by Rev. Rodgers Spencer

I don’t know exactly what I was expecting that morning when he said to us, "Come, follow me and I will make you fishers of men."

It was not as thought Andrew, you know my brother, and I were unhappy working for our father. That was just the way things were then. Had he been shepherd, I guess we would have been shepherds as well. But we were mending nets not tending sheep. He just looked at us, how shall I describe that look, he looked intensely, no compellingly, --he looked s right in the eye , not some casual glance, but in the eye, and said, "follow me."

No one had even spoken like that to us before or since.

I looked at my brother and without a word between us, we both dropped what we were doing and follow him.

To this day, I don’t think father ever understood.

And we weren’t the only ones who dropped what they were doing and follow him.

Why shortly thereafter we came upon James and John, who were also fishermen, and they too dropped their nets and follow him. We four just seemed to bond together. Yes, there were others who also joined us, but the 4 of us just seemed special. I will get to that in a moment.

But the authority of his voice was just amazing. Let me tell you of a few things and see if you don’t agree with me.

There was this time when Centurion, you know a commander of 100 soldiers, came up to him and said that his servant was lying ill and paralyzed at home and in terrible distress [8:5] and the master said, that he would be glad to go to his home. But the centurion said, "no" he didn’t need to come, but only to said the word, give the command so his servant could be healed. "Give the command – your words have authority." And Jesus did and within the hour that servant was healed. What power, what authority there is in his word.

Never, ever seen anything like that.

But that power was not limited to his word only. That power was in his silence as well. Yes, without saying a word miracles occurred. The first time this involved my mother-in-law. She was confined to bed with a bad fever and he only took her hand and the fever left her. Just amazing.

Then just when I though that I had seen it all, I was in for another surprise. We were all in a boat out on the lake when then storm came up. I mean a storm! I had been caught off guard before in storms but never like this one. We were taking on water and the waves were so high that I thought that we would capsize. And there He was, sleeping through the whole thing. We had to wake him and he just wondered why we were all excited. I wanted to say, "well if you had stayed awake you would know why." But I thought better of it. Anyway, when he realized the situation we were in, he just said, to the wind –"be calm." And they were. Can you believe that? Rebuking the wind – now that’s authority!

But the surprises for that day weren’t over. After we got across the lake, two demoniacs came out of the tombs and at his command the demons life the men and entered a herd of swine which ran off the cliff and into the sea. Well the farmers weren’t happy with us because of the loss of the pigs so we had to leave.

Amazing things just happened when he spoke.

I am certain that you have heard of them time where he took five loaves of bread and two fish and after giving thanks, he feed 5,000 and there were even leftovers! And His teaching just attracted such large crowds. Taking the old familiar words and giving them a new twist. "You have heard before… but I say to do. It all made so much sense. No wonder he gather such crowds.

Then there was the time he tool James, John, Andrew and myself up the mountain and away from the rest. Didn’t know what to expect. Certainly didn’t expect what did happen.

This mist, or cloud came over the mountain where we were, and suddenly it seamed as though Moses and Elijah were also there. I know it sounds odd, but believe me, I was there, don’t ask me how I knew it was Moses and Elijah, but I just seem to know. Moses, the great law giver, the great leader of our people out of exile, and Elijah, the first of the great prophets, - there they were talking to Jesus. And the master had always said, "think not that I have come to abolished the law and the prophets but to fulfill, the law and prophets. It was almost as if they were affirming what he had said.

I was impressed. Very impressed.! And then when we hear the voice as if coming out of cloud, saying "this is my beloved listen to him"

It seemed to me that we needed to remember this spot, that we needed to commemorate this occasion. This was something very special.

So I didn’t think that my suggestion of building three booths, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and one for Jesus was too bad. After all, we would be honoring our great law giver and leader out of exile Moses, we would be recognizing one of our great prophets, and Jesus, what was so wrong with that? If you didn’t honor Moses and Elijah who would you honor from our past? I thought it was a pretty good idea, and still don’t see too much wrong with it. But he just ignored my suggestion.

I was ready to linger there a little longer, maybe something more would come, I don’t know, but I didn’t want to go back down to where the crowd was. There people were waiting to be cured. People were hurting and needed him.

I wanted to stay on that mountain top and saver that moment –but he would not all us to do that.

That moment there seemed to give him the vision and courage to go on and to meet the challenges before him.

What I wanted to do was to remain there and enjoy that moment – maybe that is what he is always calling to do. To go and meet the challenges and the opportunities that are before us.

Yes, to listen to him, I know it is hard to do at times, other voices seem so strong, other ideas seem so good. But he said that if we have faith in him, we can do great things,