The Fisherman Read online

  You may wonder why Jesus did not simply tell us in words who he was and what he was doing. Well, in the days and weeks just prior to his death, he did. Even then, though, we could not hear it. We could not hear what he was saying because we did not want to hear it. Acceptance or rejection of Jesus as God in human form has never been a matter of the evidence. Even at this point in our relationship with him, we had more than enough evidence. No mere man has absolute and instant authority over nature, commands the winds to cease, tells the sea to be still, and calls thousands of fish to cram themselves into a net. No man has the authority to forgive another human being’s sins against God. No man has authority over all sickness, all disease. No man can, by his own act of will, bring the dead back to life. And, of course, it wasn’t just what he did, it was the way in which he did it. He did not pray that God would heal. He did not pray that God would forgive. He did not pray that God would still the storm. He simply did it himself.

  I think that’s what scared me so much that night on the Sea of Galilee. If Jesus had stood up, raised his hands to God, and prayed, “Oh, great heavenly Father, deliver us from this storm!” and his prayer had been followed by that remarkable instant calm, I could have understood that. I could have accepted a prophet whose every prayer is instantly answered. But Jesus called upon no one. He didn’t ask for help—he was the help. He sought no authority outside himself because he needed no authority but himself.

  Nothing has changed, you know. In the end our ability to see Jesus correctly is never a matter of gaining sufficient evidence. The evidence is overwhelming. He has told us who he is with every action, with every miracle, with every word he spoke. But the only voice that has the power to confirm that identity must come ultimately from within ourselves. And that voice will speak only if we are willing to hear it, only when we are ready to listen. There are implications, you see, implications that can strike terror in our hearts, implications that will cause us to stop our ears, to blind our eyes, to put rigid limitations on what we will and will not accept.

  At that point in our pilgrimage Jesus did not tell us who he was because he knew we were not yet ready to hear it, and saying too much would only drive us further away from him in confusion and fear. For now he would let his actions do the speaking.

  We were not the only ones confused about what we were seeing. Even the Prophet John had questions. When he sent his disciples to Jesus, asking, “Are you the expected one, or do we look for someone else?” Jesus’ answer emphasized not his words but his actions. “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have the gospel preached to them. Blessed is he who does not take offense at me.”

  It was a terrible time for me. Though I could never have admitted it then, I wanted my Jesus to remain small. I wanted him to be just a prophet. I wanted him to stay within the boundaries I understood. I didn’t know what to do with a Jesus who kept growing, a Jesus who kept expanding before my eyes. And my confusion would get far worse before it got better.

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  It’s no wonder I was having trouble finding the right answers. For nearly two years I’d been asking all the wrong questions. How can I get this man to stop interfering with my brother and my career? How can I impress this man? How can I use his powers for my own profit? How can I get away from him? How can I continue to cling to my career goals and still follow him? How can I invest my talents and abilities into making him a success?

  As we gently bobbed in the stillness of the silent sea, I finally asked myself the one question that really mattered. Who is this man, anyway? He’s not just a prophet. He’s far more than just a great teacher. He’s certainly not a political leader. But then who is he? The first answer to that question came in a matter of hours from a most unlikely source.

  We spent the rest of the night in the boat on the Sea of Galilee. We were all exhausted, still several miles from shore, with no wind to propel us. I curled up in a corner of the deck and slept. When a gentle breeze returned with the sunrise, we set our sail and completed our journey to the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

  Following the Master’s instructions, we put to shore a short distance from the Gentile fishing village of Gergesa. I think everyone on board wondered what we were doing in this Gentile region, but no one dared ask. It was a rugged, mountainous stretch of coastline, known to me only from the deck of our fishing boat.

  We were still in the process of securing our boat on the beach when we heard the most hideous screaming coming from a cemetery on the hillside behind us. I turned around in time to see a man running among the graves. His long beard and hair were caked with filth and matted from neglect. He was completely naked. As soon as he saw us, he squatted down, scooped up a jagged chunk of rock, and sprang into a crazed run in our direction.

  The sight and sound of that man screaming down the hillside catapulted me back into the fishing boat to find something with which to protect myself. I grabbed an oar and whirled around, ready for the attack.

  But the attack never came.

  Jesus stood silent on the beach, watching the creature racing toward him. He didn’t turn away; he didn’t run. He simply waited and watched. Then, when the attacker was close enough to hear the Master’s words, Jesus spoke: “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

  The naked figure dropped to his knees and screamed out, “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God, do not torment me!”

  He spat out the words as a man would spit out a mouthful of filth. I’d never heard such terror, such rage in a human voice before. Following his short blast, he remained on his knees before the Master, looking more as if he had been forced into the position against his will than as if he had chosen it because of genuine submission.

  I glanced around and discovered I was not the only one who felt more comfortable greeting our guest from the deck of the boat. Eleven other men, several of them also clutching makeshift weapons, huddled around me as we watched the scene in the sand below us.

  Though no one moved for several seconds, there was clearly some sort of intense warfare taking place between Jesus and the figure kneeling in the sand at his feet. The next words Jesus spoke were certainly not what I was expecting.

  He reached down, lifted the man’s face, and said, “What is your name?”

  The man responded, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” His lips curled in a twisted smile as he spoke, and his tone communicated an arrogant defiance that sent a chill through my whole body.

  Then their eyes met, and the naked creature once again dropped his face to the sand.

  “Please! Please! We beg of you, don’t send us into the abyss. You know it is not yet our time. Don’t send us away from this land. Over there! That herd of swine. Send us into them. We beg you! You know our time has not yet come.”

  When he mentioned the swine, we all looked where he pointed and saw on the hillside several hundred pigs grazing in the morning sun.

  For several seconds following the creature’s pathetic pleading, no one moved, no one spoke.

  Then Jesus broke the silence. “Go! Leave this man forever. You have my permission to enter the swine.”

  The man let out one last terrified scream, opened his mouth wide, and dug his long nails deep into his naked chest. Then he collapsed into a wretched heap. At the same instant we heard the sound of hundreds of pigs squealing as if they were being slaughtered. Then we watched as the entire herd thundered down the steep hillside, still squealing in terror, and straight into the water not fifty feet away from us. When the last squeal was silenced, we all just stood there frozen. The herdsmen silhouetted on the hillside looked down on the scene in terror, then headed into town as fast as they could run.

  That moment of my life is forever etched into my memory—twelve men armed for battle, standing frozen on the deck of a beached fishing boat, a sea of life
less swine behind them, with one man standing on the beach, and another huddled in a naked heap before him.

  Slowly the crouching figure raised his head and said, “My Lord, please forgive my nakedness.”

  Jesus turned and said, “Andrew! See if we can find soap and some clothing for our friend. And perhaps we can provide him with a brush and razor as well.” The man was big, nearly my size, so I told Andrew to bring the extra change of clothes I always kept on board.

  We spent the next hour assisting him in his transformation. He spent more than half an hour in the water, laughing, talking, scrubbing, and thanking Jesus over and over again. Once he was dressed, we cut his hair and trimmed his beard. Then we invited him to join us for our noonday meal.

  Our celebration feast was cut short, however, by the sudden appearance of a large delegation of local residents marching toward us along the beach. As soon as our guest saw them coming, he sprang to his feet, waving excitedly. He greeted a number of the newcomers by name and kept saying, “Look at me! Look at me! Look at what this man did!”

  They looked all right, but they didn’t look at him. They looked first at the now empty hillside, then at their motionless herd littering the shoreline, and finally at the Master. The apparent leader of the group spoke. “Please, sir, go away. Leave us alone. We don’t know how or why you destroyed our herd. We only know you did. Now please just go away before you do any more damage.”

  Jesus offered them no explanation, no excuse. He certainly was not afraid of them, but neither would he force himself upon them. We gathered our things together in silence and were preparing to push off when our new friend grabbed Jesus and pleaded with him for permission to join us.

  Jesus smiled at him, shook his head, and said, “No, my friend, I need you here. I want you to go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you.”

  As we set sail for home, the man stood on the beach waving and watching us until we were finally out of sight.

  It all happened so fast, I had no time to think about the events of that morning until we were once again on the open sea. Then those words spoken by the demons came back to me. “What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God, do not torment me!”

  Jesus, Son of the Most High God! What did it mean? The demons inside that poor man seemed to know all about Jesus. They knew him, and they feared him. They hated him, argued with him, bargained with him, yet they knew they could not act without his permission. The terror with which they pleaded with Jesus not to send them into the abyss caused me to cringe once again as I recalled it. Twelve hours earlier I had seen Jesus exercise absolute authority over the physical world. Now I saw him accepting without dispute the title “Son of the Most High God,” positioning himself as supreme ruler over the spirit world. He conversed with demons. He held their fate in his hands. He had the power to torment them, to act as their judge and executioner. And his jurisdiction was not limited to the nation of Israel. Even in the Gentile world, he reached out with the same healing, redemptive compassion he showed for the sons of Abraham.

  There I was, in the center of a great drama being played out before my eyes. It was a drama with a cast of one and a script written from the foundation of the world. For reasons I have never fully understood, the Director of All Things honored me with the privilege of watching this drama unfold from center stage. I saw what was happening. I heard the words. I even held some of the props. But everything was backwards. The drama was the true reality, and I was the one playing a part. I was such a child, pretending the lines he spoke made sense to me, pretending I understood the flow and purpose of the plot as it unfolded. Of course Jesus was the Son of the Most High God. Of course he had authority over the Gentile world. Of course he had the right to send demons to the abyss. I even pretended I had a part in the drama. But he and I both knew differently.

  The time would come when I would have a part. The time would come when I would understand. But not now. Now my only obligation was to watch, and to listen, and to seek to understand what manner of man this was.

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  To say that Jesus continued to provide us with evidence of his true identity in the months that followed is a little like saying the ocean contains some water or the sun gives off some light. Every relationship he entered, every attack he encountered, every question he confronted, every word he spoke only served to reaffirm his absolute authority over the world of man. He didn’t have authority; he was authority. He defied all boundaries. He shattered all my preconceptions about the nature of true devotion to God. Prior to his appearance, the calling of the devout Jew was clear: learn the system and keep it faithfully. But such thinking just didn’t work with Jesus. He knew no system. He lived on the basis of his own inner authority, an authority that enabled him to weave in and out of established religious customs, abiding by some while shattering others to pieces. In a subtle yet powerful way, he moved me ever closer to the realization that faithfulness to God and faithfulness to him were one and the same thing.

  So many misconceptions had to be reworked within me. Jesus knew them all, and he knew, too, how to bring them out into the open so that I could see them in the light of himself. My misconception about his supernatural power was a prime example. In our early days together, when I still viewed him as just a great prophet of God, I assumed God was simply giving him the power to perform certain miraculous acts as part of his prophetic ministry. But with each new demonstration of power, I was forced to expand my understanding of the authority God was giving this man until I wrestled with the realization that somehow God had apparently given him dominion over everything.

  But it was that incident in the street, when the woman touched Jesus without him knowing it, that forced me to see the flaw in my reasoning. Jesus was in Capernaum, teaching once again by the Sea of Galilee, when a man suddenly blasted through the packed bodies. He pushed, climbed, and clawed around and over anyone blocking his way until he reached the Master. It was Jairus, one of the officials of our synagogue. In a few short sentences, he told Jesus his daughter was near death and pleaded with him to help.

  Jesus immediately set off with the man, as did the entire multitude around us. We disciples did our best to stay near him, but the mass of humanity packed around us made it almost impossible even to walk. Everyone wanted to be sure they didn’t miss whatever it was the Master was about to do. As we reached the streets of the city, the throng surrounding us literally packed the roadway full of pushing, squirming, sweating human beings.

  Then it happened. In the midst of this absolute chaos, with people squeezed up against one another so close it was difficult even to breathe, Jesus suddenly stopped and asked, “Who touched me?”

  I heard the words, but they made no sense to me. It sounded as if Jesus was complaining. But Jesus didn’t complain. It sounded as if Jesus was irritated. But that couldn’t be. Jesus didn’t get irritated. He didn’t get grumpy. Sometimes he got tired. Sometimes he got angry. But he never got crabby or grouchy or sullen or cross. In fact, the human emotions that flow out of those situations in which we feel as though our rights have been invaded were simply not present within him. And yet now, in the center of this churning crush of human flesh, he suddenly seemed to be concerned because somebody had touched him.

  For a moment we all just stood there, not knowing what to do or say. Jesus apparently was not moving another step until he got an answer to his question. But there were a dozen answers. I had just touched him. Andrew and James on his right had just touched him. Lots of people had just touched him.

  It was an embarrassing situation. Everyone started denying that they’d touched him, even though lots of us were guilty of the offense. We all shoved our way back a step or two to be sure Jesus had plenty of room, but still the Master stood and waited for an answer to his question. I finally tried to smooth things over a bit by pointing out the obvious. “Master, you can see the mul
titudes crowding and pressing in on you, and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it didn’t work very well.

  Then the Master spoke again. “Someone did touch me, because I knew that power had gone out of me.”

  For just a moment no one spoke. Then a woman standing directly behind me pushed her way into the little clearing in front of Jesus, dropped to her knees in front of him, and said, “I’m the one . . . I’m the person who touched you.”

  It was as if there was some sort of private conversation taking place between Jesus and this unknown woman. They alone seemed to understand the words while the rest of us just stood there ignorant and confused.

  Then the woman explained. For more than twelve years she had suffered from what she described as “a flow of blood.” She did not go into further detail, but I have always assumed it must have concerned a severe problem with her menstrual cycle. She was too embarrassed to approach the Master publicly and ask for his help with such a problem, but after watching Jesus heal so many others in the city, she knew he had the power to heal her as well. If she could get close enough to him to touch the fringe of his clothing, she just knew she would be healed. And the instant she touched him, her hope became a reality.

  He reached down to the terrified creature before him, took her hand, and brought her to her feet. He smiled at her and said, “Your faith has made you well; go in peace.”

  Less than an hour later I stood next to the Master and watched as he restored Jairus’s dead child to life. But that restoration, as dramatic and awesome as it was, did not affect me as deeply as Jesus’ brief conversation with that terrified woman in the street.