposed to the way that Jesus actually operated -- He always emphasized the cost of following him right up front. He made sure that the barriers and costs were clear.

2. Second, it does violence to the context. Simon and Andrew did not fish with lures and flies and expensive graphite rods. They didn't try to trick fish into their boats. They were much more direct about it. They dragged them in. They used nets.

If we are going to use this passage as a model for evangelism, it would make most sense as an argument for forced conversion. Throw out the net and drag them in whether they want to come or not. Interestingly, I've never heard such interpretation of this passage.

So this fishing metaphor doesn't give us much help in knowing how we are to be fishers of men. It tells us that we are to be serious about it. It tells us that it is our day job as disciples. But it doesn't really give a clue about techniques, or how to's.

So how are we to become fishers of men? Look again at Matthew 4. What exactly does Jesus say? There are two parts to it. He gives a command and he makes a promise. The command? Follow me. The promise? I will make you fishers of men. There's a division of responsibility: We have a part; He has a part. Our part is to follow; his part is to make us fishers of men.

There's an organic connection between following Jesus and becoming a fisher of men. This is just what happens when you follow Jesus. Just as you can't help but catch fish if you spend all of your time with a master fisherman -- so if you truly follow Jesus, he WILL make you into a fisher of men.

As I thought about this connection between following Jesus and becoming fishers of men, two illustrations came to mind:

The first is an experience I frequently have when I'm with my dad. If I am going anywhere where there will be a lot of people I don't know, I love to have Dad along. Why? Because if you give him five minutes, he can make a friend of the coldest stranger. He loves people, and he loves them so sincerely and so warmly that he can't be anywhere long without being among friends. So if I follow Dad along at a conference, or even in a shopping mall, I need never feel lonely. When I lived in Chicago I went to a church and hardly talked to anyone there for several months. Then Dad came to visit. From then on the pastor was my good buddy. All I have to do is stick close to Dad, and I benefit from his presence. Check out clerks who would otherwise treat me with rude indifference are suddenly friendly. All I have to do is follow him.

The second illustration is a simple magnet and a piece of steel. The piece of steel has no power to attract -- unless it is next to the magnet. The disciple has no power to attract unless he follows Jesus.

So my simple encouragement today is not to work really hard at becoming fishers of men. My encouragement to you is to focus your efforts on following Jesus. Stick close to the magnet. If you really follow me, Jesus says, then this is what I'm going to make of you. This is what will happen. I will make you like me.

If you are really following Jesus, and the fishing isn't going so well, then go to him and ask him to fulfill his promise. He promises that if you follow him he will work through you to change peoples lives. If that doesn't seem to be happening, ask him to fulfill his promise.

There's another possibility: It could be that you are simply not really wanting to be a disciple of Jesus. You don't really want to care for people the way he does. It's too costly, too time-consuming, too inconvenient.

And that takes me back to these books, and the problem that I started with. Is it possible that there is a good reason why sharing our faith is difficult. Evangelism is hard because following Jesus is hard. Evangelism is hard because dying to self is hard. Maybe it's because I am so filled with pride and selfishness that when Jesus asks me to actually care for people at the deepest level my self feels threatened. I don't want to give up my control of my time. I don't want to give up my comfort and security. I don't want to sacrifice my pride and appear foolish in other's eyes. I don't want to be seen as a fanatic. I just want to be a nice, respectable, normal person.

Which, translated, means I don't really want to be a follower of Jesus. Following Jesus requires putting to death my pride, my security, my fears. It means loving people with a costly love.

Two simple conclusions: First, effective evangelism flows out of following Jesus; Second, one of the most effective ways of growing in following Jesus is through evangelism.

So after this week I'm trying to look at this stack of books differently. I'm no longer looking at them as simply how to manuals for evangelism -- I'm seeing them as invitations to grow in discipleship. Oh, I am still frightened of them. But it's a healthier fear: I am frightened because I know that discipleship is costly.