Quick Summary:

In today’s gospel reading we witness the roll-out of Jesus’ public ministry as two sets of brothers leave their nets behind and follow him. Something fundamental shifted within these four fishermen when Jesus engaged them, and it led to an external act: they left the boat and their father and followed him.

What does it mean to follow Christ in our day and time? For many of us today the focus of this question has become: How do I, how do we, put “following Jesus” into practice in our daily lives? In her book Christianity After Religion, in the chapter entitled BEHAVING, Diana Butler Bass reminds us that throughout its first five centuries Christianity was understood primarily as a set spiritual practices that offered a meaningful way of life in this world—not as a neat set of doctrines, an esoteric belief, or the promise of heaven. In fact, early Christianity was not called “Christianity” at all. It was called “the Way,” and its followers were called “the People of the Way.”