Matthew 4:12-23

One Wake-up Call You Don’t Want to Sleep Through!

Comedian Garry Shandling once commented on the phenomenon of wake-up calls in hotels.

He says: “Here’s a little tip from me to you as an experienced traveler: Wake-up calls—wake-up calls can be one of the worst ways to wake up. The phone rings; it’s loud; you can’t turn it down.”

Then with impeccable timing Shandling adds, “Here’s the tip: When I request a wake-up call, I leave the number of the room next to me, and then it just rings kind of quiet, and I hear a muffled yell, ‘What are you calling me for?’ Then I get up and take a shower. It’s great.”

Then there’s this true story – really! I read it on the internet … it had to be true! Anyway, a man had fallen away from his church.

A friend of his decided to give him a call about a tennis match they were scheduling later that week. That friend called from the phone at Christ the Lord Lutheran Church where he was attending a meeting.

When the call came – the man looked at his Caller I.D. and it said, “Christ the Lord.” I guess he thought Christ was calling for him. Now that’s what I call a wake-up call.  FYI – he did start going back to church after that!

Now for a really, real story:  Four men, fishermen by trade, were toiling at the nets beside the Sea of Galilee when they received their wake-up call from Jesus. And they didn’t have cell phones or caller ID – but they responded none-the-less.

We read about their wake-up call in three of the four gospels. In Luke’s gospel Jesus is teaching a crowd on the beach, and then he up and jumps into a boat and asks the fishermen in it to row out just a bit, so that everyone on shore could see him.

When he finishes teaching, Jesus asks those same fishermen to put out to deeper water and toss in their nets, which they do, even though they had just returned from a fishless morning on the sea.

As Luke tells it, the catch is so big that their nets begin to tear. They need a second boat to bring it all in. Wonder changes to fear concerning this holy man in the boat with them, whom they had just met.

One of the fishermen, Simon (Peter), gives voice to the fear, asking Jesus to leave them alone. To which Jesus responds with those familiar words: "from now on you’ll be fishing for people."

According to Luke, Jesus doesn’t even say "follow me," but from that day on those fishermen still become his disciples.

In Matthew’s version of this tale, which we heard earlier, the story is greatly abridged, almost word for word as it is in Mark’s gospel. Simply put, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew are fishing with their nets.

Jesus comes along, taps them on the shoulder and says, "Come follow me, and I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you."

And they do just that … and not only them, but a little farther down so do two other fishermen, James and John, another pair of brothers.

Now, as we approach this fishy business, the question isn’t "which story is the right one?" Rather, the question is, "what are we going to do with these stories?"

Or, more to the point, what impact are these fish tales going to have on our lives?

Now, perhaps we’d prefer if they’d just slip out of fingers and swim into someone else’s net. When you think about it, there’s a directness in these fish tales that makes us uncomfortable.

I mean, thinking about the one we just heard from Matthew’s gospel, who in their right mind would "immediately" drop everything and follow Jesus the moment he called them?

I imagine Jesus must have been a pretty charismatic individual to get them to do what they did. Perhaps they knew who he was or perhaps they couldn’t say no. No doubt the gospel writers only told us about those who followed.

I wonder if there were others who said, "No way," or "I’m too busy." For reasons unknown to us these four fishermen did not hesitate to follow Jesus.

Besides the fact that Jesus called fishermen to follow him there is a common theme that runs throughout this story. Everyone had to leave something to follow.

First, Jesus left his hometown of Nazareth, never to return again. He left his family, the carpentry business and familiar territory to carry out his mission. For Jesus, to be faithful, meant saying goodbye to the comforts of home and venturing out to new lands.

Simon and Andrew "left their nets," and followed Jesus. They literally walked off their jobs. They had already cast their nets into the sea when Jesus called them.

They didn’t say, "Wait, until we haul in our catch." They dropped everything and left.

It couldn’t have easy for them to walk away from their security. Fishing was their occupation. Fishing put bread on their tables. Fishing was what they knew.

For reasons beyond our understanding they made faith a higher priority than catching fish. But, what made them disciples was their willingness to follow and become something other than fishermen.

How did it happen that these four men made such a radical change in their vocations--from being fishermen to being disciples, and then apostles? And what can we learn from them? ///

First of all, of course, they had an encounter with Jesus. They didn’t attend a seminar on how to find a better job, though seminars like that can be helpful.

They didn’t read, What Color is Your Parachute? No, they encountered Jesus, and it changed their lives and even changed their vocations.

You know, I hope that our church is a place where people encounter Jesus. I don’t want us to be just another social organization, club, or fraternity.

These all have their place in society, but the church should be something different. This should be a place where people meet God.

Some of you may be familiar with a man named John Wimber. Wimber was an extraordinary church leader who influenced many people in their faith walk.  (I think this is another “true” story).

When Wimber was first introduced to the Christian faith, he became a voracious Bible reader. The Scriptures excited him.

However, after weeks of reading about life-transforming miracles in the Bible and attending boring church services, John became frustrated. He expected great things to happen, but nothing ever did.

Finally he asked one of the lay leaders at his church, “When do we get to do the stuff?”

“What stuff?” asked the leader.

“You know,” Wimber said, “the stuff in the Bible. You know, multiplying loaves and fishes, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, raising people from the dead, and giving the blind sight. That sort of stuff!”

“Oh,” said the lay leader. “We don’t do that in this church. I want you to understand, though, that we believe those things and we pray about those things, but we really don’t do those things.”

“You don’t? Well what do you do?” asked John.

“What we did this morning,” replied the man. Ouch! 

In frustration, John responded: “For that I gave up drugs?” 

We may laugh at that – but why do we do the things that we do/or don’t do?

The testimony of the New Testament, the witness to the life and ministry of Jesus and the early church--this is not dead history. This is a picture of what God can do in individual lives.

God is here. God is waiting to come into our lives and to make us what God created us to be.

We should come here each week expecting a miracle, expecting that God can do great things through our lives. These first disciples had an encounter with Jesus.  ///

In the second place, they responded to Christ’s call. And they did so immediately. They didn’t procrastinate. They didn’t make excuses. Christ said, “Follow me,” and they did just that. Very few people actually make that kind of commitment.

A couple of years ago, President Bush hosted the 64th annual National Prayer Breakfast. This is a bi-partisan event that draws hundreds of politicians, clergy, rabbi, clerics, and other guests each year to the White House.

The speaker that day was Bono, lead singer of the group U2. Here is some of what Bono had to say:

“A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it . . . I have a family, please look after them . . . I have this crazy idea . . .

“And this wise man said: ‘STOP.’ He said, ‘Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing--because it’s already blessed.’”

Get involved in what God is doing. What a radical idea. Don’t spend so much time asking God to bless what you are doing. Rather, ask God to show you what God is doing, and join in.

Bono believes God is calling him to be an advocate for the poor. He said to the National Prayer Breakfast, “Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing. And that is what He’s calling us to do.”

All Christians should be committed to helping the poor, but it may not be your chief emphasis. There are people in the medical field who feel called of God to help in the healing of bodies.

Some in teaching believe their calling from God is to help grow little boys and girls’ minds. A plumber can be a Christian plumber, doing honest, helpful work and sharing a positive Christian witness to everyone he serves.

What specifically is God calling you to do? Perhaps God is calling you to spend more time in study and prayer or to make Sunday School attendance a regular thing -- or TEACH Sunday School or become involved in Presbyterian Women (my wife made me put that in!) or participate in the Men’s Group.

Maybe Jesus is calling you to give more time to helping others, to give blood, to volunteer for some area of service, to pick up trash, or to visit a sick or lonely neighbor.

Maybe God is calling you to make your relationship with His Son a priority: maybe to attend church more regularly.

The point is, God is calling each of us in our own way to God’s reconciling work in the world.  ///

One final thing: in answering Christ’s call these disciples chose being real as opposed to being respectable. Let me explain what I mean.

Some of you will remember when Andrew Young was one of our most visible African-American leaders. He is a former congressman, former ambassador to the United Nations and former mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. He is also an ordained minister.

One day Andrew Young’s daughter came home from college. She said to him, “Daddy, I heard a missionary talking about ministry in Uganda, and I’ve done a lot of praying about this, and I think God wants me to take a year and go to Uganda as a missionary.”

“Well, honey,” her father replied, “You know that’s all well and good, but there’s a lot of poor people right here in Atlanta that need you.”

She said, “Daddy, I know that, but I really believe that God is calling me to Uganda.”

“Honey, it’s dangerous over there in Uganda,” Andrew Young pleaded, “you could get hurt.”

“I know that Daddy,” she said, “but I could also get hurt right here.”

He said, “But honey you could be killed there.”

“Daddy, I could be killed at any time, anywhere. I really believe that God is calling me to go to Uganda.”

Andrew Young thought and prayed about it, and finally he gave her his blessing.

“When my daughter walked onto that airplane,” he said later, “I realized that in baptizing her and raising her, what I said I wanted most for her was that she would become a respectable Christian. But I wasn’t prepared for her to become a real one!”

Do you hear what Andrew Young is saying? There is a difference between being a respectable Christian and a real one.

Pollster George Gallup calls it the difference between being a “believing” church member and a “belonging” church member.

Anybody can belong to a church. That’s different from believing in God’s purpose in the world and seeking to be a part of achieving that purpose.

So, let me ask you this question: Are you a believer, or simply a belonger? That’s an important question, isn’t it? Here’s another one: Are you satisfied with being a respectable Christian or are you a real one?

I can’t answer those two questions for you. Only you, and God, know the answers.

But I do know about Peter and Andrew and James and John. Peter became the leader of the early church. Andrew is often praised as the first evangelist. John, one of the Sons of Thunder, becomes John the beloved disciple, writing Revelation on the isle of Patmos.

John’s brother James is less prominent in the Biblical record. According to Acts, however, James was beheaded for his faith by Herod Agrippa. This is the only biblical account of one of Jesus’ twelve apostles being martyred for his activities.