I must confess that for years I have tried my hand at fishing, but the Izaak Walton League would be sure to look the other way if I applied for membership. To be sure, growing up in Wisconsin I did try my luck at some of those beautiful trout streams. But you would have been unwise to wait with a hearty appetite while I tried to catch our dinner. And, yes, my friends and I did go fishing on the nearby Mississippi River. And, yes, we did throw in a line from time to time, but at that age -- our teenage years -- we were far more interested in racing our motorboats up and down the river and jumping the wake of the huge barges and tugboats.

I was not much of a fisherman nor was I the son of a fisherman. But my daughters were a different story, especially when they were quite young. While vacationing on a lake in northern Michigan, I would take them out in the boat to a well-known spot to fish for bass. I would help them bait their hooks. They would throw in their lines, and almost before I got my line in the water, they were hauling in bass. One after another they would reel them in with gleeful excitement. And on my fishing line -- nothing, zero! Now and then I will still drop a line off my sailboat, but with no success. I admit it. I was not and am not much of a fisherman.

But Peter, Andrew, James, and John were a different matter. Living on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, they with their fathers were professional, commercial fishermen. This small, oval-shaped lake, twelve by seven miles, had long been an important source of fish not only for Palestine, but for export to places as distant as Rome. The Jewish historian Josephus tells us that in his time (shortly after Christ) at least 130 fishing boats sailed Galilee. Their catches were salted and sent everywhere as a staple in their diets. While Peter, Andrew, James, and John were not wealthy, they were not poor either. Apparently successful in their businesses, they owned their own boats and used hired help to expand their operation. Like most fishermen, they knew the importance of timing, location, bait, and patience. And like many fishermen, they no doubt had a kind of mystical appreciation of the sea and the weather and all the world of nature.

It was while these successful fishermen were mending their nets on the seashore that Jesus, the ex-carpenter and would-be leader of men, approached them. "Follow me," he said directly and dramatically, "and I will make you fishers of men." So they left their fathers, their boats and nets, and the hired help and followed him. Such was the beginning of Jesus' ministry -- changing fishermen into fishers of men, converting businessmen who fed people physically to kingdom men who fed people spiritually. They left an occupation to respond to a vocation -- a calling. Instead of luring fish into their nets, Jesus lured them into luring people to join in their cause. In place of the comfortable, settled, bourgeois life of Palestine, they were challenged to the uncertainties of campaigning for the Messianic Age, for the Kingdom of God Jesus was announcing.

And ever since Jesus has been calling disciples to his cause, luring men and women away from mere occupation to vocation, enlisting them in a spiritual army to do battle with evil, calling them away from the settled, comfortable life to the high seas of adventure, boldly announcing they were out to the change the world.

Over the centuries there have been many kinds of disciples. But today let us consider at least two types which must be held in balance -- academics and fanatics.

I.

Let's consider fanatics first.

It must be admitted that the word "fanatic" does not have a popular ring to it. It conjures images of wild-eyed, frenzied commitment to a cause, no questions asked. It suggests unswerving devotion, unquestioning allegiance, and fierce loyalty. No alternatives are considered. For the fanatic, his way is the one, right way. And when joined to the word "religious," the notion of religious fanatic breeds a negative reaction in most of us. However, when we use the shortened version of fanatic, the word is softer and more acceptable. And what is the shortened version? The word "fan," as in sports fan or race fan or fan club. A fan club is literally a club of fanatics, which seems to be entirely acceptable when attached to sports heroes, celebrities, or rock music stars. Political fanatics are much less acceptable and religious fanatics least acceptable of all.

A man in one church recalled how during football season he and his son watched football on television the whole weekend. On Saturdays it was college football, on Sundays professional football, and then to cap it off professional football on Monday evenings. This same father was uncomfortable with his son being away for a weekend religious retreat, fearing his son might turn into a religious fanatic! I asked him if he thought being a sports fan was okay for his son. Of course, he replied. But when I pointed out that "fan" is the shortened form of "fanatic," he was taken aback. His long-neglected wife, a football widow of the first rank, wondered aloud why it was perfectly acceptable to be a football fanatic and not a religious fanatic. "Because," replied her husband without thinking, "unlike a religious fanatic, a football fanatic can be perfectly harmless." "Yes," said the long-unnoticed football widow, "I can vouch for that!"

Nevertheless, we are rightly concerned about religious fanaticism -- a religious devotion and fervor which refuses to admit any questions or to raise any doubts. History is replete with atrocities committed in the name of religion. Think of the ancient religions of Mexico and Central America where virgin girls were sacrificed to ensure the rising of the sun. Or consider the sacrifice of sons and daughters in the ancient Near East to appease angry gods. Or recall the mass suicide of the Jimmy Jones devotees in Guyana a few years ago. Or think of the Ayatollah Khomeni enlisting children and young people to run through Iraqi minefields, promising them immediate entrance into paradise.

Of course, the questioning can go on and on. One man's convictions are another man's fanaticism. But, we ask, what about religions that refuse blood transfusions or the use of doctors or medicine, or religions that keep women and minorities as second-class persons, or religions that endorse caste and class and corrupt political establishments? Think of wars fought as holy wars, vicious wars in the name of God. Even the holy wars of the Bible where herem or holocaust was practiced, which meant the complete destruction of all men, women, children, cattle, and possessions of the enemy. History is replete with the devoted, destructive fervor of religious fanatics.

That is why Jesus called disciples to himself, not fanatics. The word "disciple" means "learning follower." Therefore, a disciple is not just one who blindly follows a leader, but one who learns as he or she follows. Common in the ancient world, great teachers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle gathered disciples about them who both followed and learned. And in the manner of Jewish rabbis of the time, Jesus gathered disciples, or learning followers, around him. It is interesting to note that his disciples most often called him rabbi, or teacher, or master. Learning was a part of discipleship.

Many Christians have suffered tremendously on this side of the equation. What following of Jesus we have done has not been well thought-out. Once our children are confirmed, we rarely see them again. For some strange reason we have felt our educational task was complete. So we send them off to college with at best a second or third grade religious education and then wonder why they fall away from the faith.

In many churches adult education is almost nonexistent. Many adults have not seriously opened a Bible or mature book of theology in years. And if we do read devotional books they often are the pabulum type written by the likes of Roy Rogers and Trigger! Ours is not a fanaticism of devotion but of indifference. Our fanaticism is not a flagrant fervor of authoritarian self-righteousness, but a studied avoidance of any religious commitment at all. When Jesus comes close to us in our occupations we tend to cling tighter and tighter to the boats and nets rather than take the risk of leaving them. Fearful of fanaticism, we founder on nihilism -- nothingism.

Jesus said the two great commandments summed up all religion. The first great commandment is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Unthinking discipleship will not do. A lazy mind and indolent brain are not what Jesus had in mind when he called people toward God. Why is it, he might ask, that Christians believe they must check their minds and intelligence at the door of the church?

In many parts of the world people are participating in the knowledge explosion. However, at the same time many Christians are experiencing a knowledge fizzle. We want a Reader's Digest Bible where Adam and Eve goofed, Noah cruised on a rainy weekend, and God gave two or three suggestions.

Ignorance will not lead the world of tomorrow, nor will fanatic devotion to memories of faded realities. If we Christians are going to stop retreating from the world with our tail between our legs, and turn around and lead, we are going to have to get smart. We are going to have to get a "thinking man's" religion again, to love God with our minds as well as our emotions and sentiments.

To be sure, true religion has to do with the heart, with the feelings and emotions, with, as Pascal said, the reasons of the heart, which the mind (that is, the cold, rational mind) knows not of. To be sure, religion has to do with the soul, the will, the inmost decision-making center of the self. And, yes, it has to do with strength, with energy and action. But to all fanatics, to all authoritarian religions convinced God is in their box and possessed by their religious system, to all true believers who never doubt their views, Jesus might say in the words of Oliver Cromwell, "I beseech you brethren, by the mercies of God, think it possible you might be mistaken."

Yes, Jesus calls us to discipleship -- thinking, learning discipleship accompanied by devotion and energy.

II.

If some of Jesus' disciples have tended to be fanatics, others have tended to be academics.

I must confess that I have a definite sympathy for this kind of discipleship. My world has long been the world of classrooms, libraries, lecture halls, and seminars. After spending four years in college and six years in graduate schools with four earned degrees, I find my life still resonates to the rhythm of the academic calendar. Each fall the college campus has a certain allure for me. And when the snow falls, I can be very content in the library or seminar room. Adventures of the mind have always excited me. The same is true of the life with books and magazines. My study is lined with packed bookshelves and stacks of books on credenza and tables. And my study and bedrooms at home are full of magazines and books. My wife shudders each time we pass a bookstore!

And yet, for all my love of the life of the mind, Jesus' call for discipleship is more than a call for scholarship. Jesus did not command his disciples to be just thinkers, but to be lovers -- and loving is an activity more inclusive than thinking. Just think of the devastation and destruction brought upon the world by great thinkers who were not great lovers. We now are challenged to use our great thinking to love the earth and our fellow humans rather than destroy them with weapons, technology, and pollution.

But perhaps the greatest weakness of the academic disciple is not evil action but the triple A's of academia -- aloofness, abstruseness, and abstraction. Obsessed with the notion of pure thought and pure science, the academic disciple never comes down to earth to sully his or her hands with the harsh realities of daily life.

The academic type disciple is a modern-day agnostic or dualist who believes God is known through thought more than action. If God is pure Mind, they reason, then one can get closest to God by thinking his thoughts after him. God is best known, they argue, in the latest thoughts of the leading colleges, universities, and authors. Thus, the academic world becomes the Holy of Holies of the modern world wherein one enters with a 4.0 GPA and the highest SAT scores and the best recommendations and essays. Ours is, therefore, salvation by knowledge, entrance into the best life has to offer by being "in the know."

More than that, the academic disciple begins to exude the self-righteousness of the old Pharisee. Unless we know the right phrases, buzzwords, and "in" topics, unless we are "in the know," we are outsiders, despised and rejected by the intellectual snobs who believe God is summed up in their latest systems, concepts, and theories. Alas, many of our colleges and seminaries tend to be caught up in intellectual Phariseeism, a kind of irrelevant academic snobbery content in publishing books and papers largely to be read by their peers.

The academic types tend to be like those who say, "Lord, Lord," but never do anything Jesus asks them to do. They tend to be like those described by James who say to needy people, "Be warmed, be filled and clothed, and go your way," without ever giving them the food and clothing they need to be warm and full. As Paul once put it, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." The Mother Teresas of the world know what he means.

The academic types emphasize being as opposed to doing. If they criticize the activists for acting without thinking, the activists criticize them for thinking without acting. If they invariably delay action by appointing study committees ad infinitum, activists tend to do now and to ask questions later. Academics want to serve God, but usually only in an advisory capacity. They tend to withhold commitment and involvement. And the answers to the burning religious questions are, observed Soren Kierkegaard, promised in their next book, which only raises more questions, with answers delayed to yet the next book. Academic types tend to be disciples at second hand, whereas Jesus is looking for disciples at first hand, says philosopher Soren Kierkegaard -- disciples who take the leap of faith, who make the commitment of both thinking and acting, of being and doing, of reflecting and recruiting.

The fanatic types lead with their hearts, the academic types with their heads. If like Peter, the fanatics want the Kingdom of God right now, the academic types like John tend to be mystical, reserved, and thinking of a Kingdom of God in some distant future. If the fanatics embarrass the academics by their energy and action, the academics embarrass the fanatics by their wisdom and foresight. If the fanatics tend to be self-righteous about how much they have done, the academics tend to be self-righteous about how well they have thought.

Neither fanaticism nor academism by themselves will do for discipleship. The word "disciple" means "learning follower." It is the root of the word "discipline." And the discipline required of Jesus' disciples is thinking and acting, learning and following.

You may be like me -- not much of a fisherman. But Jesus calls all to renewed discipleship, to follow him toward new goals and priorities, to be faithful fishers of men, like Peter, Andrew, James, and John. And look how they changed the world.

Prayer:

Eternal God, who has brought us to life in this world, wonderful and sometimes strange, and who has created us for worship of something higher than ourselves, we give you praise and thanks for your gifts to us.

You have not abandoned us in the universe, but through lawgivers, prophets, and apostles, through poets, writers, and artists, through musicians, thinkers, and researchers, through ministers, counselors, and teachers, we have received the words of enlightenment and the spirit of inspiration. And now, in these latter times of your grand scheme of things entire, you have spoken to us through your son Jesus, who has become your very Word for us. How impoverished our lives would be without all the literature, music, art, architecture, and grace and love inspired by him. We give thanks for your revelation and guidance by means of Jesus.

It is for us to confess our waywardness and fickle devotion to what we have learned from Jesus. The pressures of daily life, the challenges to get ahead, the search for approval and approbation from our peers sometimes cause us to forget the loyalty and allegiance we once swore to Jesus as Lord and Master. We acknowledge we have paid more attention to our doubts than to his challenge to doubt our doubts. Determined to keep up on the daily news, we have neglected the eternal truths to be found in your Word. Striving to be "in the know" for the present age, we have avoided searching for the truths for the age to come. Forgive our dalliance and diffidence, O God, and empower us anew for more devoted discipleship.

We pray not only for ourselves, but also for all our brothers and sisters of the faith throughout the world. Especially do we ask you to bless with wisdom and strength the Christians of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Help them be faithful disciples to give new leadership toward a grand new life for their people. For the church in China we ask encouragement and faith and sagacity, that it might continue its faithful witness even in times of adversity. And for churches in this land, in this city, in this very place, we pray renewed vision and strength. Help us all once again to give up worship of the self or money or nation, to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses of discipleship to follow our Lord into the new age he has prepared for us. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.