The Fisherman Read online

  Do you see what I mean about little brothers? I kept quizzing Andrew about who said what when, and how he thought Jesus gained all this knowledge about me, but the little runt kept saying he didn’t know and I would just have to go ask Jesus myself. He knew exactly how to bait me. In the end there was nothing to do but to go with him.

  We walked in silence on the way back to where Andrew last saw Jesus. Andrew was silent by temperament, and my own mind was busy creating a mental image of the man I was about to meet. I know what you’re thinking. You have read the accounts of my history with the Master. You know about our first conversation together. You know about the events that would follow. You know about his teaching, his miraculous works, about his death and what happened afterwards. It’s natural for you to assume that I must’ve been filled with excitement in anticipation of meeting this man who would change the history of the human race forever.

  But you are wrong. Andrew and I walked along that day with no premonition of what was to be. Apart from the testimonial from my little brother and the rather strange words of endorsement from the Prophet John, I knew nothing about this Jesus. He had not yet begun his public teaching. He had not performed a public miracle; there was nothing to convince me he was anything other than just the latest in an endless stream of self-appointed messiahs who inflict themselves upon our nation. To be honest, my first meeting with the Master was motivated by nothing more than a mild curiosity and a fervent desire to free my earnest, obviously misguided little brother from his messianic obsessions and get him back to work.

  In my mind I pictured the man I was about to meet. I was certain I knew his type. There would be lots of charisma, lots of smiles and heartiness, great eye contact, and very likely a warm embrace for each and every one of his devoted followers. I was grudgingly forced to admit to the positive impact of his first contact with my little brother, but this claim to supernatural knowledge about me sounded more like some sort of trick than divine revelation.

  The greatest events in my life have always taken me by surprise. They have been thrust upon me, unannounced and unanticipated. That initial meeting with the Master was such an event.

  My first sight of him shattered my preconceived concept of the man I came to meet. There were no throngs of people around him, no thousands kneeling in adoration, no urgent multitudes seeking his wisdom and guidance. There was certainly no halo hovering over his head, no Shekinah glory, no radiant glow about him. Nor was there even a hint of that hideous charismatic facade I detest in so many of the self-styled messiahs parading about the country in recent years.

  He was alone when we arrived, sitting on a rock, apparently enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. I remember having the distinct impression he knew we were coming and had been waiting for us. He greeted Andrew and told him it was good to see him again. Then he looked at me. At first he didn’t say a word. He just smiled. To my credit, I had one thing right—his eye contact was remarkable. But even that was not as I had anticipated. When he looked at me, I suddenly felt as if I had known this man my whole life. No, that’s not it. What I really felt was that he had known me my whole life. He knew me, and he liked me, and he placed a high value on my friendship. The first words I heard him speak seemed to confirm what I was feeling. “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Peter.”

  I suddenly understood what Andrew had been trying to tell me. I don’t know how he knew my name or the name of our father. He just knew. And it seemed right that he knew. And here is the amazing thing: His supernatural knowledge didn’t make him seem supernatural! I have thought much about this since those days when he was here.

  I know words will fail me in my attempt to share this, but I must try. You see, it was impossible to meet Jesus without being confronted with his tremendous spiritual power and knowledge. He possessed an authority that was rooted not in any position he held but simply in who he was. But the amazing thing is that those qualities were all contained within his obvious humanity in such a way that, though you could never deny his power and authority, those qualities never caused you to draw away from him in fear or awe. He was truly the most approachable man a person could ever meet.

  It wasn’t as though a supernatural being had squeezed himself into human skin, like you might expect if you met an angel. At the end of the day, you never anticipated catching a glimpse of him heaving a sigh of relief as he yanked off his cloak and finally stretched out a massive pair of wings crammed under his clothing. He was obviously a man. But he was a man who somehow possessed incredible insight, and power, and authority, and you kept asking yourself how someone who was just a man could possess such qualities.

  I think his approachability must have had something to do with the way in which he never used his supernatural abilities for personal gain. He never had an angle or an ulterior motive. He never used another human being. It was something none of us had ever seen before. We all knew men and women who held positions of authority, and we knew, too, the way that authority corrupted those who possessed it. But to be in the presence of a person who possessed absolute authority, yet who exercised that authority with the absolute absence of corruption, did not fit with anything we had ever experienced. It changed all the rules.

  Those first twelve words the Master spoke to me were perhaps the most important words I ever heard him speak. I came with my mind filled with questions, with suspicions, with a determination to get some explanations. I came to do battle. Then, in a single sentence, before I even opened my mouth, Jesus told me everything I needed to know. He told me he knew me. He told me he knew my past. And, most amazing of all, he knew my future! “You shall be called Peter”—the Rock!

  Now where did that come from? I didn’t know, but I liked it. I liked the name, of course. Who wouldn’t? The Rock! It had a great ring to it. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it myself. But there was something I liked even better—I liked the thought that my future was somehow tied up with this man.

  I drew all the wrong conclusions, of course. I assumed he recognized my obvious natural leadership skills, my exceptional physical strength, and my determination of will, and he knew he needed a man like me beside him. If he would have told me the whole truth that day, there is no way I could have handled it. If he would have filled in the blanks between who I was then and who I would one day become, I would have bolted in terror. Clearly he appeared to be selecting me and calling me to himself but not for the reasons or the role I assumed. How could I have understood that day the Master’s plan to use me as the greatest illustration the world would ever have of the inability of any human being to live the life of the Spirit through the power of the flesh?

  3

  “So what do you think, Simon?”

  Andrew broke the silence on the walk home. What did I think? I thought I was more confused and more excited and more terrified than ever before in my life.

  I wonder if you know what it’s like. The most perplexing, frightening, exhilarating hope had suddenly thrust itself into my life and sliced me in half. It felt horrible and wonderful all at the same time.

  My rational mind was telling me this man, this Jesus, was dangerous. I wasn’t sure how, but I felt as if he threatened all my plans for the future. I knew where I wanted to go with my life and how I was going to get there. A little luck, a lot of hard work and determination, and those plans would become a reality.

  But now, suddenly, there was this man. And it wasn’t just that he was an irritating distraction to my little brother. This was no longer about Andrew. It was about me. I knew that his prediction that I would one day be called Peter had nothing to do with fishing. It had everything to do with him. If I wanted the name and all that went with it, whatever that was, I had to go through him to get it. No, I didn’t have to go through him, I had to go to him, with him. If, on the other hand, I was determined to cling to my own plans for the future, Peter would never exist. And why was I suddenly thinking about “clinging” to my plans, as if I were clutc
hing at a chunk of debris in the middle of the ocean after a violent shipwreck? If I was determined to “follow” my own plans for the future . . . yes, that sounded better.

  So what did I think? I thought the sooner we got home and put “Jesus” behind us, the better. In response to Andrew’s question I just mumbled something about Jesus being a very interesting man. Andrew knew me too well to try to get me to talk when I was brooding. We walked the rest of the way home in silence.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. Ruth and I talked for several hours after I got home. She could always get me to talk when no one else could. I told her about the name discussion and tried to explain why it was so unsettling to me, but it must have sounded foolish when I put it into words. Mostly she just listened. It helped me to try to talk through it, but when we went to bed, I just kept churning things over and over again. I felt as though I was being asked to make some huge decision, yet I had no idea what the decision was. Should I just trot along after this man, listening to him talk for the rest of my life? I had a family, a career, a future. He was asking me to make no decisions. He was asking nothing from me. And yet . . .

  Early the next morning Andrew, James, John, and I met at our boats. James and John were full of questions about our absence the day before. We gave them a brief account of our interview with Jesus, but I chose not to go into detail with all my confused introspection. Besides, having already missed one day of fishing, there was no way I wanted to miss another. The fishing went well, but Andrew and I didn’t talk much. For once in my life I didn’t know what to say.

  Have you ever longed for something and not known you were longing for it until after it happened? Have you ever had a hope sitting in your mind just out of sight, a hope you didn’t dare put into words for fear it would sound ridiculous once you brought it out in the open?

  Two days after my first meeting with the Master, the four of us were once again at our boats early in the morning, preparing to push out from the shore. I was standing on the beach, ready to put my shoulder to the front of the boat, when I glanced down the shoreline and saw three men walking our way. The sight of the man in the middle suddenly brought my hidden hope to consciousness. It was Jesus. I did not realize until that moment how much I wanted to see him again.

  He was walking with two of Andrew’s friends, Philip and a man named Nathanael, another fervent follower of the Prophet John. When they reached us, Jesus greeted Andrew and myself with a nod and a smile, then turned to James and John. I immediately began to babble some sort of introduction, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized they were unnecessary. He knew them, just as he had known me.

  “I know you’re just heading out to fish, but the three of us are on our way to a wedding in Cana, and I’d love to have the four of you join us if you’d like to.”

  It was the first of many invitations extended to me by the Master during the next few years. And every one of them affected me the same way. On the surface it appeared to be simply a polite, casual, generic invitation to join the group. But inside I felt as if a great honor was being bestowed upon me. It wasn’t the wedding, of course. It was him. He wanted me to go with him. No, it was more than that. He was choosing me to go with him. My response to his invitation was immediate. “Hey! That sounds better than fishing. We’d love to go!”

  Three heads instantly pivoted in my direction. Andrew, James, and John all stood there staring at me in amazement. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to go. They simply couldn’t believe Mr. Make-More-Money would so quickly walk away from another day of work. They knew enough not to say anything, but the expressions they exchanged with one another communicated their amused curiosity better than words ever could have done.

  That was the first full day I spent with the Master. Cana was more than a four-hour walk away. I ran home to let Ruth know about our plans, then rejoined the group and we started off.

  During the few years the Master was physically with us, he allowed me to share many incredible events and experiences with him. I heard nearly every one of his public teachings. I witnessed miraculous healings, masses of food created from morsels, direct confrontations between the Master and the violence of nature, raging debates with the established political and religious authorities. Once I even heard the voice of God himself speaking from heaven. But if I could relive just one piece of all that I experienced during those years, I would choose the times we spent traveling together. Those were the times when he wasn’t on display, the times when we were free from the crowds clawing to get closer. Those were the times when we talked, when we joked, when we laughed, and listened, and learned more about the mind and the heart of the Master than all the other times put together.

  If only you could have joined us on one of those walks, you would understand why I began this narrative by telling you it was not the way you think it was. That first trip together was typical. All of us were a little nervous, a little excited, and a lot unsure about what the rules were in our relationship with this man. Andrew and Philip, both earnest disciples of the Prophet John, certainly assumed their times with Jesus would follow a similar pattern. The Prophet John was all business and teaching. He valued each of his disciples, but he seemed to value them most of all as faithful tools through whom he could more effectively disseminate his call for repentance to our nation. It was the message that mattered most with John. In fact, he seemed to prefer being addressed as “the messenger” even more than “the prophet,” calling himself “a voice of one crying in the wilderness.” It was not surprising that Andrew and Philip and, to be honest, the rest of us too, kept waiting for Jesus to blast through with his message as well.

  But we soon learned it didn’t work that way with him. To put it in a single statement, whereas John was most concerned with how his followers related to his message, Jesus was most concerned with how we related to him. But please don’t misunderstand me here. I am not suggesting he wanted us to trot along at his side, hanging on his every word, with expressions of reverent awe and adoration on our faces. Far from it! It was clear from our first day together that what he valued most of all was our friendship. He obviously deeply enjoyed each of us. He really liked us.

  I cannot overstate the importance of those early days we spent with the Master. All too soon the eyes of the entire nation would be turned on him, and our lives would take on a public intensity that would strip us of the casual privacy we shared during those first few weeks. But those weeks were enough for him to establish the ground rules that would shape our relationship with him forever. In a thousand different ways he made it clear no phony religious facade was needed, and none was wanted. The multitudes would always bring their expectations and their assumptions about Jesus and how they should relate to him. Rarely did he try to correct those misconceptions. But with those of us who were close to him, it was different. To us he would give the responsibility of modeling for all the world what it meant for a created being to live in friendship with his Creator. We didn’t understand that at the time, of course. We just knew this man loved us and valued our friendship as no one else had ever done before. The time would come when, just a few hours prior to his death, we would hear him say, “I have called you friends,” and we would understand what he meant. Any form of ritualistic, religious adoration from us would have seemed absurd. Most of all this man became our friend, a friend who knew us fully and loved us completely just the way we were. Certainly his friendship produced profound changes in each of our lives. But they were not changes we attempted to paste on in order to be “good disciples of the great Teacher.” They were changes that gradually infiltrated our lives the more we relaxed in his unconditional love and acceptance.

  I sometimes think the greatest gift the Master ever gave me was his permission to be myself. It was a gift he gave me most of all through all the things I never heard him say. I look back over an endless stream of stupid things I said and did during the months I spent with him. Yet not once did I ever hear him say, “
Peter, you’re such a fool!” or “Peter, you blew it again!” or “Peter, just once would you try thinking before you speak!” or “Peter, I’ve had it with your endless egotistical stupidity—get out of here!” Amazingly, he seemed well content to have me forever blundering along at his side, knowing the only thing that would transform my life was the discovery that even my worst failures would never separate me from my Master’s love.

  4

  Once again I had it all wrong. I began that day believing our journey was a thinly veiled test designed by the Master to find out which of us were really discipleship material and which were not. That belief generated within me an urgent desire to impress this man. After all, impressing people was one of the things I did best. I just knew by the end of the day I could have Jesus thinking to himself, “My, that Simon would certainly make a fine disciple. I need a man like that! I’ll have to see if I can coax him into teaming up with me.”

  It was obvious he liked me. Now I just needed to round out his perspective on me—to introduce him to the greatness of my achievements and my aspirations for the future. I talked about everything. I talked about our boat. I talked about our business venture with James and John. I talked about my grand plans for the future. I talked about anything and everything I thought might impress him. And he listened. He listened as if what I was saying mattered as much to him as it did to me. By the time we arrived in Cana, I was sure he was close to offering me a key position in his plans for the future—a position I might even consider accepting if the terms were right.