A Calling - Reflections on Matthew 4:12-23, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

by John C. Holbert on Saturday, November 15, 2025

         It is on the surface at least quite obvious why the lectionary collectors paired Is.9 and Mt.4; the latter quotes a chunk of the former, apparently as a way of demonstrating why Jesus ended up in Galilee for the bulk of his ministry. Matthew is enamored with “proofs” from the Hebrew Bible that show why certain events or locations happen for Jesus and his followers as they do. Here, Jesus moves from Nazareth to “Capernaum by the sea in the territories of Zebulon and Naphtali” in order that the words of Isaiah 9:1-2 (English; Hebrew 8:23-9:1) might be fulfilled (Mt.4:13). This geographical connection inevitably ties the two texts together. For me, that connection is quite typical for Matthew, but does not serve my interests today. I wish to use the calling of the first four apostles as the springboard for a discussion of the calling of God.

         One day Jesus strolls by the Sea of Galilee and witnesses “Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother” casting a net into the sea. After all, says Matthew, “they were fishermen” (Mt.4:18). Well, duh! So obvious as to be less than interesting, but now the surprise begins. “Come after me,” says Jesus, “and I will make you people fishers. Immediately, they left their nets and followed” (Mt.4:19-20). This scene, familiar as it is, remains puzzling. The two brothers hear a simple, and decidedly peculiar, command, something about becoming “fishers for people,” rather than fishers for fish. I find it quite hilarious that commentator after commentator make some statement like: “the quickness of their response highlight the attractiveness and persuasiveness of Jesus” (so Daniel Harrington in his 1991 volume). He is hardly alone in this judgment. Perhaps the reason Hollywood is ever intent on choosing hunky actors to play Jesus is to “highlight his attractiveness,” actors whose baritonal dulcet tones are likewise wonderfully persuasive. 

         I admit to finding these notions facile and thoroughly beside the point. If Jesus were really so attractive and persuasive, then why does nearly everyone in the story ultimately reject him and flee away? I suggest they follow for no clearly discernable reasons—they just do, as do James and John, too. Jesus’s call is odd, hard to fathom, and results in events that no follower can even begin to imagine. God’s call is like that; it comes, and one either answers or does not, and attractiveness and persuasion have little to do with it. My own call to ministry was just like that, now that I look back on it after nearly 60 years.

         I went to Grinnell College in Iowa in 1964 to study English in preparation for a PhD in that subject in order that I might teach, especially Shakespeare, in one college or another. God had other plans, or perhaps better said, God and I had other ideas deeply entrenched in my spirit. In my sophomore year I met Diana Brown, a freshman from Kansas, and, gratefully, she asked me out for Sadie Hawkins Day, a quaint tradition in those long ago days where the woman asks the man for a date, unlike the usual male procedure back then. I would likely never have rustled up the courage to ask her out, so it is a very good thing she did it first. We went to a concert across the small campus during a night when the temperature fell to -23 degrees, something quite dreadful for a Phoenix-raised boy like me.

         We had many more dates over the next few months, during one of which Diana said, “John, I like you a lot, and I think this is getting rather serious, but I must tell you: I could never marry anyone who was not a Methodist minister.” That was a distinct problem, since not only was I not such a thing; I had rarely to never been inside of a church and hardly knew what a Methodist was, let alone know anything about what a minister would look like. But, as I look back now, the call had come. I decided, if not on the spot, then relatively quickly (not, I think, “immediately”) to think about becoming such a thing as a minister might be. I changed my major from English to Philosophy ( a mistake, as it happened, since English would have been fine as a preparation for what I finally became), and began to think of seminaries, places where ministers are made or formed or prepared or something. I ended up at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, TX, since I thought, mistakenly, that it was out of the snow and cold; it was, for the most part, but not completely as I discovered. 

         I got my MDiv degree (yes, I became a Methodist minister!), as it was called in those days, stayed on at SMU for a PhD, not in English but in Hebrew and Semitic languages. Then after a brief two-year stint as an Associate Pastor in Lake Charles, LA, and a slightly longer three-year time as Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Texas Wesleyan College in Ft.Worth, TX, I returned to Perkins at their invitation and spent the next 33 years teaching on that faculty. And, yes, Diana and I married in 1969, and after 56 years are still happily together—well, happily most of the time as such long marriages tend to be. 

         How could I have ever guessed what my answer to Diana’s plaintive cry about Methodist ministry would lead? To be sure, Diana was wonderfully attractive (still is!), and certainly persuasive in her own special way, but exactly how God was speaking then through her I had not a clue. Perhaps it was the same for those first disciples. They hardly knew what they were getting into, but they went, and the adventures they had, and the pain and sorrow they endured, and the ways their lives were turned completely around was not in their hearts when they agreed to follow the exceedingly strange man near that familiar sea. I would urge each of you to share your own story of calling with every congregation you are privileged to serve. They deserve to know just why you are standing before them, claiming somehow to speak for and with God. Good for you if you are both attractive and persuasive, but if not, and some of us are neither, still you are called by that God who is both attractive and persuasive, and that call will continue to sustain you through the ups and downs of your work. You need to announce that call publicly to keep it fresh and powerful, because you will definitely need it as an anchor for your life and work.