Decisive Encounters

Invariably, many young people quickly lose their most legitimate ambitions, as it pertains to the sphere of study, work or personal success as well as to the spiritual realm of ideals and values.24 In all areas of existence, the prevailing inertia is to be content with mediocre results or to justify them.25 Not committing, not daring to try anything new because of convenience, because of fear of exerting effort or fear of ridicule, acquiescing to the “push and pull” between improvisation and despondency, when so many could attain a highly motivating reality with a bit of effort and more will.

That’s where Jesus sets Himself apart from other Teachers.26 It is true that He preaches a simple and modest lifestyle, but He arouses noble aspirations and teaches a profound philosophy of existence. He radiates “a hidden power, which cannot be wholly concealed.”27 Even His enemies must confess that “No one ever spoke the way this man does.” 28

If there is something that is made clear to his followers, it is his desire that they achieve excellence:

What do you do that is extraordinary? — He will ask his disciples demonstrating that He does not settle for little. He even dares to encourage them to be “perfect,” that is, to develop the innumerable possibilities pulsing in their beings!29

This is how He transforms their lives, demonstrating that they are capable, and what they can become if they let in the power of divine grace.

Since the start of his ministry, the Teacher calls young and even younger people to turn their ordinary lives into extraordinary lives. To change that mediocre existence of which they do not feel satisfied, for something grand, noble and beautiful. By calling them to follow Him, He invites them to enroll in a mission committed, consecrated to a great cause. His calling removes them from their routine reality and casts them to a fabulous, risky, intense, difficult, even heroic adventure in which there is no room for either meaninglessness or superficiality.

Those who follow Jesus soon stop being ordinary citizens. His example stirs in the depths of their beings the answer to the call from the ideal, and, in that way, those young people will soon be willing to continue the impassioned journey initiated by Him.30 By giving meaning to their existence, Jesus gives their ordinary lives an extraordinary dimension.

The Teacher senses that His ministry on this earth may be very brief. For that reason, He experiences it in such an intense way. After having spent His youth as a carpenter31 building homes to dwell in, plows to cultivate the land and yokes to share the loads, He now has set His mind, as an educator, on building a more inhabitable world, devising new tools to cultivate hearts, and searching for more united ways of sharing human hardships.

Since not entirely pleased about the manner in which the majority of people live their spirituality in the religious community they were born into, He decides, rather than abandoning it, as most who are dissatisfied do, to do something infinitely better, but much easier, in other words, gradually build together with His followers a new community, which he decides to call His “church.”32

The representatives of the clergy and the leaders of the country mutter:

Do not listen to him. This carpenter is not qualified. He is an ignorant megalomaniac.

He does not know what he does.

But He does not become disheartened for He knows that, when someone decides to do something important, He must face the opposition of those who would have wanted to do the same—but do not venture to take the risks—with the criticism of those in support of something different, and above all, with the resistance of those who never do anything.

At the beginning, He relies on nothing more than His own support and already has close to 30 followers. But the passion of those first disciples won over for His cause is so infectious that they themselves gradually extend the invitation to others.

When He decides to start building the community of believers with which He dreams, the Teacher makes it very clear that He does not want to establish a religion, but a school. He already has a true religion: it is the one God has revealed. Now He wants to teach for the purpose of putting it into practice. The essence of his doctrine can be formulated in a pair of sentences:

A pure and unblemished religion in the eyes of God consists of tending to the needy in their straits and not allowing itself to be contaminated by the world.33 Or, said in a different way: being a good believer consists of living in communion with God, and in treating fellow man with the empathy and solidarity with which one would like to be treated in his circumstances.34

To Him, spirituality and education have a common objective: to teach to think, to teach to be, to teach to live and, consequently, to teach to coexist; that is, to teach to love.35

This courageous reformer has many innovative ideas and very few prejudices. For that reason He accepts in His team young and old, learned and ignorant, men and women,36 something completely unheard of in that world, because He also accepts them without any prior training. And He does everything independent of the most-established religious institutions of their time, that is, outside of the temple and of the synagogue. He knows that “the special truths for this time are found, not with ecclesiastical authorities, but with men and women who are not too learned or too wise to believe the word of God.”37

His great topics are life itself, courageous truth, sincere love, true freedom, real happiness; thus, His focus is formation of character. He tells His disciples that, if they are unhappy with the society they live in and want to change it, they must begin by allowing themselves to be transformed. Only in doing so can they convince others, providing them better reasons to live and a higher scale of values. To this effect, He asks them for reflection, discipline of body and mind, eagerness to work, joy in sharing, the desire to carry out responsibilities and respect for others.

He teaches them not to confuse humility with fear, or contentment with laziness.38 That is to say, to recognize their limits; yet, without refusing to use their capabilities, allowing themselves to be guided by God to make them perform to their highest ability.

Being able to be content with few material goods does not mean to not have great plans and noble ambitions, or to accept with excuses what is inexcusable, or to confuse spontaneity with superficiality. God has for each an ideal of progress and excellence. Hence His endeavor to spur the utmost use of the possibilities without falling into an inferiority complex, nor giving in to vanity or arrogance.39

The young Teacher knows how to encourage, excite, tactfully correct, motivate to desire to give their best, and He does so with patience, firmness and affection. By means of constant analogies, stories and images, and above all, through His example, He teaches His disciples to understand the Scriptures, to interpret reality, to listen to nature and to learn from experiences, to not fear death and to take existence seriously; to pray intelligently and to fill their daily activities with spiritual strength; to live in solidarity, to exercise forgiveness; to be willing to suffer before causing others to suffer and to undergo evil before causing it.40 In a word, to live entirely positive lives, which will turn their surroundings into a better world.41

In a short time the common lives of John and Andrew, of Simon, of Philip and Nathanael, by reflecting that of the Teacher,42 will gradually turn exceptional. They need only follow Him and continue moving forward with Him on that steep and narrow but thrilling path, which goes from the lowest lands of their human mediocrity to the highest peaks of the divine realm.

And they will follow Him so closely that the members of His group will be known by their environment as “those of the Way.”43

1 . John 1:43-44.

2 . Augusto Cury, The Master of the Masters, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2008, p. 75.

3 . “Jesus Christ said great things so simply, that it seems as though he had not thought them great: and yet so clearly that we easily see what he thought of them. This clearness, joined to this simplicity, is wonderful.” (Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, no. 797, Madrid: Valdemar, 2001, p. 309)

4 . Oscar Wilde, De profundis, Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1977, pp. 92-93.

5 . Matthew 23:13; cf. Luke 11:52.

6 . John 1:40-51, Bethsaida means “house of fishing.” There are at least two places that claim that name, both along Lake Genesareth.

7 . John and James, sons of Zebedee, must have been quite young at that time, considering that three years later their mother was still trying to find them work (Matt. 20:20). The fact that John effortlessly leans on Jesus in the last supper, is better understood as a juvenile gesture of trust (John 13:23-26) rather than a calculated stance of an adult, which could have other connotations. The fact that this same disciple, near the year 100 is still serving, is fully understood if he was about ten years younger than Jesus.

8 . John 1:40-51.

9 . Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Cost of Discipleship. The Following, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2004, p. 235.

10 . Text based on John 1:43-51.

11 . “Philip knew that his friend was searching the prophecies, and while Nathanael was praying under a fig tree, Philip discovered his refuge. They had often prayed together in this secluded spot, hidden by the foliage.” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, pp. 83)

12 . “Their uncouth pronunciation of Aramaic, the common language of the time, caused them to be held up to ridicule [. . .]. The Nazarenes were contemptuously called by the old equivalent to our “dung,” am-ha-arets, men of the land, farmworkers.” (R. Aron, The Hidden Years of Jesus, Bilbao: Ediciones EGA, 1991, pp. 43-44)

13 . John 7:52.

14 . The questions having to do with Jesus: ‘why does a believer hold that his salvation is in Jesus Christ?’ as well as other questions of the same nature: ‘and who do you say that I am?’ can only be answered personally [. . .] because the question and the answer are only possible if previously there has been a non-transferable experience: the experience of the encounter.” [Translated quote] (Martín Gelabert, Salvación como humanización, Madrid: Ediciones Paulinas, 1985, p. 13)

15 . Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 83, 84.

16 . Ibíd., p. 116.

17 . The episode of Jacob’s dream is told in Genesis 28:10-22.

18 . Genesis 28:16, NKJV.

19 . Emmanuel Carrère, The Kingdom, Barcelona: Anagrama, 2015, p. 61.

20 . Jean Vanier, cited by Peter Van Breemen in The God Who Won’t Let Go, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2001, p. 98.

21 . Idea adapted from Danilo Dolci’s, Everyone Grows Only if Dreamt About.

22 . From the oldest of times to the Guinness era, our world extols champions.

23 . This expression is well known among Latinists, and it comes from the Latin poet Horacio (who lived from 65 to 8 BC. It appears for the first time in his Odes, Book II, (Ode number 10 to Licinio).

24 . In Spain, the term“ni-ni generation,” applies, since the first decade of 2000, to young people who neither study or work, and even more precisely to those who do not want to either study or work.

25 . In the religious field, a lukewarm attitude is usually referred to as “the Church in Laodicea» (Rev. 3:14-22).

26 . Dr. Augusto Cury talks about the wisdom of Jesus in this way: “There are two types of wisdom: and one is far superior to the other. The first type is measured by how much a person knows, but the second is gauged by the extent to which a person is conscious of how little he really knows.” True wise men are the most convict of their ignorance […]. Superior wisdom tolerates, inferior wisdom judges; superior wisdom relieves, inferior wisdom blames; superior wisdom forgives, inferior wisdom condemns. Inferior wisdom has diplomas, no one graduates in superior wisdom, there are no masters or doctors and everyone is an eternal apprentice.” (The Master of Love. Analysis of Christ’s Intelligence, Nashville: Grupo Nelson, 2008, p. 15)

27 . Ellen G. White, Ministry of Healing, p. 51.

28 . John 7:46.

29 . Matthew 5:47-48.

30 . “Jesus has taught something infinitely better than a sophisticated purification or a civic morality based on justice; he has sought to transform men in his likeness, according to the words of his announcer Ezekiel: ‘I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.’” (G. Papini, The Story of Christ, p. 326)

31 . In the Hebrew tradition, manual labor is sacred: “He who works for a living is greater than he who shuts himself up in idle piety,” Because God already put man in the Garden of Eden“to work it and take care of it” (Gen. 2:15). And the work is so honorable, they go on to add, that: “an artisan at his work does not need to defer to the greatest of doctors.” Therefore, to name just a few of the most prestigious rabbis, Hillel was a woodcutter, Yehuda a baker, and Yohanan a cobbler. The first great Christian rabbi, Saul of Tarsus, was a tentmaker (Acts 18:3).

32 . The word that our Bibles translate as “church” (ekklesia in Greek) means a gathering of people who have replied to an invitation (Matt. 16:18). “With the calling of John and Andrew and Simon, of Philip and Nathanael, began the foundation of the Christian church.” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 86)

33 . James 2:27.

34 . Matthew 22:37-40.

35 . cf. Enrique Rojas, Live your Life, Planeta: Temas de Hoy, 2013, p. 83.

36 . Luke 8:1-3 states that there were many female disciples; it mentions by name Mary Magdalene, Susanna and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’ household.

37 . Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 79.

38 . cf. Philippians 4:11.

39 . Philippians 4:13.

40 . Dionisio Byler, Jesus and Nonviolence, Terrassa: Clie, 1993, p. 48.

41 . Augusto Cury asserts: “If the political, social and educational worlds had minimally experienced what Christ experienced and taught, our miseries would have been eradicated, and we would have been a happier species.” (The Master of Masters, 2008, Thomas Nelson, pp. 189-190)

42 . “As the flower turns to the sun, that the bright beams may aid in perfecting its beauty and symmetry, so should we turn to the Sun of Righteousness, that heaven’s light may shine upon us, that our character may be developed into the likeness of Christ.” (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 69)

43 . Acts 9:2; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22.

3

The Call

The lake shines under the morning sun, dazzled by the white hamlet of the fishing town and the luminous sand of the beach. Its blue reflection is slightly broken by the breeze, which scatters a flight of seagulls over the still of the waters.1

Leaning against his boat, in the elusive shade of the sails, a young fisherman prepares his nets, while keeping watch over, on a rustic reed bed, a string of fish set out to dry.2

Repairing knots is not a pleasant task, and least of all after an evening of a fruitless catch.

With a tired gesture, Simon drops the old net on the sand and swipes the back of his arm across his forehead, pushing his wet curls back. His exposed back, weather-beaten by the elements, shudders for an instant, beaded with sweat.

Always the same, every day: in the evening, fishing; in the morning, to the market; then, to repair the nets; and much later, to try to sleep . . . to start again by nightfall. And like so, day after day, always the same. As if his life were trapped in nets even more tangled than those in his hands.

If only we could purchase new netting, we would not have to spend so much time each day repairing these, so worn and torn. But times are bad and loans are difficult to repay. . . .

Simon remains still, with his gaze lost in the horizon. The gleaming of the sun over the water forces him to half close his dream-filled eyes. He would prefer not to be a mere fisherman all his life, tethered to an old boat and some fragile nets. Especially now that he got married and must support his wife and his mother-in-law.

To be a fisherman in Capernaum is to doom oneself to a monotonous succession of nights fishing and of days struggling with runaway sleep. It is to continue being embroiled in a hopeless struggle against misery. Nothing can satisfy the desires of a heart like his, thirsty for adventures and (why not?) for greatness.

Simon dreams, just like some of his fellow fishermen, of getting out of there and filling his inner emptiness with something great. But the only incentive of each workday is the uncertain catch with which to fill the baskets that his wife takes every morning to the market: some days more, others less, but always the same routine.

Except today, as the Teacher whom his brother Andrew follows has approached him and has asked to borrow His boat. He wanted to speak more thoroughly with a group of followers, who absorb His words and do not let him leave the jetty. The fame of the Galilean has not ceased to spread throughout the region. A mixed crowd wants to hear in person from the man about whom incredible things are said.

Because the words of the Teacher have such charm that they ensnare like nets.

Many still remain there, unable to say goodbye, while the children splash around amid laughter and games along the beach.

Leaning on the boat, barefoot in the water, this tireless man addresses, friendly and patient, the people who crowd around him yearning for words of life. And every so often, extending His hand to the surface of the water, He splashes the little ones who run around teasing him, without caring that the edge of His robe gets wet.

Returning to his task, Simon’s attention is drawn back to his tangled knots.

The fisherman continues waiting for a decisive event that will separate him from his ties and transform his monotonous existence into an exciting adventure. Something similar to what his brother believes to have found by following the new Teacher, that rabbi whose charm he can’t seem to escape.

Other than that, nothing seems to change in his harsh life.

At the port of Capernaum, in this small inland lake, merchant ships will never arrive from distant lands, through which Simon—who has never been able to leave the surrounding areas—would like to travel.

Perhaps the army . . . The Romans continue recruiting soldiers for expeditions of conquest in remote regions. Who knows if thanks to Rome he could achieve a bit of glory, and his name would remain immortalized forever in the history of the world. But now that he is married, that sounds too unreal, and those chimeras soon vanish from his mind, erased like footprints in the sand, washed away by the incessant breaking of the waves at his feet.

His chest, weathered by the water and the sun, slowly rises in a nostalgic sigh and slowly sinks back down, defeated and helpless, such torrent of contained energy, that he does not find—and fears never finding—a channel whereby it would be worthwhile overflowing.

Sitting on the sand, Simon continues repairing the nets, while the sun slides over his tanned skin and sketches elusive shapes upon the rhythmic movement of his robust arms. His thoughts wander without rhyme or reason, crashing against the invisible prison walls of his reality: doomed to be a fisherman his entire life, depending everyday on a basket of fish. His future is discerned at the same time so predictable and uncertain like the waves upon which he risks his life every night to take his measly sustenance from the sea.3

But that is how the few inhabitants of that fishing town live: He, his brother, his parents, Zebedee and his children, his friends . . . Simon sometimes speaks to them about the sharp sting of his discontent and of his mad desire for improvement. His friends support him, but the burden of work itself keeps them from supporting his dreams, and they allow themselves to be led by the routine without thinking about anything other than daily sustenance, which they must at any cost go out in search of over the waves of this modest lake.

That same night the boats were already fishing when the moon appeared, in an exiguous crescent that hardly made it possible to view the silhouettes of the ships on the waves. Simon had waited for the right moment to cast the net. Upon the agreed sign, in silence, he went about as usual: releasing the mooring and slowly lowering, without noise, the weights from the side of the ship concealed by the shadows.

From the other boats arrived the stifled murmur of the same maneuver, as every night. Then came the more sensitive work of quickly hoisting the netting before the fish could escape. The catch depended in large part on the speed and skill of such maneuver. Simon was a skillful fisherman who knew his trade better than did most.

When he sensed the sign of apparent tugs, he raised the net in one sudden stroke. But it was empty. He had to try again, once again lowering the netting over the side of the boat. Having failed, the fisherman repeated this fruitless operation several times throughout the night.

Simon was exhausted. The joints in his arms were hurting, and that backache was striking again. The bitter taste of defeat burned his parched lips.

The cool wind of daybreak made his perspiring body quiver, exposing tiredness and the anger of failure. In a last attempt, he pulled from the rigs. This time, they offered resistance. His boggling eyes opened even wider to see the silvery reflections of the desired catch emerging to the surface. But a muted scrape breached the net, and it turned up empty and torn, perhaps ripped apart by the mast of an old sunken ship.

The catch, until now fruitless, had now become impossible.

The exiguous moon had disappeared. Shrouded by darkness, Simon dropped himself onto the wet nets, and could not hold back his tears of anger. He swore to himself that, if he could, he would leave the fishing.

It was beginning to get light and at the glare of dawn, the fishermen returned, silent and glum, to the dock.

Along with his brother and his friends, he had stayed to repair the nets, attempting to delay the terrible moment of returning home with empty baskets, without fish and with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

And it was then when the Teacher arrived.

Strangers usually did not arrive too early to that beach, but Andrew and John recognized Him on the spot and ran to meet Him. Simon, inhibited, kept looking at that unique rabbi who, some days ago, had dared to kid him about his name . . .

Wow, you’re name is Simon Bar Jonah —He had told him. That of being an “obedient son of the dove” sounds good or that of “faithful follower of Jesus.” I hope that you are less of a pessimist that the old prophet . . . I see you as tough rather than meek. It would suit you better to be named Kepa,4 let’s say, Peter: What do you think about Beach Pebble?

The fisherman, disconcerted, did not know what to respond. Because in reality that is how he saw himself, like a beach pebble, worn by routine, unable to move from the shore on his own. His brother later explained to him that the new Teacher felt emboldened to change names because He was determined to transform lives.5

Intrigued by the charm of the mysterious rabbi, He could not resist when the rabbi asked to borrow his boat that same morning.

What does that man have that makes Him so irresistible, so convincing? His demeanor, His resolve, that air of knowing what He wants, an I don’t know what in the glance . . . That is how he would like to be. Yes, he wanted to be like Him, with that moving personality.

And while pondering it, he notices that his heart beats stronger. That Teacher who had already transformed the life of his brother was now starting to disrupt him as well.