Discipleship: A Hobbit's Call

Introduction: A Hobbit’s Tale

Our gospel lesson today is a familiar enough story to us. The calling of these two simple fishermen into being Christ’s first disciples. It is a rather inspiring message that Christ uses ordinary folk like you and me to follow him and to proclaim the word into the world.

It’s a good message for us and it feels like a rather encouraging word as Matthew prepares to get to the amazing words of the Sermon on the Mount for the next several chapters.

But I think we can, at times, see it as just a prolog to the rest of the story.

A scene from one of my favorite books, the Lord of the Rings, comes to mind. Gandalf the Grey, a wisened wizard taps on a hobbit’s door. A hobbit, for those who might not know, is the most overlooked of intelligent species in the LOTR world. They keep to themselves spending their time enjoying the comforts of life. A hobbit seems like the least likely of persons to go on a grand excursion.

But part of the hook that J.R.R. Tolkien uses in his book now turned movie was the incredible idea of a hobbit, this half-human sized creature known best for its love of food, comfort, minding its own business and staying away from adventures, being thrown into the greatest adventure ever lived. It is a fantastical world where the ordinary gets cast into the extraordinary.

Today, as we hear Jesus metaphorically tapping on the door of these ordinary fishermen and inviting them into a new way of being.

You may or may not know this, but J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings along with C.S. Lewis, the author of the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, were both life-long Christians. And their incredible writings not only speak to magical worlds of elves, dwarves, hobbits, and other fantastical creatures… but to the light of Christ transforming an otherwise bleak world.

I would wager that Tolkien’s Frodo Baggins, that little hobbit who was called out of the ordinary and into something extraordinary, was inspired by our gospel reading today.

Ordinary Fishermen

Part of what makes these disciples-to-be in our Gospel reading so fascinating to me is that they are indeed the unlikeliest of individuals to go on this adventure with Christ.

They’re not seminary trained Jews who are serving as priests in the Temple to YHWH in Jerusalem.

They’re not wanderers in the wilderness who have forsaken every comfort that life has to offer, like John the Baptist did, in order to prove their humbleness before God.

Heck, they’re not even record as being among those who were getting baptized down at the river Jordan, ready and willing to repent of their old sins and be something new.

Instead, Simon Peter and Andrew followed by James and John are all just doing their every day jobs, minding their own business and staying out of trouble in a very hobbit-like fashion. They’re fishermen, yes… but more importantly they are ordinary.

They’re a couple of young guys, trying to catch some fish to eek out a meager living and survive to the next day’s catch. They’re living paycatch-to-paycatch as they provide for themselves and their family.

They’re not on the fringes looking for adventure, in the waters seeking repentance from their sins, or in the temple seeking enlightenment and answers to prayer. They’re just out there, surviving, living the regular, extraordinarily ordinary life.

Ordinary people suddenly on a quest with the Son of God to see the sins of the world forgiven through death on a cross and later proclaim the Good News to all the world building a new church that would last over 2,000 years.

Unlikely Disciples

But their story of being called by Christ to leave that survival mode of caring for themselves and their families into something new is a story that we might find a bit hard to swallow when we really stop to think about it.

I mean, if you ask yourself what would it take for you to leave life as you know it behind, giving up your schooling, your job, your retirement… putting your entire future on the line or at least on hold for who knows how many years to follow some guy from Garber telling you to leave it all behind and follow him… what would you need to have before you would step off into that adventure?

To just drop your livelihood where you stand and walk away from it, leaving all sense of security behind… it’s hard to imagine doing. But that’s precisely what these guys do.

They do the unbelievable and walk away from their paychecks…

walk away from their security…

walk away from their families even…

and begin their walk with Christ on their way to one day becoming leaders of the early Christian Church.

It is nothing short of a miracle that they accept Christ’s call to step out into the world and take on that journey at Jesus’ side. Now does that mean that they are selfless from there on out and never look back?? No, of course not.

Later on in the Gospel, in Matthew chapter 18 we see James and John, two of these brother fishermen doing what brothers do best and arguing with one another over which one of them is the greater disciple.

Even further on in Matthew chapter 26 we see Peter denying that he even knows Jesus not once but three times after Jesus is arrested and being prepared to go to the cross.

It’s easy for them to slip back into thinking about themselves over and above the calling that Christ had issued to them that day on the beach.

An Unlikely Church

And if we look at the early church, we see the same thing happening even after Christ’s death and resurrection. In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (which we heard today), we hear of a church divided. A church in which the people in Corinth are fighting with one another over who has the best theology… which denomination is best.

They’re quarreling with one another… demeaning one another as somehow less than they are. Just like James and John, the sons of Zebedee argued about who was the greatest, so too did the early church wrestle with that and, I would argue, that the church still does today.

It’s so easy to get caught up in which church has the best service projects, or the best worship music, or the best traditions, or the most baptisms, or most mission trips or whatever other statistic you want to fill in the blank with.

But Paul writes of himself, he says, “Christ did not send me to baptize

but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the Cross might be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

In other words, Paul is saying success in the church isn’t driven by how good of a public speaker you are, or how good of a writer you are, etc… but rather success in the church is based on one thing and only one thing… Christ.

The Unlikely Us

And we see that truth in our Gospel reading today as it is through Christ that all of these extraordinarily ordinary fishermen experience a new way of life in Christ. They are called.

And it is through that same calling that we, as the church today, are called out of ordinary day-to-day living and into something new. Now does that mean leaving your career, or your schooling, or your retirement behind and traveling the world on mission trips? Maybe. But at the very least it does mean being called not to focus on ourselves but on those around us.

Immediately after those four fishermen said yes to being Christ’s disciples, Jesus took them on a tour throughout Galilee preaching and teaching the Good News of a God full of mercy and grace even as he cured the sick and cared for those who were hurting in so many various ways.

But as far as mission trips to the rest of the world… well… Truth be told, much of Jesus’ ministry was done fairly close to home. He changed the world not by going on mission trips to Antarctica, but by doing ministry even in his own neck of the world.

I don’t know if Christ is calling you to quit your day job and proclaim the Good News in Uganda or Norway. But I do know that we are all of us, as extraordinarily ordinary as we might be, we are all of us called to be Christ’s church in the world today.

We are called to proclaim the message of grace and peace that was first proclaimed to us. That’s the road that Christ has set us upon.

In the Lord of the Rings, one of the man characters is the unexpected hero of a hobbit Frodo Baggins. As the little hobbit leaves the safety of the Shire for the first time on his way to a grand and terrifying adventure with three of his friends, he tells the other hobbits about his hero’s thoughts regarding 'The Road':

"Bilbo used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.'"

May we ordinary folk be swept off our feet on the road that Christ has set us upon.

May we be assured of God’s grace and mercy even as the road becomes difficult and we want to turn inward and focus on ourselves.

May we be inspired by extraordinary light of Christ that transforms foolishness into life.

Dear church, I know not what twists and turns we might have along the journey, but I do know who is on the road with us. And perhaps that is the confidence that helped those fishermen step out, follow Christ, and help to transform the world with the message of God’s love on the cross.

And in that thought, I can’t help but wonder what God might be up to in and through us today.

Peace be with you, Amen.