Justin Appel

Dear Friends in Christ,

Today’s Gospel lesson recounts Jesus calling the first of his disciples. They were from the low class, the poorest, least-educated slice of the demographic pie. They were the Wal-Mart checkers, the fast-food line cooks, the waitresses, the dishwashers. They were the people who got up in the morning and did hard, subsistence-level work. They didn’t think for a living, they caught fish.

It’s significant, when you stop to think about it, that Jesus spoke to these people. After all, he wasn’t doing charity work. He wasn’t volunteering at the local food shelter or sharing better fishing strategies with the peasants. He was looking for disciples, and the people who accepted him right away (the text says “immediately”) were simple people who lived off the land. The folks who rejected Jesus were often religious and political elites.

Now, I’m not about to make an argument for Christian Socialism, or something along those lines—that’s a topic for another time. However, what I do notice in this story is that some people who were at the bottom of society followed Jesus and went to the top of his economy of salvation—through a process of repentance, obedience, and martyrdom (i.e., “witness”). Others at the top failed to respond.

This theme seems to be everywhere in the Gospels. The common end of so many threads in the narrative (Mary’s obedience, John baptizing Jesus, the Good Thief’s repentance, Mary Magdalene’s discovery, Peter being forgiven, and so on) is the theme of turning to Christ, sometimes involving a complete reversal, an about face, an acceptance, or possibly an epiphany.

If there’s a lesson for us today, it is in that we too need to turn to Christ, but perhaps we may need to do so in spite of serious distractions. This is a thought I am pondering in my own life. There are many things that our society has conditioned us to think of as “life” which, in fact, hinder us from finding the Life. “You are worried and distracted by so many things,” Jesus might well say to me, “but only one thing is necessary.”

Thankfully, we have the picture of these faithful fishermen to guide us. Those fishermen with tongues of fire on their heads.

Yours in Christ,

—Justin