Sermon Riff: Follow Him

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. (Mark 1:16-20)

What could be more straightforward than this story? Jesus tells people what to do, and they do it. Peter, Andrew, James, and John decide to put all their trust in this wandering holy man, just because he says "follow me." And they do it right away, without debating, delaying, hemming or hawing. They just go.

This is, at the most basic level, a story about what it means to be a Christian. Here at the beginning of the oldest story we have about Jesus, we learn that Jesus calls us to follow him. Being a Christian is, first and foremost, about following Jesus--not just living according to his teachings (which is hard enough), not even living according to his example (which is even harder), but following him on the journey that he took--a journey that led him from life to death and from death to new life.

So naturally, this is one of the passages preachers turn to when they want to tell people, "get off your butts and get moving!" Thousands of sermons have been given reminding us that Peter, Andrew, James and John were not special people, and if they could do it, we can too.

But...Peter, Andrew, James, and John didn't have any idea what they were getting into. Later in the story, when Jesus tells Peter that he's going to end up on the cross, Peter "rebukes" him--corrects his teacher! James and John try to get special seats in heaven. Based on the things that we learn about them in the Bible, it seems like they thought that following Jesus was going to give them a chance to be high muckety-mucks in the "kingdom of God" that Jesus was always going on about--dukes or lords or something like that. They didn't find out about the whole self-sacrifice part of it until later, and they weren't very happy about it when they did.

But Jesus' first disciples certainly had a different kind of faith in Jesus. By all accounts, they were pretty ordinary people without any special skills or remarkable traits. But they believed that Jesus had the power to make them special, to make them remarkable. They didn't just have faith that Jesus had power to do amazing things, but that Jesus had power to make them do amazing things. Even if these uneducated, self-centered fishermen didn't understand what they were getting into, it was pretty clear that they were going to end up doing far more than people like them were supposed to be capable of. They didn't just trust Jesus to lead them. They trusted Jesus to give them what they needed so that they could follow him.

And it worked! They just got up and followed, and in following Jesus, they gained the ability to do things that were totally impossible. Later on, we read that Peter and John healed people—not through their own power, like Jesus did, not by saying, “get up and walk” under their own authority, but in Jesus name, as Jesus’ followers. And when they were arrested and brought before the learned, the judges, the clergy, they spoke up in ways that uneducated fishermen like them weren't supposed to be able to do. Following Jesus turned out to be a lot harder than they ever imagined...but they gained the strength and the power to do those hard things, to work miracles and speak truths that they never could have reached under their own power.

And this is the great invitation that we receive. If we choose to follow Jesus, if we go on that journey with him, we will have to give up things that we hold dear--our reputations, maybe our relationships, perhaps even our lives. But the more we give away the paltry things that we value so much, the more room we give to allow God to fill us with strength, comfort, joy, peace, beyond what we can possibly give ourselves.