“FISHERS” OF MEN
My wife was sharing with me what she was learning from the 9-month long Ignatian Spiritual Exercises the other day. Every day she is spending 45 minutes to an hour meditating different portions of Scripture based on certain designated themes. Below is one of the gems she shared with me, sprinkled with a bit of my own musing and embellishment. It is one of those realization of how come I never thought of it this way before. Or I can blame it on someone else by saying how come nobody told me about this before. J Maybe you already heard or thought of this before . . .
The context is Jesus’ calling His first disciples. Both Matthew and Mark’s gospels focus on Simon and Andrew who were fishermen, and Jesus called them to follow Him. “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” (Mark 1:17, ESV) Subsequently, Jesus called James and John, who were also fishermen, the sons of Zebedee, to follow Him. One can assume that Jesus’ call to make them become fishers of men (all men and women in Greek) would have applied to James and John as well. Luke’s version is consistent even though the wording is slightly different as Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” (Luke 5:2, ESV)
Notice that Jesus’ call to the disciples to become fishers of men only applied to those who were fishermen. Jesus does not repeat the same call to others who were not fishermen. Matthew, who is a tax-collector, for example, is not given the “same” calling to become a fisher of men. We do not know for certain what other disciples’ vocations were. Thomas and Nathaniel (Bartholomew) may have also worked as fishermen before they followed Jesus, for they were all together and fishing when Jesus appeared to them in John 21:2-8. But even then, we do not know for sure. They might have gone fishing simply because they grew up near the sea and everyone knew how to fish.
When I first became a believer, I was told that I was to become a fisher of men. I was to win lost souls for Jesus, to become an evangelist. It did not matter whether evangelism was my gift. That was what the disciples were called to do. I was no exception. During my college years, a group of zealous students used to go to college campuses to engage in cold turkey evangelism. We were “armed” with airtight Scripture verses to convince people to give their lives to Jesus, so we can fulfill our calling as fishers of men.
We do not know how Jesus called those disciples whose vocation was not fishing. I do not suppose Jesus needed to tell other disciples who were not fishermen to become fishers of men. Instead, I imagine that Jesus would have called them to retain and use their earthly vocations to further God’s Kingdom.
When Jesus called the disciples, it was in the everyday mundane context of life and work. Jesus does not come to us when we think we are ready to receive Him. He comes when we are least suspecting. This is both encouraging and frightening at the same time. Sacred meets mundane in the most profound way. As a result, mundane becomes a channel for sacred, effectively blurring the lines between sacred and mundane.
I imagine Jesus calling me to become a voice of freedom for many. I imagine Jesus calling others to become teachers, business owners, artists, writers, engineers, health care professionals, etc. for humanity. I imagine Jesus calling mothers, fathers, grandparents, uncles, aunts, sons, daughters, etc. for the overall good of humanity. I imagine Jesus calling all to become good neighbors for all humanity.
All of us have multiple identities. I am a father, husband, missionary, writer, speaker, etc. Undoubtedly, Jesus is calling me to become a better father, a better husband, and so forth and so on—in all my multiple earthly identities. Jesus’ calling is not a one-time event but a perpetual invitation throughout our entire life to retain and use all our earthly identities to be drenched and redeemed in Kingdom identities as Jesus’ followers.
Additionally, I do believe there is a God-given existential core to who we each are. This core is what makes us us and why we exist and live. In Herbert Alphonso’s book, Discovering Your Personal Vocation, he coins this God-given existential core as “existential ethic.” In describing “existential ethic,” he writes, “in every option with which I am faced, there is a call to unique me.” (Italicized are his) We discover (or have the holy responsibility to discover if I may put it that way) over time what our unique contributions are to the world.
The discovery and “employment” of our unique, unrepeatable, and existential gift to humanity is the life Jesus is inviting us to live out. Alphonso concludes his short book with this sentence, “The personal vocation is precisely a person’s unrepeatably unique way of opening out onto community—opening out onto social reality, social responsibilities, social commitment.” Then he writes that he closes all his teachings on personal vocation with T.S. Eliot’s charming poem, The Naming of Cats. Here it is below.
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—
But all of them sensible everyday names,
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover—
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular name.