By [rhymes with kerouac]

I grew up in the small town of Port Hope, about an hour’s drive east of Toronto. Myself and a few other teenage friends went Christmas shopping in Toronto one cold December day, and in the early evening we found ourselves walking against a bitter wind on Yonge Street in the city’s downtown shopping district. It was there that I encountered my first homeless person, a wild-eyed man in filthy and tattered clothing who bellowed incoherently at unseen demons, his ragged, matted beard shaking with each roar.

The impression was a powerful one, and I have often wondered since if this might be how shocking John the Baptist appeared, all those centuries ago, as he stood in the Jordan River, heaping invective on the Pharisees.

The comparison might not be that far off, at least in terms of their appearance—but there was compelling truth in the baptizing prophet’s message. When he pointed to Jesus, walking down a back road of antiquity, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God…” two of his disciples left him. They stayed with Jesus overnight before one of them, Andrew, went home to fetch his brother Simon.

Upon meeting Simon, the Messiah promptly changed his name to “Peter,” signifying that he was the “rock” upon which the church would be built. This was, of course, a prophetic utterance that could not be fulfilled until Peter fully grasped the reality of who Christ was and began to live accordingly. It was a prophecy that saw not only the tremendous potential that was in Peter, but also the power of the Holy Spirit, and the journey that lay between the two. It was a promise that—at least in this instance—would have fallen by the wayside of history had Simon and Peter not forsaken all else in response to Christ’s offer. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

In response to that simple statement, two ordinary fishermen, on an ordinary day, doing the most ordinary thing in the world, found themselves walking away from their nets, their home and their livelihood to follow the most extraordinary person in history, and for no other reason than because he asked them to. Perhaps it was the promise that drew them away from their nets—that they would become “fishers of men.” With that one explanation, Jesus promised to transform what their entire life was about, to make their life about something completely and magnificently other than it was now, something beyond their wildest imaginations.

Yet how could they grasp the value of a promise whose fulfillment they could barely imagine, whose very premise was ill defined? The answer must, it seems, lie in the person who made the promise. This was, obviously, no ordinary man who summoned them from obscurity to become pivotal players in the dramatic sweep of history. Undoubtedly they saw the Son of God in this rabbi from Nazareth and were drawn—inexplicably to their mind, perhaps, but drawn nonetheless—to him.

As I ponder the calling of these two ordinary fishermen on that ordinary day, however, I feel a deeper secret calling me, a tug of mind and heart that I cannot shake, a sense that there’s something I’ve been missing. Jesus, Peter, Andrew—they won’t leave me alone.

On first inspection, it appears I’ve forgotten—perhaps we’ve all forgotten—the shock of recognition, the surprise, the wonder, the astounding power of the realization that it is Christ who has called us. We fill the practice of our faith with all manner of things that speak of Christ, deadening our wonder in familiarity. We have Christian music and books, magazines, clothing, jewelry, bumper stickers and key chains, Christian cruises, conferences, websites, blogs, Christian insurance companies and Christian labor unions and even—I swear, I’m not making this up—Christian mints.

Unfortunately, Christ often becomes entirely ordinary within this pleasantly toxic atmosphere, and it is this ordinariness that has slowly asphyxiated the wonder and mystery of God being present in our every day lives. The ordinariness of the Son of God among us has created a language of Christianity that is entirely pragmatic and worship that may be emotionally potent but is noticeably absent of awe.

As I ponder all of this, however, I wonder if the fishermen, beyond the initial excitement of being invited to disciple under this compelling rabbi, knew what following Jesus really meant. We have no way of knowing what Andrew and Peter thought, but as I consider the suddenness with which they walked away from their lives, and my own unwillingness to do the same, I am forced to consider just how astounding their actions truly were.

When John the Baptist bellowed and roared at the Pharisees, he called them a brood of vipers—a pit of snakes, if you will—in an image that must have resonated through their minds all the way back to the Garden of Eden. To say he didn’t mince words is an understatement—he condemned with righteous fury the religious leaders of Israel. Those who held the spiritual reins of the nation were publicly scorned by a wild-eyed and raving prophet standing up to his waist in the muddy waters of the Jordan, a prophet who then pointed out the new and better way. “Behold,” John said, “the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.”

When Andrew and his brother walked away from their nets, they fell in step with a revolutionary leader whose vision and passion for a new way of life—for an entirely new world—far outstripped their capacity to grasp it. Today, almost two thousand years later, we hear Christ still issuing that same call.

Yet for all our seminaries, bible colleges and myriad ministries to the Church, we have no more idea today than Andrew and Peter as to where this revolutionary leader wants to take us, the world he wants us to walk away from or the kingdom he wants to create; a kingdom where everything is the opposite of the world, where everything we thought was success is actually failure. We can’t hear the revolutionary sweep of his call because we’ve become the religious establishment—because we’re now the Pharisees.

A few nights ago, at the homeless shelter where I work, I sat and talked with a wizened old man named Scottie. He reeked of cigarette smoke and booze. His fingers and graying beard were stained yellow with nicotine; his clothes were stained by the street. He told me that God couldn’t love him anymore. He said, “If you can’t love God righteously, then God can’t love you back.” It took a minute for that to sink in, but when it did the words just tumbled out of my mouth. “Who on earth taught you that?”

I then asked if he knew John 3:16 and he recited it, perfectly. When I pointed out that God gave His Son—and proved his love—for Scottie long before he had been born, the man grew thoughtful and quiet. The fact that God might love a drunk was a revelation to him, and I can’t help but wonder what in God’s name we’ve been doing while guys like Scottie go about the business of getting from one day to the next, with absolutely no expectation of God’s love, with no one to even hint that God’s love might be possible for them.

I search through layers of thought, spend weeks considering the meaning of a few lines of scripture, and dwell, as deeply as I can, in the possibilities, the questions, the difficulties and the challenges they present. So much thought is required simply because everything is so ordinary, everything is so normal.

This revolutionary call of Christ to a life that is so magnificently other than the one we live now, that asks us to give with no expectation of receiving, to forgive with no reason or limit, to sacrifice ourselves in the service of others, to live in selfless community, is buried beneath generations of our church life and Christian culture. We can scarcely imagine our faith apart from a church building, so we rush to the latest conference to hear the latest author tell us how to live a missional life while our co-workers and next-door neighbors will never see the inside of our homes, while the lost and the dying on our downtown streets remain invisible.

Christ’s revolutionary call is buried deep beneath the ordinariness of our church life, under the normalcy of our culture. It’s buried so deep we hear it only as a distant, slightly unnerving echo of the primordial being who has come to live within us, and among us, while we remain cool and aloof to his otherworldly self. And what has been lost in this smothering ordinariness, with all of its safe practicality? What has it really cost to live as Christians without following Christ into a world that is absolutely, completely and totally alien, antithetical in every way, to our own? What price must the world pay for our unending compromise?

Perhaps it’s the words of Christ that contain the final clue, hidden in plain sight. “Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.”

[rhymes with kerouac] is the anonymous cook at a homeless shelter in Ontario, Canada. He is a follower of Jesus Christ and lover of all things Starbucks. You can find more of his observations at http://mission.squarespace.com/ and order a copy of his book “Today at the Mission.” All proceeds go to support the homeless shelter where he serves.