A few short years ago, if you came to Big Dog coffee on the South Side, you’d be served up one of the most overeducated lattes you’ve probably ever had.
I wasn’t all that great with the latte art, sometimes I could do an acceptable leaf or heart, but I’d be happy to serve you a tasty latte with a side of theopoetics, philosophical discourse, or narrative theology. With a bachelor’s degree in English literature, three masters degrees and a slew of years teaching college classes and preaching in pulpits, I was the most overeducated barista in the store. (Although actually, I hear there are a lot of us out there in the coffee world these days.)
Some days would be so discouraging. All those papers written, all those years of study and sacrifice, all those books that still line my walls, and here I was, making eight dollars an hour slinging coffee and toasting bagels for college kids and retirees and millennials with their fancy dogs and their fancy purses. Tears would come to my eyes as I mopped the floors, cleaned the toilets. I’d won all these academic awards, gotten all these scholarships, learned how to parse Hebrew and Greek verbs, written hundreds of thesis statements, all for what? To scrape gum off the bottom of tables and tell the fancy millennials with their fancy purses that they can’t stay inside the store with their fancy dogs.
Was I just wasting my time?
In some ways, yes. I was biding my time, giving myself a little bit more time to heal from a destructive year and a mental breakdown. I was just treading water, waiting for the storm to pass, waiting to see what I was supposed to do next.
But in other ways, I was doing exactly what Jesus was calling me to do. I was supposed to offer myself others, to struggle, to serve the coffee drinks with a smile and a story. I was overqualified, sure. But I had so much yet to learn. I was just an ordinary person with an ordinary job. My degrees and qualifications were worthless.
I was back at square one, starting over, learning how to froth milk to just the right temperature and to make change quickly and to work with a partner when the line went out the door and down the street. The kids I worked with called me “mom,” and I loved and supported them the best I could — with my ordinary skills and my now-ordinary life. I learned the names of our regulars, memorized cappuccino and latte recipes, made smoothies and took orders from a sleep-deprived Bulgarian boss and his giant German Shepherds. I spent some time being ordinary. Doing what I had to do.
But that’s just whom Jesus chooses in our reading today. Jesus chooses ordinary men. Not the super poor and destitute, not the rich or powerful. Not the educated. They’re just fishermen. Making a living the best they know how, with skills passed down to them from their fathers, working by the sweat of their brow and the burn of their muscles.
They have all the qualifications needed to be fishermen, but that’s about it. They can repair nets and navigate the seas, they can row a boat, they can catch some fish and provide just enough sustenance to support themselves and their families.
And they’re good at what they do. They can move quickly; they know the right times and places to find the fish; they can read the weather and the stars and the position of the sun. But they’re not preachers or rabbis. They’re not cut out to proselytize — they have no marketing degrees, no fancy computer graphics skills, no diplomas in systematic theology. There’s no reason for Jesus to be attracted to these guys in particular, no reason at all. In fact, they’ll hurt and betray and disappoint and neglect and run away and hide from Jesus before it’s all over. They’re your everyday John Does, doing everyday things, trying to make an everyday life out of this everyday, mundane, world.
And for all they know, Jesus himself is just an ordinary guy. He hasn’t done anything remarkable, not yet in the Gospel of Matthew at least. In Matthew, we get Jesus’ birth, and then we fast forward to his baptism, where some people, maybe? hear the voice of God, then he’s kicked out into the desert where he’s alone and then Jesus hears of John’s arrest, so Jesus withdraws to the desert again, alone, again, and then moves to Galilee, to the big metropolis of Capernum.
He’s a loner. A wanderer. That’s it. That’s all we get of Jesus so far. There have been no miracles, no healings, no profound, awe-inspiring teachings. We’ve gotten one pronouncement that Jesus is God’s son at Jesus’ baptism, but there’s no clue that Peter, Andrew, James and John are there to hear it.
From their perspective, Jesus is just a man. A man, walking along the beach. These fishermen have no compelling reason to drop everything and follow him, except that that’s exactly what they do. There’s no compelling reason. There’s just a compelling man.
Now if I were these guys, I’d want to ask all the questions. Jesus says, “Follow me,” and I want to know “Where are we going? How long will it take to get there? What are we going to do? Why are we doing it? And who the heck are you, anyway?” These are logical questions that the disciples simply don’t ask. I mean, Jesus could be the creepy guy in the white van, tempting them to come inside and go for a ride and eat his candy for all they know, and they don’t say a word.
They simply drop everything, including their fishing expertise, including the things they’ve worked all their lives for, including their friends and their families and their way of life, including their reason and logic and sense of the practical. They drop their resumes and their promotions and their letters of recommendation. They drop it all, just to follow Jesus.
What is it about Jesus that makes these guys drop everything, every single aspect of their lives - their livelihoods, their families, their security, their homes, everything. They give it all up for this stranger who simply asks them to “Follow me.” Literally, Jesus tells them to “Come behind me.” To “Do what I do. Act like I act. Learn from me, and then proceed likewise.”
Jesus seeks them out and then tells them to do what he does, to seek more people who don’t have the qualifications or the degrees or the accolades but who will follow, simply because they are seeking. Jesus is saying: “You’ve been seeking fish, now go and seek people just as I have sought you.”
Jesus seeks them out. They don’t apply. They don’t gather up their transcripts and pay the application fee and write the personal essay. They don’t seek out their Rabbi and beg for him to take them under his wing. No. These guys were going about their business, doing their business the best way they knew how, and Jesus comes to them. Jesus is the one with the application in his hand, saying come to me, trust me, I have something you want and need.
These disciples give up everything in order to gain something. Maybe to gain everything.
But they’re going to screw it up.
They’re going to doubt and betray and neglect and leave Jesus behind.
Jesus knows there’s no guarantee on these guys. He doesn’t check their references or read their resumes. He takes a chance on them. Again, this isn’t something these guys have applied for; rather, this is something that has pursued them. It’s a high calling. The highest of callings. One we can’t be prepared for. And one that we will most certainly fail. It’s a high calling of an eventual failure.
But, still, “Follow me,” Jesus says, “even though I know you’ll fail.”
They drop it all and follow Jesus, and it all goes great for awhile. They take Jesus’ teachings to heart and they’ll watch him do miracles and heal lepers and eat with prostitutes, and then they’ll go out two by two to do the same thing. Peter will get a few answers right and will call Jesus “The Christ.” But then he’ll fall asleep. And he’ll attack a soldier and deny Jesus three times. They will all end up doubting and betraying and leaving Jesus behind, scattering to the winds. They’ll all fail. And I think Jesus knows this from the very beginning.
Still, he calls them. Still he calls us. Still, he says, “follow me.” “Even though you’ll fail and you’re under qualified and overqualified and you didn’t apply and you flunked AP Chemistry and you don’t know what you’re doing, follow me.”
There’s no reason why Jesus calls these particular guys. There’s no reason why these guys say yes to him. At this point in our narrative, there’s nothing spectacular going on with either the disciples or with Jesus. They’re just a bunch of guys going about their day until they decide to hang out together, until they decide to form a community.
Jesus calls the disciples because he knows that whatever he has to do, he can’t do it alone. He needs his people. And the only qualification we need to be Jesus’ people is that we say yes, that we keep saying yes, at least most of the time. Jesus doesn’t need theological experts or biochemists or brain surgeons or rich stock brokers or even meditating ascetics, although they’re all welcome, too. Jesus just needs us, just as we are, before the degrees and the job experience and the letters of recommendation. After the failures and the brokenness and the restarts at barista jobs. Jesus just needs us to get out of that boat and start swimming. Start swimming towards Jesus.
Now, the remarkable thing is that Jesus uses our language, the language of our own expertise to get us to step away from all those things we think we’re experts at and to follow him. He tells fishermen to fish. Farmers to plant. Shepherds to follow their sheep. He uses metaphors and story to get this English major to drop everything, forget her accolades, and serve up cups of coffee for eight dollars an hour for awhile.
Jesus uses your language, but instead of relying on your expertise, he draws you away from it, places you in someone’s story, tells you to tread water, to swim to him, maybe even to go and make disciples yourself.
Do what you do — keep fishing — except do it for people. Leave everything behind — not to proselytize and threaten, not to hook and hog tie and tackle people into believing in Jesus — but to be in community with them, to follow Jesus with them, to join them in their journeys.
The disciples don’t know what it is about Jesus that makes him so compelling, but they trust their gut and follow him anyway. They join in on the adventure. They don’t get any evidence or proof texts or apologetics of who Jesus is. They just get Jesus, himself, without degrees or a voice from heaven, or even a note from his Calculus teacher.
But once they get him, once they see him and respond to him and follow him, once they join him on the adventure, that’s when they get the proof. That’s when they get the teachings and the healings and the proclamations of the good news of the kingdom of God.
Follow Jesus. Just because.
Follow Jesus just because Jesus has followed you, has tracked you down, and has called out to you, “Come! Follow me!”
There’s no reason. There’s just Christ.
Put down your nets. Put down your degrees and skills and bank accounts. Put it all down. Come fish for people. Make them a meal. Visit them in prison. Offer a cup of cold water. Wash their feet. Make them a latte. Scrub some toilets and mop some floors. Do the thing you love or the thing you have to, but do it because Christ calls you to it. Christ calls you to the thing that you love most, but not for yourself. Do it for people. Do it because there is hunger. Do it because that’s what Jesus did.
Thanks be to God.
