Surely each of us remembers a day in our lives where things changed forever. Before that day, our world was different. Afterwards, nothing was the same. We couldn’t look at the world in the same way. Our perspective on life changed. We became older, maybe wiser, but perhaps even more troubled.
I remember the day I came home from school to the news that the Challenger space shuttle had exploded. It may have been my first awareness of a national tragedy that affected everyone, an awareness that life could change in the blink of an eye. For some of you, maybe it was the day that President Kennedy was assassinated. Dallas, Texas, will forever have a pall cast over it. Or was it September 11, 2001? I will never forget watching, in horror, the smoking towers on my college dorm room TV. Who can look at the New York City skyline without lamenting its sparseness? Or maybe it was mid-March 2020, when this nation began to lock down for the COVID-19 pandemic. Will any of us ever hear a cough again without some measure of anxiety?
The day that changed things forever for the first disciples was a seemingly ordinary day on a lakeside in Galilee. It was business as usual at first. Simon and his brother Andrew were engaged in their usual occupation of casting nets and hoping for a decent catch. All was at it should have been until Jesus walked by and said a handful of words that would change their lives—and the world’s destiny—forever. Follow me. And without so much as a word or second thought, those two brothers followed him.
A little farther down the seashore, James and John and their father Zebedee were mending their nets, like they always did. It was just another day in Galilee until Jesus walked by and called them. And their response was as prompt and undeliberated as Simon’s and Andrew’s.
Jesus’s words, follow me, were both so simple and so profound. The lives of James, John, Simon, and Andrew would never be the same again. The world itself would never be the same again. And our own revisiting of the call of those first disciples is tinged with poignancy, even heartbreak, because we know how those disciples’ lives would change forever. We know that James would be the first to lose his life because he accepted that call. We know that Simon would be crucified, but upside down. We know that Andrew would also be nailed to a cross in the shape of an X. Neither Simon Peter nor Andrew felt worthy enough to be crucified in the same manner as their Lord. John alone of those first four disciples would die of old age, but I imagine he must have been haunted by that fact. Why me? How did I escape martyrdom, he must have asked?
We can, if we wish, get stuck on the tragic endings of those four disciples, just as we can get stuck on tragedies that have changed our own world. Those disciples’ lives changed forever because their decision to follow Jesus would upend their reality. But there is so much more. Their lives changed forever because the moment they dropped their nets and left their families to follow Christ, they had already died.
The abandoned nets on the seashore represent Simon’s and Andrew’s entire livelihood. They left their normal existence, the comfort of their ordinary lives, their means of earning a living to follow a man they had never met until then. James and John left their father because their love for a man who had just entered their lives was the primary love of their own lives.
And the world would never be the same again for them and for us because those men would be a part of that initial apostolic thrust into the far corners of the earth, witnessing to the visible signs of another kind of kingdom breaking in to right the wrongs of sinful earthly kingdoms. The sick were healed. Those enslaved by disease found freedom. Wrongs were righted even as the conveyors of wrong reacted in fury. The world would never be the same again because in a world full of bad news, good news came as a person. Good news came not just through words, but in actions.
Something about this person was different from any cultic figure or guru that had ever preceded him. This teacher and healer did not wait for his disciples to grovel before him obsequiously to establish his devoted following. This teacher and healer called them. He called them and chose them before they ever knew who he was. He called them and chose them not to bow before him or buoy his reputation. He called them and chose them to put themselves behind him, to attach themselves to himself in relationship so that they would learn just how wonderful the world could be. In following behind him, their world and our world would never be the same again.
Although the story of the call of those first disciples is poignant, there is perhaps a sadder story to my mind. Let me tell it to you. On the shores of countless lakes in our own day, people are busy. They are going about their ordinary business, laboring hard to earn their livings. Some are the recipients of a massive catch. They are making a great living for themselves. Life is good. Life is comfortable. They have their families. They have their routines. They have the comfort of financial security and a future of bliss.
And by the shores of these lakes, the Messiah still walks. With only a few words, he issues a call. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. It might be that he pauses for a time, to wait for a response. But in the end, he encounters cold silence. Those complacent folk along the lakesides, if they even bother to turn their heads, return to their work and their families and their amassed fortunes and their future comfort and go on with business as usual. They do not follow the one who has called them, and their worlds never change for the better.
On the shores of our lives, this one who lived, died, and was raised again still calls. Follow me. He calls us to a way that is more difficult than we would like, but he calls us so that we might die and rise to a new life, a better life, a life that is intended for our flourishing and that of the whole world. And still, we ignore him.
The sad truth of this story, the tragic reality that breaks my own heart, is that in our own day, far too many of us have found plenty of excuses not to follow the one who will change our world. We have found every reason not to give ourselves completely to him. We have thoroughly justified clinging to our material possessions and paychecks rather than liberally giving it all back to the Giver of all good things. We have been stingy with our time so that we give what benefits us and our comfort rather than the proclamation of a Gospel that the world sorely needs to hear. We have withdrawn from risking our lives to help those whose own lives are threatened by savage governments. We have smothered ourselves in our biological families without opening ourselves up to the human family that needs our care. This is a sad story precisely because we know that one has come and still comes and walks along the lakeshore of our lives to call us to something far more glorious. He calls us from our passive sitting in darkness to an active movement out of our comfort zone to follow him into a marvelous light.
What keeps you from following him? What prevents you from leaving everything behind to put yourself close to him? The call that will change your world forever, and for good, is awaiting your response. What stops you from letting go of your fear of putting yourself behind him, not just in word but also in deed?
More than anything else, this one who has chosen us before we were born and who calls us before we even know who he is, shows us exactly who God is. And God does not arrogantly wait for us to grovel in shame but instead walks before us and invites us to get up and follow. God walks like a Good Shepherd leading the sheep through danger into a place of safety and nourishment. God asks us to follow behind because God will protect us and lead us. God will show us the way to green pastures, where all will be fed and where righteousness reigns. God invites us to place ourselves behind the Son of God, because he is the one who calls us not servants or slaves but friends. And this Jesus calls us to follow behind him and to get close to him so that we may go where he goes. And although this call to follow means giving everything up for his sake, in doing so, we will find our true lives, because where he goes, we shall go, and wherever he goes, there will be the kingdom of heaven.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 25, 2026