The Fisherman Read Free Page A

him. Nor was there even a hint of that hideous charismatic facade I detest in so many of the self-styled messiahs parading about the country in recent years.
    He was alone when we arrived, sitting on a rock, apparently enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. I remember having the distinct impression he knew we were coming and had been waiting for us. He greeted Andrew and told him it was good to see him again. Then he looked at me. At first he didn’t say a word. He just smiled. To my credit, I had one thing right—his eye contact was remarkable. But even that was not as I had anticipated. When he looked at me, I suddenly felt as if I had known this man my whole life. No, that’s not it. What I really felt was that he had known me my whole life. He knew me, and he liked me, and he placed a high value on my friendship. The first words I heard him speak seemed to confirm what I was feeling. “You are Simon the son of John; you shall be called Peter.”
    I suddenly understood what Andrew had been trying to tell me. I don’t know how he knew my name or the name of our father. He just knew. And it seemed right that he knew. And here is the amazing thing: His supernatural knowledge didn’t make him seem supernatural! I have thought much about this since those days when he was here.
    I know words will fail me in my attempt to share this, but I must try. You see, it was impossible to meet Jesus without being confronted with his tremendous spiritual power and knowledge. He possessed an authority that was rooted not in any position he held but simply in who he was. But the amazing thing is that those qualities were all contained within his obvious humanity in such a way that, though you could never deny his power and authority, those qualities never caused you to draw away from him in fear or awe. He was truly the most approachable man a person could ever meet.
    It wasn’t as though a supernatural being had squeezed himself into human skin, like you might expect if you met an angel. At the end of the day, you never anticipated catching a glimpse of him heaving a sigh of relief as he yanked off his cloak and finally stretched out a massive pair of wings crammed under his clothing. He was obviously a man. But he was a man who somehow possessed incredible insight, and power, and authority, and you kept asking yourself how someone who was just a man could possess such qualities.
    I think his approachability must have had something to do with the way in which he never used his supernatural abilities for personal gain. He never had an angle or an ulterior motive. He never used another human being. It was something none of us had ever seen before. We all knew men and women who held positions of authority, and we knew, too, the way that authority corrupted those who possessed it. But to be in the presence of a person who possessed absolute authority, yet who exercised that authority with the absolute absence of corruption, did not fit with anything we had ever experienced. It changed all the rules.
    Those first twelve words the Master spoke to me were perhaps the most important words I ever heard him speak. I came with my mind filled with questions, with suspicions, with a determination to get some explanations. I came to do battle. Then, in a single sentence, before I even opened my mouth, Jesus told me everything I needed to know. He told me he knew me. He told me he knew my past. And, most amazing of all, he knew my future! “You shall be called Peter”—the Rock!
    Now where did that come from? I didn’t know, but I liked it. I liked the name, of course. Who wouldn’t? The Rock! It had a great ring to it. I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it myself. But there was something I liked even better—I liked the thought that my future was somehow tied up with this man.
    I drew all the wrong conclusions, of course. I assumed he recognized my obvious natural leadership skills, my