Mtr Mary Trainor

Dear follower of the Way

Middle-of-the-night friends. That’s what I call them. The ones you phone at 2 a.m. when you break down on the highway. Or you’re in the emergency room and scared, but you’re not yet sure it’s bad enough to bother most of the people in your contacts.

That’s when you call a middle-of-the-night friend—even if it’s in the middle of the day. He just stops what he’s doing and comes to your aid. She tells her spouse/friend/boss, I gotta go.

You cannot identify them from looking only on the outside. In my experience the extra-friendly ones who urge you to call should you ever need anything, well, that may not actually work out. Sometimes the ones who become your middle-of-the night people are the quiet, serious ones, maybe a little rough on the outside, nonconforming, but solid through and through.

All of this came to mind as I read today’s Daily Office selection from Mark, Chapter 1, about the call of the first disciples. Two sets of brothers—Simon and Andrew; and sons of Zebedee, James and John—drop everything to follow when Jesus calls.

Some label Mark the Cliff Notes Gospel, it is so spare in detail. There is no record of Jesus’ birth. He is an adult at the start and, just fourteen verses in, he’s been baptized, was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, John the Baptist is in jail, and now it’s time for Jesus to call disciples.

The spare detail makes me wonder. Combined with Mark’s frequent use of the word “immediately,” it’s easy to assume that the seaside encounter is a first meeting with a quick conclusion: He sees them, he calls, they follow.

It may have happened that way, or it’s possible the five men—all Galileans— were aware of one another, or at least familiar with one another’s stories.

Maybe they didn’t know each other well, this son of a carpenter and these sons of fishermen. But perhaps  well enough that the men wanted to be part of what Jesus offered, and well enough for Jesus to know these four were essential for his ministry. They weren’t perfect. They would seriously disappoint from time to time. And...they also formed the core team that would carry his Way of Love into their world, and into ours.

Simon, Andrew, James and John would be Jesus’ middle-of-the night friends, and he would be theirs.

Mtr. Mary