Chapter 2

“You may go, Reverend,” the bishop said again.

Leander returned to his upstairs study. He entered the room and looked out the window. Some birds fluttering through the trees and then some flowers bending in the gentle wind distracted him from his current woes. In a moment, he was back to his current situation. He wished he were accused of a common crime. Petty theft, loitering perhaps?

In his mind, no crime had been committed. Yes, he had sworn vows to a human institution; nothing he had ever studied indicated the Lord ordained those vows when He lived so many years ago. All he did was express love for another human. In his case, it happened to be another man.

He sat at the desk and opened his Bible. The familiar smell of the gift, given to him by Father John when he went away to Cambridge, offered some comfort in spite of the situation. No matter where he looked, though, the words blurred. He finally settled on Mark, 1. He loved the seventeenth verse, one of the first he’d learned from Father John. “Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men.”

He slammed his fist on the table. Tears spilled out of his eyes.

How did I get here? 2

1875, London, England

The old squeaky water pump woke him each morning. The housekeeper always rose first and pumped the water needed for the first part of the day. She kept the household in order and on schedule; her husband, the sexton, maintained the church building and the parish house. Father John was the official head of the household, but he only dealt with the students who came to study and, of course, Leander.

After breakfast with the small community, Leander helped the sexton with maintenance or the housekeeper with cleaning. After luncheon was his favorite part of the day—lessons with Father John. He taught Leander the stories of the Bible and about Jesus, but also how to read and write the Queen’s English and Latin. He introduced Leander to classical literature and the music of the masters.

He loved to ask questions. The housekeeper would tell him that children were to be seen and not heard. The sexton would make up answers to the things he didn’t know. Both the sexton and his wife would threaten him that if he wasn’t obedient, no family would adopt him. But Father John would answer his questions and encourage him to ask more. If Father John didn’t know the answers, he would show Leander how to find them in his enormous library. Leander’s parents, however, were one of the few subjects Father John didn’t encourage.

“Tell me about my mother and father,” he asked.

“Leander,” Father John replied, as a scowl appeared on his face, “we’ve talked about this before.”

“Please,” Leander begged.

Father John frowned for a moment, but then let out a sad sigh. “Your father and mother dropped you off on the church’s front steps. They left a note inside your basket. It said, We will return when the barley harvest will allow us to pay our debts to the landlord and survive the winter.”

“I thought you said before they would return when the wheat harvest was good?”

“Oh, yes,” Father John corrected himself. “We will return when the wheat harvest is good.”

Sometimes instead of lessons or chores, Father John took Leander on errands around London. Leander loved leaving the church, which was located in a London slum. Inside the confines of the church, he smelled the dust and dank from two hundred years of chaste living. Outside, the air came alive with the sweet smells of the season. He especially loved going to the docks with Father John to experience the hustle and bustle of the port, the smell of salt in the air, and the shrieking gulls

“I want to fly like the gulls,” Leander said as they walked along the pier. “The gulls’ wings make them free.”

“Ah…but are the birds really free?” Father John responded. “You see how their lives are attached to the fishermen who bring in their catch each day?”

“Like I’m attached to my chores each day?” he asked.

Father John didn’t answer. As they continued their walk, Leander’s attention was drawn to the fishermen, who had begun unloading nets full of glimmering fish.

“Are those men like Peter and Andrew in the scriptures?”

“Yes, they’re similar. Do you remember what the Lord said to Peter and Andrew that day?”

“And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me and I will make you to become fishers of men,” he recited.

“And what does that really mean?”

“You told me before it meant Jesus was asking them to help Him reach the people of Galilee and preach the good news of the New Testament.”

“Ah, yes, very good. You are learning your stories nicely.”

“But what good is that today? Everyone attends church on Sundays.”

“Oh, I think you’d be surprised not everyone attends church, Leander. There’s a whole wild world out there, with people who’ve never heard of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”

“Never heard of the Lord?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to ask those men to be fishers of men?”

Father John chuckled, stifling a hearty laugh. “No, I want you to understand there will always be people who don’t know the Lord. Our job as Christians is to tell his story.”

“I love the Lord Jesus with all my heart, Father John. I will always tell his story to anyone who will listen.”

“Good, now let’s pick out some fish for supper.”

“When did you decide to become a fisher of men?”

“Oh, I received my calling at a young age, probably not much older than you,” Father John said as he eyed the fish lying in neat piles on beds of ice. “You see, not only do you have to have a desire to do God’s work, you must also be called by the Lord.”

“By God himself?” Leander’s eyes grew big.