Radical Change
The Trouble with Jesus: To understand what Jesus was calling them to do, you can’t ignore the changing political, economic, and social scene.
It’s a story for the books, maybe a movie (ok, yeah, that’s been done already), but who really does this sort of thing? You’ve got to be really desperate to just take off, leave your job and family, and literally get behind a guy who says get on board with him, and he’ll show you how to fish for people. People can stink worse than the fish they caught. I don’t know. What did they think they were getting into?
To be fair, they didn’t have a real clue of what the plan was. But Simon (later Jesus called him Peter) with his brother, Andrew, James and John, also brothers, were hard working men who had seen their livelihood get robbed of the businesses they had built for generations. To understand what Jesus was calling them to do, you can’t ignore the changing political, economic, and social scene.
The Backstory
When Caesar Augustus died, Tiberius became ruler of Rome. King Herod Antipas knew what side of the bread the butter needed to be, so he built a new city on the Sea of Galilee and smartly named it, guess what, Tiberius. He had big plans for this new urban center, specifically the fishing industry. Doing what despots do, he saw to it that all fishing was controlled by the Romans. Taxes bit into everybody’s profits by requiring fishing permits, a sales tax on the product and its processing, and even enforcing toll taxes on its transport.
Don’t think this revenue was funneled back for the promotion and benefit of the people who did the hard work. They were Jews. Keeping them marginalized and poor held the lid on them, so Rome was happy with that. Government infrastructure got a great boost from the project with building good roads and fantastic palaces. All in all, Herod had a good thing going here.
The Tipping Point
Except that Herod made a mistake. In the eyes of Rome, it’s what you do when there are dissonant voices against your reign. But arresting John the Baptist who had been preaching better days with his message of the Kingdom of God (after all, Herod was supposed to be the king) only heated the simmer against Rome. Add in the oppression against the fishing industry, and you easily could find people who were ready to make a stand. All they needed was a leader.
What Herod didn’t count on was someone else taking up JTB’s refrain of how the time had come for the Kingdom of God. Jesus’ preaching made it all the more emphatic, especially in how he headed right into the danger, taking the very message John had been arrested for right to the fishing villages on the Sea of Galilee. He was preaching radical change, what the Brothers Four were ready to join. When Jesus asked them to sign up, they dropped their nets and took off.
So are you saying how Jesus recruited them was really a call to arms, so to speak? They thought they were signing into God’s army to overthrow the Romans and get their lives back? That’s not the usual narrative.
Messages in the Movement
It’s the narrative that is, but you know how people choose to take things for their own platforms. As said before, these men did not have a real clue as to the specifics of the plan. If they had, would they have gotten behind Jesus and the movement he was starting? Who knows, but it does explain why for the next three years they seemed to be mistaken as to where this mission was leading. They knew from their own history as God’s chosen people that only by a mighty warrior could invaders be turned away. The ancient writings said a Messiah was promised. After 400 years of prophetic silence, John the Baptist was saying the time was now. More than ever, the people wanted that time to be now, and Jesus’ message made him a good candidate.
What gets wrapped in this story is the change Jesus would preach. Radical change, certainly, but not change brought about as before. Time and again, Jesus tangled with the religious authorities who more often than not cow-towed to political rule. What infuriated him was how they leveraged God to oppress the people as much as the Romans did with their heavy taxing. But instead of raising an army and storming the Roman centers of power, he preached loving neighbor and enemy, turning the other cheek , walking an extra mile, and being light in the darkness. In doing so, the naked would be clothed, the hungry fed, the foreigner know hospitality, and the prisoner would be released.
Such a movement would effect change, change greater than any charismatic leader, governmental edicts, or religious laws could bring. Inherent in it is revolution that ascends above what any protest, demonstration, march, or rally could ever accomplish. Reversing one’s relationship so as to honor God and care for others would lower, maybe even remove, the rancor and divisions between people and bring about the Kingdom of God. Jesus preached this because it is so much within all realms of possibility, because if this change is embraced, it is the Good News.
It begins with this: “Come, be my disciples, and I will show you how to fish for people!”
The Chosen really understands the context that is not readily realized by 21st century readers but was well understood by those who originally read the Gospels. When the context is explained, much of the reading is clarified. Thanks for your kind words.
This is a good one - didnt know the context of taxes on fishing (though recently might have had an inkling of it from one the The Chosen episodes).