I have always had strong images of the calling by Jesus of Peter and Andrew, Jam

es and John. Perhaps it is through having been brought up in a town with a stron
g fishing history. Even though the heyday of the fish industry in St Ives was al
ready well past when I was a child, there were many people around who could reme
mber it and nets were hung out around the harbour to dry and to be repaired on a
regular basis. I heard many stories of the fishing boats and it was always easy
for me to picture Jesus coming along and calling fisherman to follow him. I hav
e often imagined this incident taking place in a St Ives setting.
This week I have looked at this story again, and four points have come out at me
about the call of Jesus in our lives today.
They are:1. Jesus calls us in the midst of our daily lives
2. He wants a response
3. He calls us to move and become
4. He doesn t tell us where we are going
We will look at these four points this morning.
Jesus calls us in the midst of our daily lives
Pilgrimages are back in fashion after several centuries. In medieval times, befo
re the reformation people would travel all over Europe, from church to church, v
isiting relics of saints, or would go to monasteries or to the Holy land, to pla
ces where God had worked in power, hoping to hear something from him, to become
close to him, maybe to be healed. This ceased somewhat after the reformation, bu
t now many people are travelling, looking for encounters with God. They go to ma
ny different places, such as Iona, Lourdes or Lindesfarne that are regarded in s
ome way as being especially holy, more so than ordinary places, hoping that when
they get there, God will speak to them in some way.
In contrast, Peter and Andrew, John and James, were simply going about their dai
ly routines. The daily round of hard, and probably quite monotonous, work. They
were fisherman, a trade that did not have a high status. It was smelly and they
were probably not very clean. But it was in the very midst of that that Christ s
poke to them and called them to be his special friends. Their minds were probabl
y solely on finishing the task in hand, they had not specially prepared themselv
es for a religious or mystical experience of some kind. But it was in the ordina
riness of the every day that Christ called them.
When I was a child in Sunday school we used to sing chorus that went:- we don t nee
d intoxication, transcendental meditation, we don t need to cross the sea or even
cross the street. This chorus seems to have been written in the 1960 s or 70 s when v
arious celebrities and singers were espousing practices such as transcendental m
editation or were travelling to other continents to listen to teachers and gurus
, desperate for some form of mystical, spiritual experience. It emphasises that
we do not have to travel to find Christ, that we do not have to abandon the ordi
nariness of our daily lives, or perform special rituals, but that Christ will co
me to us and speak to us, if we will only allow him to and listen.Just as Peter,
Andrew, James and John were called in their daily work, so can we be, whether w
e work in a shop, a nursery, a factory, a hospital, whether we are retired or un
employed or busy bringing up our children, Christ is the lord of the ordinary as
much as he is lord of the extraordinary. We can listen to him while we are doin
g the housework, while we are doing the shopping, in the Post Office or at work.

He wants a response
Many of you will know that I am totally hopeless when it comes to making decisio
ns. If I have to decide what to do when faced with options, I will normally look
at Rhonda, wanting her to make the decision, or I will say It s up to you or what do
you want to do? I take ages to decide, not knowing what to do for the best, or e
ven what I want to do. I weigh the different options up and come to one conclusi
on, then weigh them up again and come to a different conclusion. All the time pr
ecious time is ticking away.
When Jesus came and called the fisherman, he expected an immediate response, and
he got one. They did not look at each other for the decision, instead they each
decided individually, and quickly, to come with him. They grabbed the fleeting
opportunity that they hand to come around with this special preacher and prophet
. They did not even have the luxury that we do now of knowing exactly who Christ
is, they just knew that he was a special man of God, it had not been revealed t
o them at that time exactly how special he really was. It could have seemed real
ly quite unreasonable of Jesus to ask them to give up everything at the drop of
hat and to come along with him on the spur of the moment. The easiest option for
them was to stay where they were, in the life that they knew and in which they
felt safe. They could have carried on listening to him preaching, but then retur
n to their Fathers boats in the evenings. They could have asked for more time to
decide, or say that they would be his supporters, but that it would be impossibl
e for them to leave the family businesses.
But Christ demanded and expected an instant and immediate response. He did not a
sk them to support him, but to follow him. It is the same with us. He does not w
ant supporters, but followers. The call to us is the same as it always has been:
Follow me!
The required response is to come with him. To leave behind the trappings of our
lives without him and to go along with him. To be his active followers, not his
armchair supporters.
He calls us to move and become
The next thing that strikes me about the call of the fisherman is that the call
to Follow me! required movement, not just intellectual assent. Their response was
to get up and go with him, not just to stay in the boats and admire him and his
teaching. We demonstrated earlier, in the Children s activity, that to follow some
body implies motion; to follow is a verb of motion, not of stasis. When I was a ca
det one of my tutors, Major Kathryn Stirling, made a very true statement, she sa
id
If you go somewhere and people do not come with you, you haven t led them .The conver
se is true if the leader goes somewhere and you haven t gone with him, then you ha
ven t followed him. Following is an active process that requires movement and chan
ge. Following Jesus might mean that we have to move to a different place, it mig
ht just as well mean that we have to stay in the same place, but it will definit
ely mean that we will have to change as people. Our characters will change to be
come more like his, what is important to us will change. I would go as far as to
say that if I am still exactly the same person as I was a year ago, than I have
not followed Jesus. I might say that I am following him, but if I am going nowh
ere and not allowing him to change me, then I am just watching him from a distan
ce, not following him.
He doesn t tell us where we are going

The fourth that I noticed about the call of the fisherman was that Jesus did not
tell them what following him would entail. He did not tell them where they woul
d be going or where they would end up. Would Peter have known as he left his net
that his following of Jesus would end up with him in Rome, the capital of the e
mpire, being crucified upside down, or Andrew that he would be crucified on an X
-shaped cross in Greece. James following ended with him being killed with a sword
in Jerusalem not long after Christ s death and resurrection, John s with dying as a
n old man in Ephesus, many miles away from the Sea of Galilee? Would they have s
uspected that their decision to go with Jesus would be the subject of a sermon i
n Britain nearly two thousand years later? Almost certainly not!
If they had known these things would it have daunted them, have overpowered them
? Probably. Christ only revealed to it to them bit-by-bit. If he had have told t
hem all at once they would probably have felt that they would not be able to cop
e and not come.
They did not question him about what would happen. Instead they trusted him with
their futures. They allowed him to become the Lord and master of what was to co
me in their lives.
It is just the case with us today. When Christ calls us, he does not tell us whe
re following him will lead us, what will happen in the future, give us detailed
career plans. Instead he calls us to follow, to go behind him, to go where he go
es. He is to be in charge, to be the navigator; all we are required to do is to
follow.
Jesus is calling us all individually this morning to follow him, he wants a resp
onse, following him will change you. Just trust him for the future.