i've begun rereading the gospel of mark, with special attention to the teachings of jesus. mark is believed to be the oldest of the gospels, and it seems to me to be the most direct and accessible. there is no attempt to trace the family line of jesus back to ancient ancestors, no recounting of a miraculous birth, just a simple proclamation that the "good news of jesus christ" begins with the preaching of john the baptist, jesus' cousin, and the baptism of jesus.
today i'm thinking about the first words of jesus in mark's gospel: "follow me and i will make you fish for people." jesus says this to peter and his brother andrew as he finds them fishing on the shores of the sea of galilee, and they drop their nets and follow jesus. a bit farther along the shoreline, jesus finds james and john mending nets while sitting in their boat, calls to them, and they too follow him. the gospel doesn't say that jesus had any prior conversations with these four fishermen, but it seems reasonable that the five men are acquainted. we don't know why jesus was near their homes in the fishing village of capernaum, or what their earlier encounters were like, but it appears that what jesus had to say to them was compelling enough for them to abandon their settled lives to become his disciples.
probably their wandering with jesus far from capernaum didn't begin immediately, because jesus seems to have used the little town as his base for his early ministry. so peter, andrew, james, and john could have lived in their homes with their families and continued to fish to support themselves, venturing out with jesus from time to time in the neighborhood of capernaum. it is possible that these four were already prepared to become jesus' followers and were waiting for his invitation to do so, since they immediately left what they were doing. to have done this with no prior preparation, no knowledge of the person of jesus or his teachings, would have been the acts of unstable individuals who were willing to turn their lives upside down at the drop of a hat.
i try to put myself in their places and imagine that i find myself dissatisfied with my present life, tired of the drudgery of making a living going out onto the sea every day hoping to make a good catch, feeling an emptiness, a longing, for something more. i think of the wandering of siddhartha as he began his search for meaning and the pattern of jesus' life. so much is left unsaid in mark's gospel, and indeed in all the gospels, about jesus' life prior to his baptism. we know almost nothing of his childhood or of the year's in his adult life leading up to the beginning of his ministry and the calling of his discples. what we do know is fragmentary and unreliable. by the time jesus calls the fishermen to follow him, he is a mature teacher, and his teaching must have resonated with those who heard him, convincing some like peter, james, john, and andrew that he had the answers to the questions that gnawed at them.
there are so many unanswered questions in those simple words that are jesus' first utterances in mark's gospel. i long to know what led up to these encounters along the seashore. surely the lesson to be learned is not that one abandons everything on a whim to become a follower of jesus. it seems to me that jesus is saying that his teaching will enable these four to relate to people in a new way, to see life in a new way. by following jesus, they will draw people to them, just as their nets draw fish from the sea. people will come to them to hear their teachings, their answers to life's questions, just as these first followers came to jesus.
may we each be seekers of the answers to life's mysterious questions. may we use our minds to reason through what is presented to us, rather than blindly accepting what our forebears believed. may we choose the path that speaks most clearly to both our hearts and our minds. shalom.
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