The so-called Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) offer slightly varying reports about the sequence of events that took place once Jesus returned to Capernaum. Matthew in particular tends to follow themes, not precise chronology. For now, we will use Luke’s account, simply because it offers more details of the calling of the disciples into full-time ministry.
At the start of His preaching tour of Galilee, Jesus stopped by where four of His disciples were engaged in their normal vocation: fishing at the north end of the Sea of Galilee. The same crowd that had asked Him to stay in Capernaum were going to receive one last session with Him. He had Simon push back one of their boats so He could speak from the pulpit (the actual name for the seat in the prow of the boat).
We note from the context that it seems Simon was the senior partner. And while Andrew isn’t mentioned, he must have been there. James and John, Sons of Zebedee, are mentioned.
Peter and his crew had been fishing all night, which was about the only time fish were up near the surface enough to get caught in a net. Once daylight dawned, the fish typically headed down into the deeps, which also meant swimming far out from the shore. After His message, Jesus turned to Peter who had sat patiently manning the oars to push the boat just out from the shore, and keep it in place while Jesus spoke to the crowd. He suggested that Peter and his crew push out and drop the nets.
Peter objected for the most sensible common grounds that fish weren’t caught in daylight at this time of year. However, he summoned the rest who had been cleaning the nets and they hauled them back into the boat. Peter knew he needed to humor his Master, because that was simply part of being a disciple, even if the Master apparently knew nothing about fishing.
So both boats pushed out a ways, and dropped the nets. Immediately they were full of fish, a catch that had never been before, and would probably never be seen again. It was enough to start breaking the strands of the fishing net. They just barely got it into the boats, which were then overloaded almost to the point of sinking before the net had been fully hauled up.
At this point, Peter had seen multiple miracles from his Master, but this was something he truly understood. He was unworthy to follow as this man’s disciple; it was one of Peter’s better moments. You can bet the other three were in agreement with this, after Simon took the lead. But Jesus said it was time to stop worrying about fishing in the sea and to start fishing for souls of men. This was the signal for the moment they probably were expecting, so they left the whole business in the hands of their relatives and servants, and took up the life of full time discipleship with Jesus.
Our narrative loop is closed; we have caught up to the point were Jesus calls His disciples full time.
Luke goes on to tell us that, in one of the Galilean cities, Jesus encountered a leper. Given how imprecise the term was in the Bible, we cannot be sure this was actually Hansen’s Disease. The label “leprosy” would cover a much wider range of afflictions on skin and extremities. The point is that there was a protocol under the Covenant of lepers warning off regular folks. But there’s nothing about this that keeps Jesus from touching the man, only a handful of rituals for dealing with ritual defilement.
The man announced that he knew Jesus could heal him, if He was willing. Jesus said He was willing, and this time it was the health that was contagious. Jesus instructed him to go through the rituals for showing himself cleansed, but the man could hardly contain himself and the good news even as he made ready to make the long hike to Jerusalem. It seems the primary reason Jesus wanted the man to go straightway to the Temple was obvious: He already had too many people crowding around Him and there was never enough time to be alone with His Father.
It’s doubtful anyone can explain what it was like for Jesus. If you don’t experience that deep longing to spend time alone with God, no one can make it more clear. The power of Creation itself resides in the personal relation between Creator and Creature. The mission of the Messiah called for even more of that, because He was in the awkward place of being the only sinless soul in an ocean of deeply afflicted people, His own family. The primary problem was that all these sorrows He encountered were the result of how they had all been alienated from God and the Covenant. The power to overcome lay in renewing the one thing Jesus had that was missing from all these lost sheep. It was necessary to keep His cup full if He was going to put something in their empty cups.
Luke doesn’t give us the whole setting for the next event. At some point in His tour, Jesus returned home by boat to Capernaum. He tried to rest, but within a few days folks realized He was back and crowded around Him at Peter’s home. So He went through another teaching session, but this time He knew the audience included a significant number of Pharisees who were snooping around.
The pattern had already been established back in His first visit to Judea after His baptism: Jesus presented Himself as a rabbi, but wasn’t following any of the established schools of teaching. Instead, He taught from His own authority, and had the audacity to back it up with miracles. He made the Pharisees look back, so they sent inspectors to team up on Him, looking for some legalistic flaw according to their traditions.
So, while He was teaching, some enterprising fellows brought a paralyzed friend, but couldn’t get in the door. The homes of men like Peter had one main entrance on the street, then a walled-in courtyard, and then the house sat at the back of the lot. Typically the wall around the courtyard was continuous with the walls of the house. It was rare that the flat roof wasn’t used for something like storage, drying stuff in the sun, a patio of sorts, etc. These fellows came around to the back side of the walls of the house and found a way to climb up on the roof. They bore their paralyzed buddy up to the flat roof surface and tore into it. It was usually dried clay, often in the form of tiles, resting on woven wattle, so this wasn’t too hard, but it made a mess and was pretty noisy in the room below.
Once they had a big enough hole, they lowered their buddy down on ropes tied to the corners of a blanket litter. They managed to estimate correctly, because the paralyzed man ended up hanging right in front of Jesus. Everyone was convinced by Pharisaical doctrine that anyone in this sad condition was most likely a sinner, and that he must have sinned in the womb to be born this way. Nobody was willing to grasp the idea that it was caused by how far the leadership of the Jews had drifted from the Covenant.
So Jesus attacked the real problem that must have troubled this man for years. He told the man that his sins were forgiven. Because of their legalistic training, the Pharisees immediately began rejecting the message internally. To them, Jesus was elevating Himself to God’s place. Jesus answered their silent arguments out loud. What different would it make if He had said either, “your sins are forgiven” or if He said, “rise up and walk.”
On the one hand, the paralyzed man needed to know he wasn’t at fault. Healing his body without first healing his tormented soul would be pointless, since the mission was to restore the Covenant that should have protected him in the first place. But then we are distracted by the question Jesus addressed for the Pharisees. The term “Son of Man” was simply Jesus’ way of saying that He was a human operating under that Covenant. Yes, humans can forgive sins, at the very least in that they can know the heart of God and announce that mercy is available, particularly in the face of false guilt.
But to ensure that they understood His authority under the Covenant, Jesus then told the man to get out of the litter and go home. This he did, having the presence of mind to gather up his litter and take it with him. He walked out praising his God, and the people broke into pandemonium. The Pharisees could not have said anything in front of this crowd. Nothing had changed their minds, of course, but they weren’t stupid enough to shout down such a celebration, even if they did despise the common people as accursed and ignorant of “the Law” as they saw it.
The trend of escalating confrontation is clearly established. Jesus was carrying forward the torch of His cousin, John the Baptist, calling for the nation to restore the Covenant relationship with the Father. The leadership were determined to protect their position by preventing that very thing from happening. They had long since surrendered to the idols of their own making, sticking the name “Jehovah” on a characterization of God that was vastly different from what He revealed through more than a thousand years of history. Jesus was pulling down their palace of lies by seeking to restore the ancient Hebrew understanding of things.
