The God Who Notices – The call of the first disciples

 Preached on-line and in church on 30 Aug 2020

Opening Prayer

Father, may these spoken words be faithful to the written word and lead us to the living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord

(from https://ramtopsrac.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/what-do-you-pray-aloud-before-a-sermon/)

What really happened?

The reading that John read for us gives very little sense of what really happened. If we look at the other Gospels – Mark, Luke, John, we begin to see a little more detail, but it’s still only a sketchy outline. In Luke there is a miraculous catch of fish which persuades the disciples to follow Jesus, in John, they spend a day with him. It’s not difficult to put all these things together, but when we do, we still get only a slightly bigger, better understanding. Much more must have happened than is recorded for us.

There are some clues as to why the disciples followed Jesus, after all the gospels were written so that their readers would follow Jesus, so we would expect that. There really isn’t anything that answers the question we are looking at this morning – Why did Jesus pick these particular people?

Why Peter, James & John

What was it about Peter, James and John that made Jesus think – they’re the ones, they will be great at leading the church?

Was it their willingness?

- After what they had seen and done, they were certainly more than happy to follow Jesus

Was it their holiness?

- There is no evidence that they were particularly holy, indeed some of the others that Jesus called were positively and clearly sinful.

Perhaps it was their sinfulness, then?

- Maybe Jesus wanted to demonstrate the amazing change his followers undergo? This is unlikely, everyone is a sinner, and everyone changes when they come to Jesus. It wouldn’t be a factor that made them special.

Perhaps it was their theological prowess?

- I doubt it, common fishermen would not have studied theology

Well, perhaps they were just his mates as he grew up?

- When Jesus started His ministry he was around 30 years old, most commentators believe the disciples were in their teens, certainly no older than very early twenties when they were called. So that doesn’t really work either.

What do we see in people?

Perhaps we can get a better idea of what Jesus noticed in them, if we think about what we notice in people. Catherine said near the end of her sermon last week that we must be the watchers.

CYFA group

I have led CYFA, Pathfinders and Explorers in my time at this church, sometime I have spotted things in the youngsters, probably before they see it themselves. There was one CYFA meeting where we were looking at the strategies of Satan. Everything went wrong that night. The cassette player ate the tape I wanted to play. A curtain rail fell off the wall – completely of its own accord. We didn’t need to do the study, we were living it. At some point I said something like “Satan always overplays his hand”, and I watched as one of the young people suddenly understood something. They went on to work for Youth for Christ for many years. In that moment I had seen a disciple in the making. Those qualities that make a good youth worker – a dedication, a longing for the things of God and a longing for the lost to know Jesus were beginning to be visible. We would say that the Holy Spirit was at work – which means that God had ALREADY noticed.

CCS Group

But it isn’t just the young that God notices. A few years ago, I helped lead a CCS group. If you’ve attended the Course in Christian Studies, I believe that God has already noticed something in you and wants to grow it. There was one person who was already retired, who had not studied since leaving school, at a much younger age than they do now. Their work was hard to read and difficult to mark, but as the course went on, it got easier to read and a pleasure to mark. They went on to become a pastoral assistant. Jesus had noticed something in them, and the Holy Spirit brought it out into the open.

God is watching

God is watching all of us all the time, and noticing those little changes – do you spend longer reading scripture and praying that you used to? Is your language more guarded and more positive than it was? Are you becoming more generous, not just with your property, but in your spirit? Do you care more about the life of the church and the life of the lost than you once did?

All these little changes God sees and encourages. We too, as God’s agents in this place, must look, see, and encourage those around us. I think Christ Church is good at that. Look back and count the number of people who have gone into some sort of ministry from this place – there are a few vicars, even one who has become a bishop.

It’s not just vicars, though, and it's not just ministries that the diocese licences that count. Everyone who goes and does something positive in God’s name has been noticed and called to do what they do.

Conclusion

Jesus noticed something in the disciples He called – they were just ordinary fishermen, but whatever it was Jesus saw, it meant he called them away from that life towards something different. They ended up founding the church, because they continued to follow Jesus.

We can never know, when we see something in someone, whether it will go anywhere. But we should keep encouraging anyone who we see has any sort of interest in Jesus, the church or even just theology, because we can’t see where it might lead - BUT GOD CAN.

Amen.