Follow Me

Scripture:        Isaiah 9:1-4, Psalm 27:1, 4-9

I Corinthians 1:10-18,  Matthew 4:12-23

Pastor Dave by the Sea of Galilee, 2015

“Follow me.”  Just two words, but with great potential, for good or ill.  What associations do those two words bring up in your mind – feelings of hope, or of dread?  Are they an invitation, or a demand, or even a threat?   When I’ve heard those words, usually someone wants to show me something.  Often it’s been something I’d rather not see – a broken window, a broken taillight, a water leak, a difficult medical diagnosis.  But that’s just me.  For some, there may be pleasant associations – a surprise birthday party, for example.   Perhaps it depends on who is asking us to follow.

In today’s Gospel reading, those who would become Jesus’ first disciples hear the words, “Follow me.”  We have no reason to think that Peter and Andrew, James and John – all fishermen - had met Jesus before.  And yet, along comes this stranger, saying, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  Apparently they just dropped whatever they were doing to tag along with Jesus. 

Why would they do that?  If, at this point in my life, somebody walked up to me and said, “Follow me,”  I’d probably respond with something like, “Nah, I’m good.”  And that’s because I’m at a place in my life where I’ve settled into a routine – working at my day job, and then pastoring here.   Not only is my routine settled, so have my expectations and responses…..as I’ve told people more than once, at this stage in my life, the concrete has pretty much set. And that could be good or bad….on one hand, there’s a lot to be said for sticking with work and relationships over the long haul, through good times and bad.  On the other hand, there are times when a routine can feel like a rut, and a rut can feel like a narrow grave for one’s earlier hopes and dreams.  But in any case, here’s where I am, and while it’s theoretically possible that something could come along that would make me willing to drop everything and move in a new direction, I have a hard time imagining what such a thing could be.  And I suspect that’s where many of us are – we’re invested in lives as they are – but not all.  Perhaps those who are younger, those with more flexible expectations, those with more of a sense of adventure, or those with less to lose – particularly those whose lives aren’t working for them in any way, shape, or form, those who are in crisis -  might be entirely willing to walk away from all they’ve known to respond to the words, “Follow me.”  Somehow Jesus’ words broke through whatever inertia was holding Peter and Andrew, James and John in place, and each of them had a “God moment” that led them to follow.  And that momentary decision to follow set the course for the rest of their lives.

Could they possibly have had the slightest idea what they were getting themselves into?  To be sure, they were privileged to hear the words of Jesus from Jesus’ own lips, privileged to have front row seats to healings and exorcisms.  Three of them - Peter, James, and John – were privileged to be present for Jesus’ transfiguration, when Jesus revealed just a glimpse of his glory to the inner circle of his disciples. They were also privileged….if that’s the right word, and it almost certainly isn’t…..to experience hardship, hungry bellies, aching feet, travel on foot through unfamiliar and sometimes hostile territory, long periods of separation from their families.  To follow Jesus brought life-changing experiences, but it also brought real suffering, and took real commitment.

It’s notable that Jesus said, “Follow me.”  He never said, “Worship me.”  Probably a good thing too; I could imagine the response if I walked down Thompson Street on some Saturday morning walking up to random people and saying, “Worship me.”  They’d probably say, “Worship this” and punch me in the face.  Jesus never asked for worship.  Worship is what we do, our response to our experience of Jesus.  But Jesus never asked for worship, but for followers, for people who were willing to be taught, and who were willing to learn how to walk as Jesus walked and live as Jesus lived. 

Jesus was looking for followers, not a fan club.  In our country, to be a fan of Jesus costs very little, though in some countries, one worships Jesus at the risk of one’s life.   But for us, worshipping Jesus can either lead us toward or away from being followers.  If through the work of the Spirit, the Scriptures, the hymns, the sermon sink into us and transform us, worship can lead to great commitment, can lead us to truly follow in the way of Jesus, can lead us to become Christlike ourselves.  But worship can be and for many is cop-out that brings complacency, that excuses from further commitment.  It’s easy to express great admiration for Jesus, to recite creeds about Jesus, to praise Jesus to the rafters, and then go home to live entirely self-centered lives, to live as if Jesus had never existed.  As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, “shall we continue in sin, so that God’s grace may abound?”  (His answer was a very loud “no”.)   Or as Gandhi expressed, “I like your Christ.  I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”  Many witness to Jesus with their words and against Jesus with their lives. And this disconnect between the Christ of Scripture and the Christians in many churches is why younger generations have largely turned away, not that they don’t like Jesus, but they certainly don’t have much patience for BS.  It’s the same as any other commitment.  I can buy a gym membership, but if I don’t get on the machines and run and lift and sweat and strain, I’ll be as flabby as ever.  (Unfortunately.  As I’ve discovered….)  If we want to be musicians but don’t practice scales, our skills won’t improve.  

What does it look like to follow Jesus in our day?  One example that I always return to is that of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who resisted Hitler when most around him – including most of his Lutheran pastor colleagues along with much of the Catholic leadership, bought into the idea that Hitler was God’s chosen instrument to make Germany great again.  Bonhoeffer took increasing risks to open an underground seminary to train would-be church leaders to be faithful to Christ and resist the demands of the Third Reich, and particularly to resist Hitler’s intended extermination of Jews and other disfavored groups.  Many years ago, in the late 1980’s, soon after I joined Old First where I would be a member for 15 years, its pastor, the Rev Geneva Butz, gave me Bonhoeffer’s book “The Cost of Discipleship” which contains the words, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” At the time, on reading those words, I thought Bonhoeffer was nuts, a raving fanatic, and couldn’t imagine why Geneva would want me to read such a thing, why she would even put such a book in my hands.  But Bonhoeffer’s words echoed in my mind, and I kept coming back to that book, and Bonhoeffer’s words worked on me over the years.  Over time, I came to realize how shallow my faith up to that point had been – while I was a regular worshipper and sang in the choir, I was more of a fan of Jesus than a follower - and over time I came to see what it was to die, not all at once but over time, to one’s other attachments and priorities, to die to self and live for Christ…..not that I’ve arrived in any sense or even gotten particularly far on the journey, but I’m learning, still learning, all these years later.  For Bonhoeffer, Christ’s call to come and die was quite literal; for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler, Bonhoeffer was hanged in early April, 1945, less than a month before Hitler committed suicide.

Another example is the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whom Christ also called to come and die.   And truly Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 to the religious leaders of his day apply, as he accused them of building the tombs of the prophets killed by their fathers, and saying, “If we had been there, we would never have acted as our ancestors did.”  Last Monday we celebrated King’s life, but often it’s a very safe, sanitized version of King, using quotes from earlier in his life, such as the 1963 “I Have A Dream” speech, with its vision of little black boys and girls joining hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers.  We don’t as often hear quotes from his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, which called out the white churches who were constantly imploring him to wait and to go slow.  We rarely hear about King’s sermon at New York City’s Riverside Church, titled, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”, where he spoke in opposition to the Vietnam War, and called out what he called the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism, where he said that “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” – words as true today as when King spoke them.  A gunman’s bullet cut King down on April 4, 1968, a year to the day after that sermon.

We’re not all called to follow Jesus into a concentration camp, as Bonhoeffer did.  We’re not all called to follow Jesus to take a bullet such as the one that claimed Dr King.  But we’re all called to follow Jesus, and following Jesus will inevitably come at a cost – to our money, to our time, to our convenience, and quite possibly at cost to our health and our life.  To follow Christ is not just religious observance – Sunday attendance at church – but a way of life, a way of life, something that affects everything we say and do.  We may well ask, “What would we have done had we lived in Bonhoeffer’s circumstances, or King’s”.  And the answer is, whatever we’re doing or not doing now is what we would have done or not done then….there is love to be shown to outcasts and spiritual wickedness in high places to be resisted as much in our time as in theirs, and to sleepwalk through our days is to miss Jesus’ call to follow.

Why do it?  Why bother?  Why open up one’s life to the demands of the gospel?  To put it pointedly, why let Jesus mess with your life?  Why should I let Jesus mess with my life?   Why not just sidestep all that?    Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship, also contains these words:  “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves….the preaching of forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.  Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked form, the door at which a man must knock….[please hear these words]  it is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”

“The only true life.”  Christ calls us to die to the false priorities that we call our life, and offers us the only true life.   To devote ourselves only to our own comforts, to live only for ourselves, is to die without ever having truly lived. 

“Follow me!” Jesus called to his first disciples.  These same words are for us as well.  May we, like those first followers, be willing to leave our nets and boats, our projects and priorities, and where Jesus leads, may we follow.

I’d like to close with a song:

I have decided to follow Jesus/I have decided to follow Jesus/I have decided to follow Jesus

No turning back, no turning back

The world behind me, the cross before me/the world behind me, the cross before me, the world behind me, the cross before me

No turning back, no turning back.  Amen.