I sometimes wondered why the people who wrote the Gospels didn’t first sit down together, share their stories, anecdotes and memories, prioritise eyewitness accounts, check their written sources and then, when satisfied that they had everything available to them, put together a common chronology and storyline of the birth, early life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Doing so would have made life for the ‘discerning’ Christian so much easier and more comfortable.

But they didn’t do that. They began their stories at different stages of Jesus’ life (conception, birth, baptism, eternity) and then followed what at best could be called a winding pathway, intersecting in places but rarely doing so for long.

Then… I asked myself if that was what I wanted – what I really, really, really wanted? (with apologies to the Spice Girls!). A nicely packaged Jesus, all ingredients of his life checked for danger and clearly noted on the box? A Jesus with all blemishes removed, photoshopped to impress even the most critical believer. A Jesus who looks the same in every image, whose features, actions, even moods are predictable?

And that is when I said, “No, don’t do that. Don’t strip the person who has changed our world more than any other person of his character, or his uniqueness or the wonderful and incredible mystery which lies at the core of his being.

You see, I actually like the Jesus I have to search for in the Gospels; the Jesus I can never be sure about; the Jesus who is never exactly where I want to put him; the Jesus I think I have finally got a handle on, only for him to be somewhere else, doing something different.

The Jesus of the Gospels is not a character from history who is no more. The Jesus of the Gospels lives…now!

This is the mystery which is at the heart of the Gospels. It is the mystery we proclaim each time we celebrate the Eucharist – “…the Christ who died, the Christ who is risen, the Christ who will come again.”

And that, maybe, is the secret to understanding the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were not writing about a dead man. Mark says it in his opening words, “The beginning of the Good News, about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God…”  and Matthew says it in his closing words, “…and know this; I am with you always, even to the end of time.”

These disparate thoughts came to me as I reflected on this Sunday’s Gospel. Maybe I better explain….

Whenever we read a story or an episode from the Gospels we do so as human men and women, with our strengths and weaknesses, our virtues and sins, our moods, our pride, our anger an so much more. That seems so obvious that it is hardly worth saying. However, all the characters we meet in the Gospels are also human (including Jesus), and, while the world we inhabit is a totally different place to that which Jesus inhabited – science, technology, medicine, travel, education, to mention but a few, our deepest instincts, needs, hopes and dreams are the same. All the people in the Gospels had hopes and dreams just like we do. They too had their moods, their good and bad days, their successes and failures, their joys and sorrows.

For example, Mary the mother of Jesus: In every scene in the Gospels where we meet her, she is first and foremost a mother; a mother who loves her son and constantly worries about him. In this she is no different than any other mother in any corner of the globe. That she had to be present at his suffering, humiliation and death on the cross is, for me, a pain almost beyond understanding. And she felt that pain like any mother would feel it.

We must, I think, always remember that all of those who encountered Jesus – whether they loved of hated him, followed or did not follow him – reacted to him as human beings, just like us. We must not expect Jesus to demand any more of them than is humanly possible, and we must not expect them to be ‘superheroes’, doing things no human could do.

This Sunday’s Gospel is a wonderful example of what I mean: In it we read of the call of Jesus’ first disciples – Peter, James and John. This is an important moment in the life of Jesus, so it is no surprise that we find it in all four Gospels… but in each Gospel it is presented differently.  This should not surprise us. After all, for the first thirty or more years after the Resurrection, there was almost nothing written down at all. Everything was shared ‘word-of-mouth’, firstly by eyewitnesses and then others, spreading the stories they heard as they travelled.

To be one of the first disciples of Jesus carried with it certain bragging rights. “I was with him at the start. He called me!” A very human reaction to be sure, but which of us at some time of our lives did not boast that we were friends with X or travelled for a while with Y? Likewise, to be able to say that “I know / am a friend of / grew-up with Peter (or James or John)” gave a certain authority to what you might say. That too was important.

There must have been many, many versions of the call of the first disciples doing the rounds of the first Christian communities. Some had slightly different or more names; some used a different time or place (in John’s Gospel Jesus calls his first disciples at the river Jordan, after the baptism of Jesus). At a human level there should be no surprise that the same ‘true’ story might have several versions, with differing details.

Now consider this:  At the end of this Gospel, when we come to the call itself, it is presented to us as if it was sudden and unexpected, and the response of Peter, James and John is presented as immediate: “…and when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.”

Just for a few moments put yourself in Peter or James or John’s place, and ask yourself, purely as a human person, what is going on here.

Would Peter, a married man with a family depending on him, simply up and leave his wife and children to follow Jesus? Surely, that would be the height of irresponsibility and selfishness on his part. No husband and father, with a family depending on him, would do that, and if he did how could anybody ever trust him again? How could a person who abandoned wife, family and business become Jesus’ “rock”?

Even more important, could the Jesus we meet in the Gospels (kind, forgiving, understanding, compassionate), ever demand this of anyone? Because if he did, he was effectively saying to Peter, “I don’t care about your wife or family or your business. I want you now. Follow me!”

It seems natural for me to say, purely at a human level, “…none of those involved in this story would act like this.” For all involved, Jesus, Peter, James, John, it is not how caring, mature, responsible adults act towards one another.

So, what then is Luke saying to his first readers and to us? I will try to outline it in story form – all of the following is  absolutely true to the Gospels and all of it satisfies what it means to be human.

“Peter and his brother Andrew, and their partners in business, James and John, are all devout Jews, unhappy with Roman rule and waiting/hoping for the Messiah to bring about retribution and the Kingdom of God. They hear about a strange man, John the Baptist, calling for people to repent and prepare for the Messiah. They are curious, and because he is preaching very close to them, they go to hear him and like what they hear. They return to hear him again, and through him they meet Jesus, who is also interested in his message.

As a friendship between Jesus and these fishermen develops, they talk about this ‘Kingdom of God’ they are longing for, and it becomes clear that the ‘Kingdom’ Jesus talks about is quite different to the Kingdom John is preaching. More than that, the punishing, vengeful God John is expecting is very much not the loving and forgiving God Jesus is talking about.

Together, maybe with a few others, they decide that the Kingdom Jesus is promising is worth sharing with others. They begin in a small way, very locally, travelling with Jesus, supporting him both practically and as friends. They continue to work as fishermen, supporting their families and living at home.

As the wonders Jesus performs make him popular and his message grows, their commitment to Jesus also grows. They are away more often, though they rarely travel more than thirty miles from home, and they avoid large towns and cities. However, for the sake of their business they bring others on board as partners, giving them more time.

They maintain their families and homes and return there very frequently. Jesus often spends time with them. A story in Mark’s Gospel confirms this, telling us of Jesus visiting the home of Peter and healing his mother-in-law who was ill.

Then comes the shock and horror of the crucifixion. They run and hide away in fear and then return home to their families and their fishing, trying to pick up where they left off.

And then the Resurrection……and all is changed, changed utterly…..”

For me (and I say, only for me) as a human person, the story of Jesus calling his first disciples as told above is closer to the Jesus I meet elsewhere in the Gospels. I cannot ever imagine Jesus saying, “Leave everything you have; leave the people who depend on you; leave those you love most in life and follow me, now, immediately!”

However, each one of us has our own image of Jesus, and no one image is either more true or more correct than any other image.

As I said earlier, that is the beauty of the Gospels. The Jesus we find there is illusive and always surprising. We are always journeying with him, hearing more, understanding more, coming to know him more and more as a friend in whom I can trust.

However, there is a warning we must take from this.

If we read, “…and when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.” and see that as something Jesus might literally demand of his followers, then we are sailing very close to fundamentalism, and fundamentalism in all its guises is dangerous. Be it Fascism, Nazism, far-right or far-left political ideologies, or religious fundamentalism, it is all extremely dangerous, as we witness all too frequently in our world.

Fundamentalism places ideas, ideologies, religious beliefs above our common, shared, humanity. It makes no allowances for ways of speaking, context, audience or cultural difference and it dares to say, “…this is what God wants of us.”  The first Christian communities who listened to what Luke wrote knew exactly what he meant and what Jesus asked of them: “To be a follower of mine requires commitment and courage and it will inevitably come with a cost.” We too must listen with ears attuned to our own humanity and the humanity of Jesus.

A fundamentalist reading of today’s Gospel will always put the cost of discipleship beyond us, and it will make demands that are cruel, heartless and unfeeling. In one word demands that are ‘inhuman’, and Jesus would / could never do that!

We all come into this world trusting, needing love and responding to it, open, tolerant, accepting. That’s what humanity is at it’s best and it lives in each one of us. It is only what Jesus demands of us!

“Unless you become like little children you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.”

Many thanks,

Brian.

If you have any thoughts or comments that you would like to share with me on this reflection, please send me an email: b.maher@oblates.co.uk 

They left everything and followed him