The People Jesus Chooses--January 27, 2026

The People Jesus Chooses--January 27, 2026

As [Jesus] walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-22)

You can tell a great deal about a person by the people they choose.

Whether it's the sort of people you pick to be your closest and most trusted friends, the profiles of the prospective employees you select to work with you, the character of the person you marry, or the individuals appointed to specific offices in the government, the kinds of people who get tapped in each of those situations reveals something about the person doing the tapping. When your favorite team spends all their money on acquiring the talents of a single extraordinary player, it sends the message that they are pinning all their hopes on one person to carry the franchise and generate ticket sales rather than building a team.  If the newly-elected governor gets rid of long-time civil servants in important roles and replaces them with campaign donors, you suspect they are more interested in repaying cronies or getting favors than with good governance.  Or when the new company CEO who promised to hire the best and the brightest instead only seems to hire or promote their own family members and friends, you can't avoid the feeling of nepotism. 

Maybe even deeper, the kind of people who are chosen sends a message about how the chooser sees the world or their purpose in it.  In the old days, if the king's council of advisors only had generals and military commanders in it, you could tell he was preparing for war. If the king was primarily appointing merchants, moneylenders, and money managers, you could infer he saw the world more in economic terms of wealth and poverty.  And if you had a king who surrounded himself with artists, poets, and philosophers, well, it would send a different message still. We might debate what precise mix of culture, coin, and combat is the ideal balance, but the point stands--the people you choose to share in your work reveal something about what you believe your work really is.

On that count, I think Jesus is no different. There is purpose and intention to all of Jesus' choices--even when those choices surprise us or seem foolish in the eyes of conventional wisdom.  In other words, when Jesus calls the likes of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, as many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, he is saying something about the kind of community he intends to build.  The twist, of course, is that Jesus doesn't choose anybody because of their skill, their smarts, their strength, or their savoir-faire. The first disciples aren't experts on the market or military tacticians. They are neither pious priests nor cunning conquerors. There's reason to believe they couldn't even read. The reason Jesus chooses them is precisely their ordinariness, which includes their frequent fear, regular doubts, and more often than not, their astonishing ability to miss the point. This is how Jesus begins his movement--intentionally.

Why would Jesus do something like this, when he conceivably could have only admitted the best and the brightest, the rich and the famous, or the ones who looked like "winners"? I'm convinced this is the way Jesus makes it clear that God's Reign is for anybodies and Jesus' everybodies. Look at these grubby fishermen, who probably smell like seaweed and sweat as Jesus calls to them--these are the first-round draft picks?  The conclusion is obvious: Jesus' community is not an exclusive country club for the well-heeled or a boot camp for an angry army of the Lord. It's a found family of outcasts and ordinaries, of sinners and screw-ups and people just struggling to get by. We do not audition to prove our worthiness to get in, and we do not have to worry about messing up so bad we get kicked out. What makes us belong is that Jesus has called us--and that is enough.

And to push this just a bit further, then, I'm convinced that these first disciples whom Jesus calls are also a statement of what Jesus is not about.  None of these guys have political power; none of them are being recruited to form a brute squad to dominate people in Jesus' name. Jesus isn't looking for wealth, for smarts, or for social standing, and he's not raising up his own private army to fight off the empire or take back his country in the name of God. None of those are Jesus' intention. Instead, the choice of ordinary anybodies like Peter, Andrew, James, and John signals the beginning of a movement that includes all kinds of people, just as we are. And Jesus' clever pun about making these guys into "fishers of people" simply points to his intention to reach even more people through them.  Jesus is about building a community where all kinds of people are welcomed, where all kinds of people receive love from God and from other people, and where all kinds of people are formed and shaped to live the Jesus way of life by doing it together with others who are learning along with them.  That's how Jesus changes the world. That's what he's showing us about himself by the people he first chooses: they remind us that there is a place for you and me in Jesus' community, too.

Someone you meet this week is waiting to hear that kind of welcome--just as they are, with whatever baggage and blessings they bring to the table.

You can be one more voice through whom Jesus' love reaches... everybody else around.

Lord Jesus, you have drawn us to yourself like the first disciples you called by the sea. Use us to draw others into your community and into God's Reign.