Most preachers love the psalms and parables. Me, I’ll take the call stories. The stories where Jesus collects followers like I collected baseball cards and comic books. Intentionally: with respect for big names and the common ones alike.

Of course the other stories are sexier.

The enduring parables like The Prodigal Son(s), the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd: all great opportunities to talk about GOD and mercy and forgiveness.

The big season stories, too, are perfect opportunities for preaching love and faith. We just did two favorites in Jesus’s birth and baptism.

And what preacher doesn’t get amped up to deal with all the drama of Holy Week, even if we dread the volume of preaching or the fact that we have to deal with John again. Still, you can’t tell me you can’t think of five different ways to go on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday; each. There really is so much there.

All these are rich with theology or faith or nuance. All have texture or are overpowering. All are deeply interesting. And I have a feeling that to most people, these call stories aren’t interesting like that. They’re kinda…meh.

Here’s why I like the call stories

I’m drawn to those stories in the gospels that aren’t really about Jesus. The stories that include Jesus or have an action in them, but the action doesn’t scream

This is what you should believe, Christian, in the 21st Century!

as if Scripture is some divining rod for divine inspiration. As if it reveals itself so easily.

The call stories seem different somehow. In these stories, we get Jesus calling pairs of disciples. And the stories aren’t identical in the canonical gospels, either. Last week’s lectionary choice from John, has Philip and Nathaneal coming second (immediately after Andrew and Simon Peter). This week we get Andrew and Simon Peter, then James and John.

Unlike the parables, these stories are quite straight forward, aren’t they? What could possibly make them interesting?

In truth? Nothing. They aren’t interesting. Jesus collects some weirdos for disciples and moves on. What’s interesting for the church, and for the Christian, however, is much more significant.

What the call stories offer

The call stories offer us some interesting parts of faith to wrestle with:

1. Jesus calls some nobodies to be his closest followers. And this is the place we see that they really are nobodies. We forget this by the end, but these guys didn’t start out as hotshots.
2. Jesus calls them in an uninteresting way. He goes to them and gives them his pitch. That’s the sum of it. Want to fish for people? Want to test your luck in the big water? It’s not even a big sell about the after life or promises of redemption. It’s pretty much “let’s go fishing!”
3. Jesus’s pitch is immediately accepted. I don’t know which is more surprising: the simplicity of the pitch or that these guys jump at it. They leave behind their lives for something with absolutely no guarantee of success. They are possibly throwing away everything. And yet there is no stammering and delaying. They jump at the chance.
4. These callings come in pairs. None of these guys comes alone or is expected to do this alone. They come in pairs and soon enough Jesus sends them out in pairs.
5. The disciples are called to not only follow Jesus, but do like Jesus. This is particularly true in Luke’s version, where the twelve become apostles before they know what’s going on, less than a chapter after being called in the first place.

This is the big reason I like the call stories, however. The special, last thing:

This is the only place that makes sense for Christians to see themselves as straight-up in the story. We can claim that we are so called, that we have been stopped from our mundane existence and invited into something bigger. The rest of Scripture is ultimately filtered through our personal experience or through the haze of confusion around what Jesus really meant. In the call stories, it makes sense in a more direct way. 

• We’re called to follow Jesus.
• We’re called to do like Jesus.
• And we’re asked to come fish for people.

This isn’t about who is Jesus in the story and who is the disciple. This isn’t about interpreting what Jesus really believes about a current issue of national importance. It is the place in which the mission makes sense. We can then allow ourselves to leave the text behind and see it happening here with us and with each other.

Here is what we’ll do. Here is where we’re going. Follow me.

And the disciples in the story do.

But do we?