Joining the Resistance

Last Updated on: January 24, 2026

“From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Matthew 4:17-20)

We’re at the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, and, as in the other Gospels, no sooner has Jesus proclaimed His message than He starts a recruitment programme, beginning with Simon (Peter) and his brother, Andrew.

This appears to be the first time Peter and Andrew have met Jesus, yet as soon as He calls them, they ‘leave their nets and follow Him.” And they don’t just follow Him to the other end of the beach. These are their first steps on a long and arduous journey that (according to legend) will lead to both of them to painful and ignominious deaths! The obvious question is, why did they do it?

Of course, neither of them knew that they were stepping out on a path towards crucifixion, but they did know they were walking out on their jobs and their families, so why? The answer is (if I might use Robert Pape’s riff on James Carville’s famous slogan of 1992), “It’s the Occupation, stupid!”

Living as a Jew in first-century Judea was remarkably similar to living as a Palestinian in the same area today. First-century Jews had to deal with the Roman Occupation of Israel in the same way Palestinian people today have to deal with the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. In both cases we’re dealing with a brutal military occupation where the subject people are taxed, abused, and killed with impunity.

Just as every Palestinian growing up in Occupied Palestine today prays for the end of the occupation and yearns for independence, so the Jews of the first century dreamt of a world where there was no Rome – no soldiers on the streets, no tax officials taking their money, and no Empire murdering and abusing their people!

If we were living in Gaza today, and we’d seen so many friends and family killed by the foreign occupying forces, and a young charismatic preacher came up to us and said, “Things are about to change. God is about to act. “Follow me!” I reckon a lot of us would also drop whatever we were doing and say, “Why not?”

They dropped their nets and followed Jesus because they thought they were joining the rebellion. Whenever you’re reading the Gospels, keep the Occupation in mind as an interpretative key for understanding first-century Judea. “It’s the Occupation, stupid.” The point is not that any of us are really stupid, but that a lot of the New Testament doesn’t make sense until we factor in the Roman Occupation as the basic preoccupation of every character in the Gospel drama.

Jesus has proclaimed, “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near” or “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” and whatever else that means, what the people of first-century Judea heard was the end of the Roman Occupation.

“Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” (Matthew 4:17-20) because they thought they were joining the rebellion, and this is confirmed, I think, by the only other recorded words Jesus spoke to those men, apart from “follow me” – namely, “I will make you fishers of people.” (Matthew 4:20)

When I was a kid at Sunday School, we’d sing a song about this verse, and it had actions. We’d sing “I will make you fishers of men” repeatedly, and we’d be symbolically casting a fishing line and reeling it in.

I think our understanding was that we were going to hook in more members for Sunday School. Our hearts were in the right place, but the problem with the fishing analogy is that when you pull in a fish, you don’t normally make friends with it. You kill it and eat it. Moreover, if Jesus was drawing on imagery from the Torah (as He always did), the metaphor of ‘fishing’ in the Hebrew Scriptures was always an image of judgement:

In Jeremiah 16:16, God sends “many fishermen” to catch Israel as part of a programme of divine judgement.
In Ezekiel 29:4, Pharaoh is hooked like a fish and hauled in for destruction.
In Amos 4:2: the prophet warns that the wealthy women of Samaria will be dragged away with fishhooks

The fishing metaphor is generally one implying the conquest and humiliation of your enemies, and I have little doubt that, whatever Jesus might have meant by the metaphor, this is what the boys in the boat would have heard.

Peter and Andrew followed Jesus because they thought they were joining the resistance, and yet they stuck with Jesus to the bitter end! Moreover, I suspect the other ten disciples all signed up for the same reason, and all but one of them stuck it out to the bitter end too (though Judas, of course, had his own bitter end).

Now, I appreciate that the reason you stay in a relationship isn’t necessarily the same as the reason you get into it in the first place. Indeed, any of us who have been in a long-term relationship know that the rationale of the relationship changes over time. Even so, if the disciples joined up to become freedom fighters, why did all but one of them stick with Jesus even after He was humiliated, tortured, and killed?

They thought they were joining a rebellion, and I think they stuck it out because they realised over time that they had joined the rebellion. They just hadn’t realised that Jesus’ rebellion reached far beyond Rome and that it confronted every empire, every domination system, and every power that grinds human beings into the dust.

They didn’t realise when they set out that their revolution would be fought with the weapons of forgiveness and compassion, and that victory would come, not through killing, but through a cross. This is still the rebellion Jesus calls us into today— a resistance that topples empires by transforming hearts, that breaks the cycle of hatred by absorbing it, and that builds a new world with the only weapons strong enough to really change things: truth, mercy, courage, and love.

Matthew 4:19

Our Sunday Eucharist

We celebrated another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend, and it was great to have my friends, Dr Andrew Madry and Doug Pyeatt with me on the panel. Our virtual brother, AI Paul, also joined us, and I thought he was especially helpful this time. Decide for yourself by watching our discussion on 1 Corinthians 1:1 at the end of this post. It’s 15 minutes long but worth the time investment if you haven’t seen it.

As usual, the most popular shorts from last week are pasted directly below, and you can catch up on all the shorts on the Sunday Eucharist Instagram page or watch the full episodes from the archive on YouTube.

This coming Sunday I’m very much looking forward to having Jakob Pyeatt and Costandi Bastoli with me, whom I think are the youngest and oldest members of our panel team (respectively) though only in calendar years. Costandi has never lost the fire of his youth, and Jakob invariably displays a wisdom beyond his age.

Join us this Sunday at noon, please, and invite your friends by referring them to our Facebook Event Page or the Streamyard page. Join us via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia, Streamyard or TheSundayEucharist.com

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What’s On?

Sunday, January 25th – Our Eucharist from noon @thesundayeucharist.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Faithia or Streamyard
Tuesday, January 27th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Thursday, January 29th – Online Bible study group meeting from noon @ www.thesundayeucharist.com/bible
Thursday, January 29th – Boxing at the Mundine Gym in Redfern from 7 pm
Friday to Sunday, January 30 to February 1st – @Binacrombi. Please join me.

There’s much to pray for as we come to the end of week three of 2026. The violence and mayhem surely must slow down soon if we are ever to reach 2027!

The situation in Iran remains deeply concerning. As I said last week, it’s not just a battle between governments and armies but between narratives – the US/Israeli narrative that depicts the Iranian population as ready to rise up and overthrow their dictator, and the Iranian narrative that blames all their problems on Western interference. As you know, I lean towards the Iranian narrative, and if this article in The Cradle is correct, it confirms my worst suspicions about the recent Iranian riots.

I was grateful to be able to make a case for the counter-narrative in this interview with Topher Field this week. A big thank you to Gigi Foster for suggesting me to him.

I’m a long-term fan of Topher‘s (see this website here) and I’ll mention here that he’s expressed a willingness to join us on the panel of The Sunday Eucharist in the coming months, so … watch this space. 😊

One final favour before I let you go today – will you please put aside half an hour some time over the next week to check out www.fightingfathers.com? It’s my latest attempt to develop a member site where we can effectively:

Pool resources
Share calendar events
and stay connected with each other.

I believe this platform (www.skool.com) will also allow us to have group’ video chats, and it may suit us better than Zoom.

Of course, my goal here is not just to give us the chance to cosy up to one another but to allow us to support one another more effectively as we try to serve God and our fellow men and women together.

Take a look. Let me know what you think. This is my fifth attempt (at least) to find a platform that works, and we haven’t really had anything effective since the forum we were running in the early 2000s. If you think this platform will work, let me know and start working with it. If you know of a better platform, definitely let me know that.

As I say, we’ve had an explosive start to 2026, and this may turn out to be a critical year in human history. Are we ready to put on the spiritual armour and fight the good fight of faith in 2026? However ready and well-equipped we are, we all know that the best chance we have of withstanding the assaults of the enemy is to fight together – side-by-side, shields locked, helmets on!

May the Lord bless and strengthen you for the work to which you have been called.

Your brother in the Good Fight,