Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John were called to leave their nets and leave their boats -- but that was the call to THEM. (For the first time today ! I noticed Zebedee in the reading. Zebedee was called to stay where he was.) You are not necessarily called to get up and physically leave the work you’re doing or the life you are living. My hunch is that for many of you, the work you are doing right now is your calling. If your work in the world -- whether it’s your job, or in your family or your community -- that is satisfying to you and meaningful, if it helps you and you like it and helps other people.. then very likely it’s your calling - and maybe all you really need to do is recognize that... you don’t always need to follow Jesus someplace else... sometimes you just need to follow Jesus right where you are - or just go on following Him. Test that. Think about the work you do and the life you live. Imagine it shining with the light of Christ...

When Peter and Andrew and James and John are called to leave their nets and their boats, they are called leave what has been the framework of their lives -- everything that makes sense to them --their work, their families, lall their assumptions. Our lives too are built on a framework not only of people and places but also on a whole set of assumptions about how things are and how things should be -- maybe you’re being called to leave behind some of those. Assumptions like, “It’s important to be Nice ” “It’s important to defend your property,” or “People like me never do things like that.” Or maybe there’s something else that you’re resting your life on that Jesus asks you to let go of .. maybe a resentment or a sense of unfairness that’s been informing your thinking -- or maybe an addiction -- or a particular way of wasting time. “Following Jesus” often means something as simple - and as TERRIFYING - as challenging some of the things that shape our lives.

Or maybe when Jesus says “follow me,” he’s not talking about leaving anything at all, but instead embracing something right there -- something you don’t even want to look at, something you’d rather run away from. Your own pain and suffering. The world’s pain and suffering. Follow Jesus into the depth. Frederick Buechner has an interesting image for that:

"Be a good steward of your pain...It involves being alive to . . . life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows."

Wherever and whatever your calling is -- whether it’s right where you are or whether it means moving out into the unknown -- it is true that a calling often requires courage. That when Jesus says, “Follow me,” you may have to do something brave. 

But before you say, “well, that lets me out, I’m a coward” ... stop and think about how many kinds of courage there are. The other day I saw a very frail and elderly woman .. tall and thin, bent over a walker, making her way very very slowly down the street. in Silver Spring. It looked as though every step was an effort, and every step was an accomplishment. And I thought how brave she was. Sometimes just putting one foot in front of the other is an act of courage. Sometimes just getting up in the morning is an enormous act of faith.