Fishers of Men

I see him, a solitary figure, trudging along, until the sight of the lake opened up before him; with no luggage, no money, no prospects, no plans; only those magnificent words (“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears”) still ringing in his ears, and a sense of exaltation at the knowledge that he had, indeed, been chosen to give them a new tremendous reality.

Those who met him along the way must have marvelled to see one who was at once so poor and so uplifted.

In Capernaum he found his first disciples among the fishermen on the lake. They just dropped their nets and followed him. With, perhaps, a touch of dry humour (detectable from time to time in Christ’s sayings, and to me very pleasing) he told them that thenceforth they might expect to catch, not fish, but men. What did they see in him?—someone of their own kind and class, yet inspired; saying to them things, simple and comprehensible in themselves, but such as they had never heard before—things which gave a new meaning and a new glory to their daily lives; a new dimension to life itself. Never man spake like this man. Who, then, could he be but the long awaited Messiah? They recognised him when others, cleverer and more important, were blind.

Some of the disciples, chosen then or later, were of a higher social and intellectual level than the fishermen—for instance, Matthew, who sat at the receipt of custom; but the original twelve, the first Christians, must have presented a nondescript appearance. If Pilate, the Roman Governor, or Herod had happened to catch a glimpse of them, how could he possibly have guessed that they were, indeed, going to turn the world upside down ?

Christ’s life revolved ‘round the Lake of Galilee during the succeeding months of his ministry. Each morning it was this scene which met his eyes; each evening he could watch the sun going down behind these self-same hills. Sometimes he preached from a boat on the lake, or escaped from too demanding crowds into the solitude it offered. Often he went by boat from one side to the other, for convenience, or for security reasons—to slip quickly out of the kingdom of King Herod, that fox, as he called him. I daresay he sometimes bathed in the lake. Certainly, he knew its storms and its calms; the hazards of a fisherman’s life and the varying amounts of his catches…

– Malcolm Muggeridge, Jesus Rediscovered