The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on January 24, 1982. The title is, He Came, He Saw, He Captivated, and the scripture reference is Mark chapter 1, verses 14 to 20. 

I'm reading from the first chapter, beginning at the 14th verse. Now after John the baptizer was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.

And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men. and immediately they left their nets and followed him.

And going on a little farther he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother who were in their boat mending the nets and immediately he called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. The Gospel of the Lord. Last week we considered the call of Nathaniel as recorded in John's Gospel.

This morning we turn to Mark and we see Jesus calling four others. Simon and Andrew, James and John, two sets of brothers, all of them fishermen. It appears actually that this call preceded Nathanael's. That these were in fact the first men that Jesus called to himself in that special relationship that we know as apostleship.

These were the first. And so we want to pay particularly close attention to what was going on as Jesus began his ministry. I want you to note first of all that his words, and mind you these are the first words that Mark records, the very first thing that we have from Jesus' own lips.

His words are a distinct echo of the message of John the Baptizer, but with a lovely addition, a very special addition. John said repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand here we read Jesus saying the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe in the gospel and believe in the gospel you see John's message as you go back and read it in the various gospel accounts John's message was almost entirely one of God's anger with sin. Repent.

Get your act together. Straighten up. The Messiah is coming.

God is angry with sin. Jesus doesn't lose sight of that. We're dealing with a holy God after all.

And He is angry with sin. But Jesus' message is not primarily one of judgment. It's primarily one of hope.

God isn't only angry with sin. He's prepared to do something about it. And that's why he sent Jesus.

I myself have come, he says, to deal with that sin. I myself have come to take it upon myself, and a cross of crucifixion, and remove it from you. So believe in the gospel.

There's good news this morning. Jesus preaches the gospel. So he comes into Galilee, preaching as he does, And we find him walking one day by the Sea of Galilee.

And the scripture says he saw Simon and Andrew. What a simple statement. He saw them.

And yet I pause there. I wonder if anyone else saw quite what he saw. If anyone else saw in Simon and Andrew what Jesus saw in them.

How many other people had walked by the Sea of Galilee and they'd looked and all they'd seen is a couple of fishermen. But Jesus comes along and he looks and he sees two men worth investing his life in. Think about that.

He saw Simon and Andrew in a different way than anybody else had ever seen them. Jesus notices things that other people somehow overlook. He sees things in a different light from the way that most people see them.

I think this runs all the way through the scripture. We were talking last week also about the woman at the well in Samaria. Everybody else, when they saw her, saw the town harlot, or nearly so, little better than that, the town bad girl.

They didn't even want to have anything to do with her. That's why she has to go to the well in the middle of the day. Everybody else went early in the morning or late in the evening when it was cool.

She couldn't even get near the well at that time. She's a sinner, have nothing to do with her. what does Jesus see?

the first Samaritan evangelist and he invests his life in her she's worth my time says Jesus he comes into Jericho and he meets that little tax collector Zacchaeus everybody else literally looks down their nose at him he's a turncoat and he's a thief he's not only sold out to the Romans and acting as their lackey to collect very great taxes from the Jews, but in addition to that, he's taking his own slice of graft on top. Zacchaeus wants to get to see Jesus, and everybody else is elbowing him back like this. He has to climb up into the sycamore tree.

What does Jesus see? He says, truly, this is a son of Abraham. A true son of Abraham.

Him? Yep, Him. Mary Magdalene.

To everybody else, she's a crazy woman with loose morals. She's deranged and demonized. That's what everybody else sees.

Jesus sees in her a model of gratitude to be proclaimed as long as the gospel is preached. Her sins, though many, have been forgiven. And that's why she loves as she does.

Saul of Tarsus, to everybody else, he's a self-righteous, overzealous Pharisee determined to crush the church. And what does Jesus see? A chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before Gentiles and kings.

How about the thief on the cross? To everybody else, he's a notorious insurrectionist and murderer. And Jesus looks over at him and he says, You're the first one that's going to share my entrance into paradise.

Jesus sees what other people don't see. He looked at Simon and Andrew, and he saw not just a couple of fishermen, but two men into whom he could pour his life and reduplicate himself and make them foundation stones along with himself in building his church. James and John.

You know what everybody else called James and John? The sons of thunder. Gives you some idea of their character.

Nobody wanted anything to do with James and John. You bring up any subject under the sun and you have an argument on your hands. Jesus looks at John and do you know what he sees in him?

Potentially an apostle of love. His best friend. James and John are hotheads.

But Jesus sees something more than that. He looks at Simon Peter and he sees a dunderhead. Thou art Peter with a brain like a rock.

But he's about to begin to be changed into the image of his master. What does Jesus see in you? Aren't you flattered that he's called you to himself?

Don't misunderstand the calling though. It isn't that you've arrived, you see. It's that you've got potential.

Maybe nobody else sees the potential. But Jesus sees it and that's why he's called you. He sees things that nobody else notices.

He looked out at Simon and Andrew and he saw something worth investing his life. He came and he saw their potential. I'm interested, secondly, in the way in which he called them.

He says, follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. Well, that's language that they nearly understood. It's couched in something with which they were already very familiar.

They're fishermen. And they know what it is to be fishers. They're not sure what it means to be fishers of men.

But they know what it is to be fishers. And so he speaks to them in those terms. I wonder, I just wonder if he had spoken first of all to farmers.

Might he have said something like, follow me and I'll make you harvesters of souls. Or if he had spoken to doctors, might he have said, follow me and I'll make you physicians of the Spirit. Supposing he met a couple of lawyers.

Might his call have been something like, follow me and I'll show you how to write God's law on the hearts of men. Or if they were shepherds. Follow me.

And I'll show you how to bring people into God's sheepfold. Do you see what I'm saying? Jesus spoke to them in language that they understood.

He identified with where they were. So the first thing is that he notices what other people don't notice. The second thing is he starts where people really are.

He identifies himself with them. He speaks in language and imagery that's already familiar. Whenever you hear the charge that the church is irrelevant, it strikes me that it's not because its message is wrong, but because it hasn't taken the time to translate it into terms that people understand.

We haven't taken the time to identify with where people really are. You look through the annals of Christian history and especially Christian missions, and you'll see that there's a principle here, that whenever Christians have been willing to do what Jesus did, to start where people really are, to identify with where people are, to speak as people speak, God blesses. God blesses.

The great breakthrough in China, for instance, came in the China Inland Mission when a fellow named Hudson Taylor put away his Western clothing and began to dress like a Chinaman. He grew a pigtail. The mission board was horrified, but the people began to take notice.

He began to eat Chinese food. He began to look like a Chinaman. And things began to happen.

Jesus never made the mistake of speaking in some way totally unrelated. He started where people are. So he came and he saw and he captivated.

You know, Caesar said, I came, I saw, I conquered. Jesus conquered too. But he conquered in a very different way.

He conquered by captivating. He started where people are, but he intrigued them to go well beyond it. I think that the imagery of fishing is particularly apt at this point.

You know, the fisherman throws out the bait, jiggles the line a little bit, as the fish begins to nibble at it, sinks that hook, and lands his fish. Neil said, do you really think they did it that way? Sure they did.

They also used nets. Okay? We'll go for the big crowd.

We'll also go one at a time. I can hardly think of a better description of the way Jesus dealt with people. You look at all those conversations.

He begins where they are. Invariably, he'll touch where they are. The woman at the well, he talks about living water.

But he gives her just a little bit of bait and jiggles it, jiggles it until she rises to the bait. And then he sinks that hook and lands his catch. I want us not to miss the point here.

I've already suggested that if he had been speaking to folks in some other occupation, he might very well have used a different set of imagery but the point would have been exactly the same. Exactly the same. To follow Jesus is to be capturing men and women for the kingdom of God.

Do you hear me? To follow Jesus is to be capturing men and women for the kingdom of God. And we capture them by captivating them.

We intrigue them. We entice them. We lure them to ourselves and to Him.

What was it about Him? that was so irresistibly attractive that these fishermen would leave everything to go follow him. He lured them.

He captivated them. He bludgeons no one. He entices many.

And to be following Jesus is to be doing exactly the same thing. To be capturing men and women, boys and girls, for the kingdom of God. Thirdly, aren't you glad that he said, follow me, follow me.

He didn't say, you go do it, I'll sit here and watch. He said, I'm going to do it, you watch till you get it. I'm going to do it, you watch till you get it.

That's the picture of biblical discipleship. Jesus, if you analyze the way that Jesus spent his time, I think it will be quite revealing to you that he spent perhaps 10% of his time one-on-one speaking with individuals, perhaps something like 15, maybe 20% of his time speaking to the large crowds, but the overwhelming majority of his time he spent investing his life in this little group that he particularly called to learn of him. He said, follow me.

I'm going to reproduce myself in you. You're going to learn how to do it as you watch me do it. He spent his time with that little group, reproducing himself.

There's a lot of teaching abroad in the church these days on the subject of discipleship. Perhaps some of you have run into it. There's a very, very different understanding of discipleship being promoted.

The word is being defined as a matter of coming under somebody else's authority, looking to some other human being, my spiritual shepherd, for my marching orders. Somebody else tells me what God wants me to do. And finally I end up quite unable to make any decisions at all without somebody else telling me how to do it, what to do, when to do.

That's not how Jesus behaves. That's not biblical discipleship. Biblical discipleship is a matter of looking at Jesus, patterning my life after his, until it begins to reflect his life and in fact become a pattern for others.

That's what we see in Paul. Paul said to the Philippians, What you've learned and received and heard and seen in me, do. And the God of peace will be with you.

Isn't that an extraordinary statement? How could he say that? Because what he had learned and received and heard and seen in Jesus, he did.

And he began to reflect the model. And so Jesus says, come, follow me. follow me do what I do go where I go behave as I behave and let it become second nature to you one of the many variations of the story of the man in the iron mask has it that a king that was very ugly so horribly repulsively ugly that nobody could stand to look at him, commissioned a mask to be made patterned on the features of a very, very handsome young man in his kingdom.

And he wore that mask. It was a metal mask. And he wore it all the time, lest anyone had to look at his face.

One day he fell in love with a young woman and he was too timid to ask her to marry him because he knew what he really was like underneath that mask. that she fell in love with him as well and consented to share his life. And on their wedding day she said, I have one request.

Would you please let me see your true face as it really is? And against his better judgment, with great reluctance, he consented and took off the mask only to find that his own features had grown into the shape of the mask as he had worn it those many years. There's something there.

There's something there. Mold your life. Allow the Spirit of God to mold your life into the mask of Jesus.

Follow me. I'm the pattern. Let me mold you after myself.

So that when others see you, they'll see me. There's one other thing I want us to notice. It's a remarkable juxtaposition of epistle and gospel this morning.

Paul said to the Corinthians, everyone should remain in the state in which he was called. Chapter 7, verse 20. And again, let everyone lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him.

Stay put, says Paul. If you're doing one thing, you don't have to leave it in order to follow Jesus. You don't have to try to change your status.

Continue to do that thing. And then we turn to the gospel and we find Jesus striding into the lives of these fishermen, saying, come on, leave everything. And they do.

immediately they leave their nets they leave their father they leave their boats they leave their hired servants and they go follow him how do you put those two things together? well I believe of course that God sometimes calls some folks to do literally that to leave everything but I suspect that that's the exception to the rule I think that God's will for the great majority of us is to brighten the corner where we are you see the implication is that you can learn to be a fisher of men right there among fishermen you can learn to be a harvester of souls right there down on the farm you can learn how to bring the law of God to be written on the hearts of men among your fellow barristers you can be bringing people into God's sheepfold among shepherds what God wants for you to be is a little bit better you, reflecting the Lord Jesus right where you are. The one thing that you cannot do, the one thing that you cannot do is legitimately call yourself a disciple of this Lord Jesus and be unconcerned with capturing men for His kingdom.

To be a follower of Jesus is to be involved in fishing for men, catching men and women, men, women, and children, captivating a catch for Jesus. Let's bow our heads together. Lord Jesus thank you for calling us to yourself how extraordinary that you have seen something in each one of us that the world probably hasn't really seen.

We've valued other things about ourselves, but there's something in us that You have thought worth investing Your life in. And You've called us to Yourself. Lord, we pray that by Your grace we would begin to come up to the potential that You've seen in us.

that we begin to be what you call us to be. And especially, Lord, we pray that you would give to us a zeal for winning men and women, boys and girls, to the kingdom of God. That you would make us fishers of men as you did Simon and Andrew, James and John, so long ago.

For your great name's sake. Amen.