The most obvious things about this week’s gospel is that it is a call story and it is also not the call story we usually focus on.
The call story, when Jesus invites some fishermen to fish for people is incredibly familiar to most Christians. And this one isn’t. It’s like the calling of the backups. The three-star prospects rather than the blue chips.
This may be the more compelling part of the story today.
The story is theologically rich and compelling, especially for those who emphasize the naming of the Messiah. And I do believe this remains the most important aspect of this passage.
But given how we engage scripture together in lectionary churches, getting what seems like a weird, second-tier reading right after the baptism, is really quite fascinating.
This is especially so in our relatively Biblical illiterate landscape of people longing to know the story better.
We know Peter, James, and John in the boats from the Synoptics. We may know about Andrew bringing his brother, Peter to Jesus in John. But this call story of two disciples we might confuse for each other, Philip and Nathaneal? This happens the next day?
My own thoughts always revolve around telling the story and resurrecting the context we sacrifice (which I explored a little bit earlier).
The Story in Contrast
In John’s call narrative, there is a wide variety of calling for the disciples. We get two who go from John the Baptist straight to Jesus when John points him out.
We have Andrew who picks Jesus; then he brings Peter to him.
And then Jesus finds Philip who obviously knows Andrew and Peter. And Philip introduces Nathaneal to Jesus.
There’s a kind of messy, kinetic energy to this. We can clearly pull out a succinct theme for it, labeling it “relationships” or “evangelism”. And we can totally talk about the importance of introducing people to Jesus. All of this is here, and yet doesn’t truly capture the vibe of it all.
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to a shoegazy, noise-rock album I used to listen to all the time (Flying Saucer Attack). It’s an album I’ve apparently never before listened to with stereo headphones on.
And as the opening track kicks in, this sound is coming into my right ear, weird and discordant. Then the track’s opening melody starts in my left. And the time signatures don’t match.
My brain is trying to put these two together in a new way. Because I’ve always listened to this album on speakers, I never really heard the two tracks. This time, my brain had to do the work of bringing the sound together.
This itself may be too messy of an image, but this is what I mean by messy. Because messy isn’t slight. It’s complex, intricate, and difficult. It takes skill to make, replicate, or untangle a beautiful mess.
And it is the polar opposite of a charismatic man showing up and saying, how about we fish for people.
Picking Jesus
There are a lot of aspects of John’s gospel that connect with this story, but I suspect the most important element for John’s telling is to show how we are all called to choose to follow Jesus.
Some will treat this as obvious. Others believe we must always describe the divine nature of Jesus; saying our focus is on how Jesus comes to us and saves us.
All of this hits really differently for me at the moment.
When the promise of a savior comes from people looking more like Caesar than Jesus and the individualistic age has all of us relying on none of us, but expecting each of us to do something, a vision of Jesus doing all the work feels far too passive and ill-suited.
Our part is not to wait for Jesus to come to us. He came.
We are to pick him.
The posture itself is active over passive. Declaring rather than waiting. Hoping instead of doubting.
So that when we come to pick Jesus, we are actively choosing a different way. Declaring that Jesus is Lord. And hoping in salvation.
This first act of following is to pick Jesus over comfort.