Call stories have common themes as well as unique ones. At the burning bush, Moses complained that he was not good with words. In a temple vision, the prophet Isaiah agonized over being a man with unclean lips. Jeremiah the prophet lamented: “I am but a child.” At their fishing trade, the first disciples, Andrew among them, heard the call to follow Jesus. They would turn from harvesting fish among the waters to harvesting souls from the world. There is no dialogue recorded in this call story. There is only action. They cast off their nets “at once” for an apprenticeship with a wandering preacher.
There must have been conversation among them that day. Andrew may have recollected that John the Baptist said, of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” Peter may have recalled the time when Jesus told him to cast his nets overboard resulting in an abundant haul of fish and a humbling confession: “Lord, depart from me for I am a sinful man.”
The encounter at the Sea of Galilee that day and the events that followed seem wrapped up in this one dramatic moment when the disciples “immediately” left their nets and their family businesses. From then on, they witnessed the blind receiving their sight and the sick restored to wholeness. They learned that Jesus had the words of eternal life and that he could make all things new. He revealed God to them and gave them the Spirit of God to transform them into everything they were meant to be. Is it any wonder then that they left everything? They left all but gained so much more. Perhaps during this season of Advent, our waiting hearts could look back on the trajectory of our lives. Having left everything, the first disciples, like their Teacher, were free to offer all of themselves to their generation. In communion with the angels and the saints, may we follow in their God-filled footsteps.