“Follow Me…”
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 2:10-1б; Matthew 4:18-23
It seems strange that Jesus, coming to the shore of the Lake of Galilee, to the village of Bethsaida, immediately addressed a call to fishermen:
"Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!"
and Andrew and his brother Peter, followed by the other two brothers, John and James, followed Jesus humbly.
It looks strange, because those young fishermen did not seem to ask anything, did not ask where Jesus was calling them, where they should go, and why they should follow Him. Adults don't do that; adults would have to find out in advance why they have to leave their homes and their families and go somewhere at someone's call.
The evangelist Mark, describing the calling of those first four disciples of Christ, also tells us about that event in a very short way. The evangelist Luke also describes that calling, but we learn more from Luke. It turns out that Jesus did not just appear, make a short call to the young fishermen, and they followed Him silently, like sheep following a shepherd.
The Apostle Luke tells us that even before this calling, Jesus came to the shore of the Lake of Gennesaret and preached the Gospel (Luke 5:1-11). The evangelist Luke recalls that the people were so crowded that Jesus had to enter a boat belonging to Simon, and from the boat he was already teaching people.
Luke goes on to say that after preaching the Gospel, Jesus said to Simon:
"Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." (Luke 5:4)
There Jesus performed a miracle of catching fish, which terrified Simon Peter and the other experienced fishermen with him. They realized that this could not happen naturally; they realized that Jesus was not just a man, that the invisible power of God was in Him.
That is why
"Simon Peter [when] he saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees, saying, 'Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinful man!'... Terror overcame him and all who were with him." (Luke 5:8-9)
The fishermen realized that Jesus was subject to the forces of nature, that the great grace of God was obviously in Him, and that they could believe that He would be successful in all His work. Therefore, when Jesus called to the fishermen:
"'Follow me, I will make you fishers of men!' [then] "they immediately left their nets and followed him." (Matthew 4:19-20)
But obviously, the evangelist does not tell the whole conversation in detail, but only gives the final summons. The fishermen had already heard from Jesus about His divine mission and the need for disciples who would fulfill the will of God and help Him fulfill this divine mission of saving people. Thus, the miracle of the catching of fish served as a convincing proof for the fishermen that the divinity resides in the human body of Jesus, that Jesus acts not just with human means, but with God's means, and therefore He must be obeyed and listened to.
The evangelists do not provide detailed explanations and conditions, but only through their laconic narrative and the actions of Jesus and the called disciples do we come to this understanding. And at the same time, from the story of Jesus' closest disciple and one of the first four called ones, we understand:
a) that these four young fishermen had met Jesus long before his arrival in Bethsaida. Two of them, John and Andrew, were first disciples of John the Baptist (John 1:35), and they visited Jesus and talked with Him.
b) And the same two disciples received the testimony of John the Baptist that Jesus was the "Son of God." (John 1:34)
Another Galilean, Simon, was also in southern Palestine, and was also where John the Baptist baptized Jesus. There, in the south, when Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus, Jesus said to Simon:
"You will be called Cephas, which means rock" (John 1:42),
and in Greek that name is translated as Petros, in our language - Peter.
Moreover, it was there in the south that Jesus met his fellow Galileans, Philip and Nathanael (John 1:43-50). Thus, when Jesus returned to Galilee and settled in Capernaum, when he went from there to Bethsaida, where the young fishermen lived and worked, he already knew that he would meet like-minded people who wanted to do the will of God.
And those fishermen, although perhaps not quite clearly, understood that Jesus was no ordinary person, that through Him the salvation of people was to be accomplished. The miracle of the catch of fish gave the fishermen convincing proof and removed any doubts they might have had about the divinity of Jesus Christ. That is why the fishermen were so trusting of Jesus' call and followed Him.
They obviously did not know how they would "catch people" for Jesus, but those fishermen, having believed in the divinity of Jesus, having believed in the power of God in Him, having heard His gospel preaching, they were convinced that He was the Shepherd of God, that they should follow Him to do the will of God.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
