Walking along the lakeshore, Jesus said to some fishermen, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mk 1:17). Great turn of phrase.

In Jesus’ experience, however, the phrase has an assorted history. In prophetic use, the phrase refers to God’s judgment of exile.

Prophet Amos warns the people of Israel, “The time is coming when you will be carried away in baskets, all of you in fishermen’s pots.” (Amos 4:2)

Habakkuk also describes, “The Chaldean brings all of them up with a hook . . . and gathers them in his fishing net…” (Hab 1:15; See also Ezek 38:4 for another reference to hooks.)

Jeremiah declares, “Look! I will send many fishermen,” announces Yhwh, “And they will catch them” (Jer 16:16).**

I conclude that Jesus knew his Hebrew Scripture. So is he using the fishing metaphor in spite of its earlier use? Or perhaps the disciples should have heard Messianic overtones. Who appointed fishermen? God did.

In broader first-century Jewish thought, we stumble across a reference to humanity-fishers in the Psalms/Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls that echoes the Messianic ring.

You made my lodging with many fishermen,
those who spread the net upon the surface of the sea,
those who go hunting the sons of iniquity.
And there you established me for the judgment,
and strengthened in my heart the foundation of truth.
The covenant, therefore, for those looking for it. (1QH XIII (=V) frag. 29 ++)

The entire psalm deals with rescue of God’s approved ones, but the judgment of God toward oppressors.

There is an interesting reference to man-hunting in Plato’s Laws, 823b.

“There are…very many varieties also of hunts of land-animals—not of beasts only, but also, mark you, of men, both in war and often, too, in friendship [i.e. hunters of men]…”

Plato’s reference simply gives a larger Greco-Roman context to the use of the metaphor. Was Jesus aware of Plato? It’s worth considering but hard to build a case for or against. Some early Greek Gospel readers surely would have thought of Plato, however.

So what did Jesus mean, “Follow me, I will make you fishers of men”? The discipleship calling is clearly stated in the invitation, “Follow me.” Up to this time, it is God who appointed fishermen for epoch-transitions (Assyria-Israel, Babylon-Judah, Approved-Oppressors). The metaphor is startling because it was Jesus who was making this appointment.

** For more info, see Robert Eisler, Orpheus—The Fisher (London: J. M. Watkins, 1921), 75—83.

++ Florentino Gracía Martínez, The Dead Sea Scrolls Translated: The Qumran Texts in English (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 337.

Earlier in Jesus’ experience, he was preaching and healing in Galilee when he approached a town called Nain.

A crowd had followed Jesus to the village. And a crowd, a funeral procession, was coming from the village when Jesus approached. A widow was burying her only son.

The Gospel of Luke tells the story (Lk 7:11-17).

Jesus saw the widow and had compassion on her. (If you know your parables, this same expression is applied to the Good Samaritan in Luke 10 and the Father in Luke 15.)

This couldn’t have been the only funeral Jesus experienced, yet this death he interrupted like Lazarus’.

Nain was far away from power centers and political conflicts. Jesus was still relatively unknown. Life, as it always does, returned to normal.

Bethany, however, was a suburb of Jerusalem at the heart of religious politics. Here, the escalating drama of religious conflict took a decisive turn in a graveside moment.

“Jesus wept.” This phrase captures the humanness of Jesus’ experience.

When he received the news about his friend Lazarus, Jesus was involved. He was vested in the relationship. He felt the hurt and the pain surrounding the death of his friend.

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch observe in The Shaping of Things to Come that Jesus was an “authentic human being” who engaged his world. In fact, they write,

 Jesus was Jesus precisely because of Mary and Joseph, his twelve disciples, the poor to whom he ministered, and all the others who interacted with him … He was changed in some way by all those he came in contact with in precisely the same way that we are changed by our relationships — for good or ill. To be a genuine human being, Jesus must have had such [interactions]… If this is not true, then his humanity was a sham (The Shaping of Things to Come, 36).

Jesus was moved by his friends’ experience. He wept.

Jesus

The Gospels refer to this common name almost six hundred times.
Only four times do they refer to “Jesus Christ” (Mk 1.1; Mt 1.1; Jn 1.17; 17.3). My attention was drawn to this fact by William Barclay in Jesus as They Saw Him.

Pick up a Greek Old Testament (aka The Septuagint), and you will notice something more. The sixth book, commonly titled “Joshua” in English Bibles, carries the name Ἰησοῦς (translated “Jesus” in the NT). In the Greek, the name appears over and over throughout the OT book. If you’re thinking, “Not so fast!” link over to the Septuagint book list in Wikipedia to see for yourself.

Barclay observed, “The name Jesus underlines the real humanity of our Lord.” Would we say the same about the name “Jesus” today?

“Do not think that I have come to put an end to the Law,” Jesus said. Then he added I have come “to fulfill” it (Matt 5:17).

This week the Sabbath reading includes the ten words (aka commandments) from Moses’ Law book, “Names,” (aka Exodus).

Every year, year after year, Jesus’ friends and neighbors gathered Sabbath day to Sabbath day to read the Law of Moses. Plus the priests read the Law at the Temple feasts.

In Jesus’ experience, whenever he spoke about the Law, his listeners only had to think of their previous Sabbath synagogue reading to consider his meaning.

Reading Jesus’ story today, the familiarity with the Law as well as the shock of Jesus’ words is often lost.

So consider this. It would be like someone telling Americans that the federal courts have misapplied the U. S. Constitution.

And of course, to make the illustration completely parallel, Americans would need to read and re-read excerpts from the Constitution every Saturday.

“I have not come to put an end to the Constitution but to fulfill it!” Whoa. What does that mean?

During the first-century on Sabbath the devout of Israel gathered to read the Law of Moses. In Jesus’ experience, the Law of Moses was authoritative. It came from God.

Jesus’ later follower Paul and his brother James confirmed the practice (Acts 13:27; 15:21). For example, James said, “For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath” (Acts 15:21).

First-century Jewish writers Philo and Josephus also comment on the practice of gathering for Sabbath instruction (Philo’s Special Laws 2.15 §62 and Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, 16.2.3 §43; 2.17 §175).

Though the practice of reading is without question, the schedule of readings in the first-century is debated. There is an annual cycle of Torah readings as well as a three-year cycle that could have guided the Sabbath practice.

The SpendaYearwithJesus storyline follows an annual cycle, giving a flavor of what it could have been like to hear the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus in the same timeline.

One of Jesus’ followers wrote that Jesus faced all of the same trials and challenges as any person on earth; and more, that Jesus lived with human frailty. Yet Jesus faced the challenges without frustrating himself or exploiting others (Heb 4:15).

That sounds nice, “Jesus faced the same things we do.” As we read the stories, however, do we assume that Jesus could tap his inner supernatural whenever he wanted control?

If that assumption is true, then he wasn’t challenged like I am challenged.

If Jesus controlled the natural rhythms of this earth-bound experience for his own advantage, then he cannot relate to my human experience.

I don’t float six inches off the ground, and if Jesus’ follower is right, neither did Jesus.

By writing SpendaYearwithJesus, I see the phrase “live like Jesus lived” in a new light.

I do not immediately think of moral or charitable activities. I think of a pace of life, an expectation of life, an engagement of life … Jesus’ experience.

For more on this topic, see No Shortcuts and No Shortcuts Revisited.

Sign-up for SpendaYearwithJesus.

Jesus’ tradition prescribed affirming “God is one” (Deut. 6:5). In Jesus’ experience, he and his disciples would have repeated this affirmation in their morning and evening prayers.

It’s not a question of whether the Jesus and the disciples thought this way. It’s not a question of whether or not they believed God is one. The devout believed.

For the people of Israel in the first-century, God was in heaven. God’s chosen one, the Messiah, was a human who would come and rule on earth. Their expectation was ironclad.

How do you change an ironclad expectation?

Change the currents of experience. The currents of experience that seemed to flow so neatly were about to flow in a seemingly new direction.

Could Jesus say enough, could Jesus do enough in one lifetime to change the expectation? I think, No.

Because he was human, Jesus could only begin a culture shift that would take generations to unfold. Frankly, compared to others from the Greco-Roman world, he had a limited impact in his lifetime.

Gospel Scholar Vincent Taylor once wrote, “It goes without saying that in any recreation of the past much has to be supplied by the imagination; but there is all the difference in the world between idle fancy and the historical imagination controlled by facts which have been patiently investigated.”++

The SpendaYearwithJesus story is the result of a decade of patient investigation.

If the details of the Gospel accounts are to be accounted for on first-century terms (and in light of pre-Pentecost realities), then economic, geographical, and relational implications may be played out in narrative form. SpendaYearwithJesus is exactly this sort of play–one which emerges out of the broader historical realities implied by the available details.

++ Vincent Tayler, The Formation of the Gospel Tradition (London: MacMillan, 1933), 168.

Jesus walked and walked and walked. Traveling was a major part of Jesus’ experience.

First, there was feast travel. At an early age, Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his father Joseph (Lk 2:41). And since Jesus kept the Mosaic Law, he made three trips a year (Ex. 23:17) to Jerusalem for more than a decade before he started preaching. The trip to Jerusalem was a common travel scenario for the people Jesus lived among.

Teaching tours. The Gospel of Luke describes how Jesus went from village to village in Galilee preaching about the kingdom of God. Luke also mentions that the 12 disciples as well as some women went with Jesus (8:1-3). The region of Galilee must have accommodated co-ed travelers, meaning that necessities such as safe roads and separate quarters were available.

Withdrawals. During the summer of Jesus’ last year, he went to Tyre and Sidon and then to the Decapolis both outside Galilee. After the Feast of Dedication in the winter, Jesus went to the remote place where John had baptized years before (John 10:40). Later that last winter, Jesus and his disciples withdrew to a wilderness border town called Ephraim (John 11:54) where no one found him until he re-emerged traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread.

In all of this travel, Jesus used that most humble and human form of transportation, his own two feet.