In today's gospel, Christ starts to recruit His apostles.
Peasant revolts are rare in history; until recently, most change in history came from the top. Sometimes an uprising occurs successful enough to leave its poor upstart leader drawn and quartered in some anonymous public square but it is unusual. Intellectual revolutions are different--a breakthrough thought will take the world by storm because it cannot be denied--but it is usually agonizingly slow, demanding confirmation after confirmation until the thought is no longer revolutionary, it is inevitable. (An exception might be the astonishing Joan of Arc.)
Today's gospel is a strange amalgam of both: A man who says he is God tries to change the entire structure of the world from below. Christ does not recruit in the temples, does not go to the philosophers or the priests. Instead He goes to the docks in search of fishermen. Unless He is building His entire revolution around a great line, the "fisher of men" line, why would he seek His followers there?
There is a lot of angst of late over the nature of genetics and knowledge. Over "expertise." There is a famous discussion about the failure of Long Term Capital Management, an investment company run on principles devised by Nobel Prize winning economists, whose ideas failed and would never have passed an even casual assessment by five guys having a beer in a bar after work. Christ, here, seems to be turning to the average guy to see the value of His teachings. While He certainly is purposely "starting anew," it is as if Christ is appealing to a knowledge that He knows is already there.
Peasant revolts are rare in history; until recently, most change in history came from the top. Sometimes an uprising occurs successful enough to leave its poor upstart leader drawn and quartered in some anonymous public square but it is unusual. Intellectual revolutions are different--a breakthrough thought will take the world by storm because it cannot be denied--but it is usually agonizingly slow, demanding confirmation after confirmation until the thought is no longer revolutionary, it is inevitable. (An exception might be the astonishing Joan of Arc.)
Today's gospel is a strange amalgam of both: A man who says he is God tries to change the entire structure of the world from below. Christ does not recruit in the temples, does not go to the philosophers or the priests. Instead He goes to the docks in search of fishermen. Unless He is building His entire revolution around a great line, the "fisher of men" line, why would he seek His followers there?
There is a lot of angst of late over the nature of genetics and knowledge. Over "expertise." There is a famous discussion about the failure of Long Term Capital Management, an investment company run on principles devised by Nobel Prize winning economists, whose ideas failed and would never have passed an even casual assessment by five guys having a beer in a bar after work. Christ, here, seems to be turning to the average guy to see the value of His teachings. While He certainly is purposely "starting anew," it is as if Christ is appealing to a knowledge that He knows is already there.
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