Monday of the First Week in Ordinary Time
He walked along a little further and saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were mending their nets. Then he called them, so they left their father Zebedee in the boat and followed him.
Mark: 1:19-20
Today features the call of Jesus' first disciples: Peter, Andrew, James, and John. This is the moment when Christ’s upside-down kingdom begins.
In that culture, young men who were the best and brightest asked a rabbi to follow and learn from him. But here was Jesus, finding his own men, hardly the best and brightest. Fishermen were considered ceremonially unclean, so they were not allowed to worship at the temple.
These were the teamsters of their day. James and John were part of a family business. Others associated with the “Zebedee & Sons” enterprise included the Bar Jonah boys, Andrew and Simon. All four left immediately, abandoning Zebedee to mend his own nets.
Things were changing at breakneck speed in Galilee, Herod’s urbanization causing massive upheaval. Zebedee, a father desiring stability for his sons, may have been proud that his boys hadn’t gotten caught up in one of those apocalyptic movements that seemingly were popping up on every corner of the region. Until now.
He had to be reeling that his sons and associates left, seemingly on a dime, to follow a Nazarene of all people (Nazareth was often the butt of a joke in the first century). Mrs. Zebedee (Salome, feminine for “Solomon”) would leave, too, joining the other faithful Galilean women all the way to the cross and the empty tomb.
In the Kingdom movement there is a different understanding of what makes a “family” — the antithesis of the societal pyramid structure of the Greco-Roman-Jewish world. Let us recall that for Jesus his family was not one of blood but that his mother and brothers and sisters consisted of “those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28).
Still our hearts go out to the chief operating officer of Zebedee & Sons. He really is the first one in the Gospels — before kings and emperors and high priests and Jesus’ own kin — to know firsthand that the fruit of this revolutionary movement is a world turned upside down. This should merit him a place of honor since he had sacrificed not only his fishery but his entire family to the cause of the Reign of God.
It is, after all, the least that Jesus could do, taking as he did for his mission Zebedee’s sons and wife. God being a just god, in eternity “papa Zeb” knows what he sacrificed was miniscule, given that it resulted in a place prepared for him by those who he thought had left him in the lurch. Even today he sees God in the face, the beatific vision enjoyed by those who sacrifice everything.
All in all not a bad trade off for a fishery.
—Timothy J. Cronin