Epiphany 3 B: Following Jesus Today
Dear Partner in Preaching,
I’ve always found this passage both inspiring and vexing. I find it inspiring because of the decisiveness and immediacy of the response of the four disciples mentioned in today’s reading. But I also find it a tad vexing because it seems to set the bar so high. Leave everything…to follow an itinerant preacher into an unknown future…immediately. To be honest, I find it hard to imagine doing as these four did, and I wonder if our folks might feel the same.
And that might not be a bad place to start: asking our folks if they can imagine picking up and leaving everything to follow Jesus. If you do that, make sure to start with your own reservations and then invite your folks to be similarly honest. Most of us, truth be told, would find it very hard to leave work and family and friends and all the rest to venture into such an uncertain future. Does that mean we’re more or less failures as Christians? Or at least that we are less faithful than Andrew and Peter, James and John? (Frankly, given the rest of the story Mark will tell, I don’t think we have that much to fear. Yes, they leave to follow Jesus now, but let’s not forget that they also end up disappointing and denying and abandoning him at various points of the story.)
So I wonder, Dear Partner, if this week we might ask the question of whether we think Mark offers this story to set an example for us in the first place. And, if so, what kind of example did he intend?
It’s this second question I find most intriguing. Because I suspect that we are indeed meant to find this story of disciples willing to follow Jesus inspiring. Yet I doubt that Mark imagined people following Jesus in quite the same way. I mean, he obviously knew that it’s no longer possible for people to follow the historical Jesus as did these four. That event had come and gone. So perhaps Mark’s message to those reading back in the first century – as well as to those of us following along in the twenty-first – was more about following Jesus in general than it was about any following him only by leaving everything to proclaim the coming kingdom of God.
Except that we can never follow “in general.” We follow him in particular and distinct ways that may or may not be like the first disciples. And that, I think, is the point. Perhaps we follow by becoming a teacher. Perhaps we follow by volunteering at the senior center. Perhaps we follow by looking out for those in our schools who always seem on the outside and invite them in. Perhaps we follow by doing a job we love as best we can to help others. Perhaps we follow by doing a job we hate but contributes to supporting our family and helping others. Perhaps we follow by being generous with our wealth and with our time. Perhaps we follow by listening to those around us and responding with encouragement and care. Perhaps we follow by caring for an aging parent, or special needs child, or someone else who needs our care. Perhaps we follow by….
Well, you get the idea. There are any number of distinct ways that we can follow Jesus. And, indeed, follow him immediately – here and now, in the world and time in which we live. What seems at the heart of the matter is that we can follow Jesus in all of these different situations and circumstances precisely by trying to imitate him – by trying, that is, to treat others with the same regard, love and patience that he did, including all manner of people but especially those who were overlooked by society. This, I think, is at the heart of what it means to be a Christian: to try to live and treat others as Jesus did, embracing the values of inclusiveness, love, forgiveness, and healing that he radiated in word and deed.
Now I should probably confess that in writing that last statement I got a little worried that you will think I’ve given up on justification by faith, because it sure sounds like I’m interested in the fruits – or even “works”! – of the Christian life. But notice that I said this is the heart of being a Christian, not becoming a Christian. That is, we are invited into and promised a secure place in the Christian community only the grace of God, apart from any effort or merit on our own. And yet at the same time I think the day-to-day benefit we experience from being included in the Christian community is affected dramatically by whether or not we try to live into the identity we have been given. God will always treat us a beloved child, yet whether we act like a beloved child of God – and receive the joy of acting like one – depends greatly on whether we try to follow Jesus and live into the gift of that identity.
Okay, having gotten over my theological insecurity, I’ll simply suggest that we might ask people to look ahead to the coming week and ask them to anticipate times and places and occasions where they might try to follow Jesus by treating others as we see Jesus treating people. We might ask them, that is, to follow Jesus immediately, in their actual lives this very week. Moreover, we might promise that as they try to do so, they will live into and benefit more fully from the identity into which Jesus has already called them. The point isn’t about being “better disciples” but rather it is about knowing and experiencing Jesus more deeply by following him.
In the closing passage of his monumental “The Quest of the Historical Jesus,” Albert Schweitzer – theologian, doctor, Bach scholar – offers a similar insight that I think is still both poignant and relevant. Having concluding that separating the “real” or “historical” Jesus from the “Christ of faith,” Schweitzer nevertheless discovers that we can come to know Christ Jesus Christ fully and authentically only by following Christ. As he writes,
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
Such is the promise we are authorized to make, Dear Partner, and I am grateful for your commitment to do so. Your echo and announcement of Jesus’ ongoing call to follow him will not just make a difference this week, but actually change someone’s life as they meet Jesus as if for the first time. Thank you.
Yours in Christ,
David
I meaning of “following Jesus” concerns the heart…love. This is what the church so often gets wrong. This love cannot be manufactured and it can’t come from doing good works. It does not originate with us but is a gift from God.
Those who try to “follow Jesus” into ministries of one sort or another must come to them with a heart motivated by a love which has been first bestowed upon them. All else is false “do goodism” that is usually easily discerned as fake and phony.
1st John describes the transformation and what comes after it. “We love because he first loved us.” What follows is a life lived in truth and love.
Your comment reminds me of the disciples who got their nose bent out of shape when they discovered “others” who were healing and sharing God’s love without their authority! Jesus, of course, responded appropriately by telling his disciples to leave them alone as there was nothing wrong with the others actions as long as it was based upon the values of God’s Kingdom (I am, of course, paraphrasing). Why is it religion has to protect its dogmas and doctrines when it comes to being a descent human being??? I believe that all human being, by our birth in God Almightys design and hand, are capable of sharing the spark of God’s love that resides in each of us. The question, I think, is whether it is nurtured or not, condemned or praised. Jesus nurtured people of all stripes who were already God’s children. He did not stop and ask for doctrinal proofs. Blessings.
Thank you, David, for driving us relentlessly to the question of what faith looks like when we step out of the sanctuary into Monday-Saturday life. I think you need not apologize for exhorting people to be “better disciples.” God loves the world and has chosen, in God’s wisdom, to do some measure of that loving through us. May we all grow into being better at the work to which God calls us. Surely we will come to experience Jesus’ love more deeply as we do.
Thank you David as I mentally prepare a homily for this Sunday! I so appreciate your idea of inviting folks to honor and follow their call in their real life circumstances. To follow Jesus model that is about love, compassion and caring for others.
Blessings and light.
Would “deliberate disciple” be a more workable way of putting it?
David… as a graduate of LTSP and former ELCA pastor, I found this to be rather duplicitous. We are asked to follow the Author of Life, therefore deciding to do so and yet to be in league with a denomination that endorses and pays for the taking of life through abortion, well… it seems a bit hypocritical.
I’m not sure if it was intentional on your part or not, David, but that last line sounds like a tribute to the recently departed Marcus Borg, a scholar and faithful follower of Jesus who invited countless others to know Jesus in their lives. Thanks for your reflections.
The called ones followed into a community that stood outside the political and religious consensus around them. They weren’t only called as individuals to treat others kindly (and often didn’t). They were called into ‘God’s reigning’ overagainst the reigning of Rome or religious authorities. They formed a community that had an economic and political lifestyle at odds with many of their own ‘natural’ inclinations. We seem to avoid this element of call – or identify it only for clergy in some traditions – of a different kind of community that seeks the transformation of the world. There is a unity of spirit and structure that challenges our incrementalism and our individualism.