As I was growing up I would get asked the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" For a long time, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to grow up at all. It was pretty nice being a kid. Sure I had to clean my room and do my homework but over all it was a pretty good deal. But then there were those days when I most definitely wanted to grow up. I would think to myself that when I grow up I was never going to have to clean my room again and somebody else would take out the trash. I would never have to do anything I didn’t want to do.

Eventually I began to come up with answers to the question. So when I would get asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I would respond, "a lawyer or a judge or prima ballerina for the New York City Ballet." Some days I would even respond that I wanted to be pope so that I could fix a lot of what I saw wrong in the world. There were of course some restrictions on that position – so that one was rather out of the realm of reality.

That question echoed throughout my childhood and on into adulthood – What do you want to be? It would come out of the mouths of relatives and mentors. But it wasn’t part of every day conversation. The every day question was different. It wasn’t searching for some great and far-reaching response. The every day question was, "What do you want to do?" There is a difference between asking what do you want to be and what do you want to do. Sure there can be a connection between the two. In order to be what you want to be you have to do certain things. In order to become a minister I knew that I had to go to college and seminary and I had to do the various paperwork the denomination requires. There were steps that I had to do as I worked to become what I felt called to become.

As I was watching some of the coverage of the Inauguration on Tuesday, the newscasters were talking about the geography of the area around the national mall. One of them said that she was still rather unfamiliar with the area even though she had been briefly employed as a bike messenger in DC. One of the other anchors said, "Wait a minute, you were a bike messenger in DC?" "Yes," she replied, "that was step 57 of becoming a news anchor." The group laughed and moved on to talk about other things. But as I thought about what she said I began to realize that she was doing certain things in order to become something – of course as she pedaled around DC on her bike, I doubt she was thinking that she would soon be covering a Presidential Inauguration on a national news network.

So we have steps along the way that we do in order to become what we want to become. But the things that we do are not what we are. Let me try to be a little clearer. If you are a nurse you take patient histories, monitor vital signs, administer care and various other tasks – but all these tasks are things that you do because of what you are. Your identity is that of nurse and the tasks that you do grow out of that identity.

When Jesus was walking along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and called out to Simon and Andrew, he was calling them to a new identity. They had been fishermen and as fishermen they cast out nets, caught fish, mended nets, and brought the fish to market. Jesus called out to them and said that he would change their identity. No longer would they be fishermen but they would become fishers for people.

Some of the translations read, "I will make you fish for people" rather than "I will make you fishers of people." At first glance it may seem as though there is no great difference between "fish for people" and "fishers for people." But there is a major difference. If Jesus told Simon and Andrew that he would make them fish for people then he would only have been calling them to do a different task. However, by calling Simon and Andrew to become fishers for people, Jesus was calling them to a new identity. No longer would they be fishermen and do the tasks that fishermen do but they would shift their identity and become fishers for people and do the tasks associated with that. Jesus was calling them to a new identity – not just a new task.

I like to make a lot of lists. I make lists of what I need to get at the store and most importantly I make lists of what tasks I need to do in a given day or a given week. So for instance part of my list for this week went something like this:

That’s just a snippet but you get the idea. Each of the items on this list are specific tasks that I had for this week. When I completed a task I could mark through it on my list – it had been completed.

So if Jesus called Simon and Andrew to fish for people that could have been just one more item to add to their list for the day.

It would be just one more thing to check off at the end of the day. So that’s why it is important that Jesus didn’t tell Simon and Andrew that he would make them fish for people but that they would become fishers for people.

If one is a fisher for people then the tasks that one does will flow from that identity. But what in the world does Jesus mean by telling Simon and Andrew that they will become fishers for people? When I was growing up and heard this passage, I would imagine Simon and Andrew going out into crowded marketplaces with their rod and reel casting into the crowd, hoping to hook someone and reel them in to Christ. But that isn’t exactly what Jesus is talking about here. He wasn’t just calling Simon and Andrew to exchange their fishing hole and do the same tasks on dry land. With a change in identity comes a change in tasks.

When Jesus was calling Simon, Andrew, James, and John to follow him, he was calling them to become disciples. They would change their identity from fishermen on the Sea of Galilee to disciples of Christ. Discipleship is an identity, not a task.

If discipleship were a task, we could add it to our daily lists:

But discipleship isn’t just a task that we can do each day and then cross off our list. Discipleship is an identity – not a task. If discipleship is our identity then the tasks that we list for the day will spring from that identity. So the list of tasks for a disciple may look something like:

These tasks, though mundane, stem from one’s identity as disciple. Being a disciple or follower of Jesus isn’t something that we do. It is something we become.

The call has gone out and we have confessed ourselves to be disciples. What tasks do we need to do in order to fulfill that identity?