Why Follow Jesus?
By Charles Rush
January 23, 2000
Mk. 1: 16-20
picture James and John as twenty-year-olds. Isn't this text just
like our twenty-year-old kids? Think of poor old Zebedee, left
behind. James and John are in the boat with their father, Zebedee,
drop everything, and immediately follow Jesus.
Hey, whose gonna mend these nets?"
Back in the 70's the Maharishi Yogi was touring the country
introducing people to Transcendental Meditation. He was a squatty
13-year-old that developed an amazing following. He came to Westport,
Connecticut where we lived at the time. One of the kids in our high
school attended a retreat where the Maharishi taught the path of
spiritual enlightenment. The young man was so moved in gratitude that
he gave away one of his parents paintings to the Maharishi, without
telling them. It was worth real money.
I believe his father was the president of Schick razor blades- a
very straight laced corporate type. Wouldn't you love to have heard
the conversation at the table that night?
Kids are just like that. My mother loves to tell the story of the
first time I went to Europe, back pack loaded, and all. I couldn't
tell her any plans... because... actually, I didn't really have
any. She didn't know how to reach me in case of emergency and was
fretting about how haphazard the whole arrangement felt. A friend
dropped by. At the last minute, I decided to have him drop me off at
the airport rather than my parents. He was driving a convertible- much
better transport. Kiss Mom, off we go.
An hour later, I called home, to ask my mother if I'd left my plane
ticket on my bureau. I had. Dad raced it to the airport. This kind
of thing does not inspire confidence.
Kids are just like that though, aren't they? Their first few
forays of adventure usually portend chaos for their parents. James and
Johns just up and bolt down the road after an itinerant prophet they
have just met.
Yet, I strongly suspect that Jesus had a charisma about him that
was contagious and beguiling. I suspect that this is what Mark wants
us to remember. The
Life
magazine reporter who went to interview Mohandas Gandhi in the middle
of the campaign for the independence of India said that Gandhi had a
similar quality of character. He was at once simple and profound. He
appeared to have discovered something basic that she knew she didn't
have and she found herself not wanting the interview to end. She
wanted to ask him about everything. I'll bet Jesus was like that. The
interesting thing about him is the variety of ways that he has moved
people to drop their nets and follow him.
Lately, I've been moved by the way that Jesus shifts my attention
off a temporal busyness to get a wider picture on my life. I was
reading a piece dealing with the fact of our dying. The author said
that humans have two principal ways of taking their mind off the
subject.
On the one hand, we are driven to do something outstanding so that
our great feats might transcend our earthly mortality. I presume that
is what drives Donald Trump to build those magnanimous buildings, crass
as they might be. That was what inspired Homer to write his great
epic. It has energized thousands of acts of selfless courage in the
face of certain death. Our memorials keep alive great deeds. And in
many ways, Plato lives through his work, more fully in death, than
thousands of people that merely exist in life.
And the other way is to merge into the herd. We try to lose
ourselves in the great mass of people around us. There is comfort in
that. There is a strange comfort in being part of the teeming mass in
Manhattan. Maybe God won't notice us there. Maybe the grim reaper of
death will just skip over us. Even if the worst catastrophe were to
happen, somehow the frightful fear of it is mitigated by the sheer
solidarity of thousands around us.
I was reading this on the plane last week, reflecting on how we
keep nervously busy, do we not? The guy next to me was doing memo
after memo until the last minute before the stewardess told him he
absolutely had to turn of his laptop. Then he is on the phone touching
base with 10 staff, 6 clients, and 3 lawyers. The whole flight he is
on the phone. Soon as we touch down, he has the portable out all the
way to the limo, touching base, keeping connected.
On one level, of course, that is what we have to do to pull a deal
together at the last minute. But it strikes me that we also like to
keep busy, to be productive. It keeps our mind occupied. There is
something strangely comforting about adding assets, securing our
families financial future, organizing our homes, getting the yard in
finished shape, washing a new car in the springtime to a buff shine.
And we like staying connected, coordinating a whole bunch of people on
a volunteer project or in a social scene. It keeps our mind fruitfully
focused on the here and now. It is very grounding in a comforting way,
befitting the human herd instinct.
I was in West Texas last week, preaching at the church of my good
friend Charlie Johnson. On Saturday, Charlie drove me in his pick up
truck about 50 miles southeast of Lubbock to the place where the cap
rock breaks out into the plain. We stopped the truck, got out and
started walking with the dog, separated from one another. I got to a
place with the dog and it was a good 10 miles in any direction to the
nearest person, except Charlie and I couldn't hear or see him. I could
see several miles in the distance in every direction and there weren't
even any cattle on this ranch. Just the wind. The silence has a depth
to it in that expanse of space.
I stood there for a moment and tried to just take in the whole
horizon. It was near dusk and the sun was an enormous ball in the
West, the moon faint over head. It was just so big... Then I started
thinking about the galaxy and the universe, which you cannot do
literally. But you can imagine it enough for a moment to become
metaphysically dizzy, like spinning around when you were a kid with
your eyes closed.
You get metaphysically dizzy in relationship to that vastness of
space. Thinking about that vast space, reflects the vastness of time.
Our whole history is but a moment in time, our significance
infinitesimal- rather like ants worried about their place and position
in the ant colony, deeply invested in the dramas that put them slightly
ahead of the other ants. Absent faith, that experience can be
despairing. For me, I heard the words of Jesus framing our busyness in
a wider perspective.
Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or
what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is
not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the
birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and
yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than
they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to the span
of your life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the
lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I
tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of
these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is
alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will not God much more
clothe you, of people of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious
saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What
shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your
heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But se
The simple encounter with Jesus still provokes us to life-changing
reflection. Likewise, so is the encounter with other Christians who
manifest the Spirit of God in some simple but profound manner.
Jurgen Moltmann, probably the most gifted theologian living, was a
soldier in the German army in World War II. He was captured in battle
in 1944, I believe, and taken to a prisoner of war camp in Scotland.
You may recall that there was no love lost between the Allies and the
Germans during those years. Germans were subject to ridicule,
loathing, or both. Moltmann experienced all of these in the P.O.W.
camp. After a couple months, a group of Christians from a near by
university asked to speak to the prisoners. They brought them treats
to eat, passed out Bibles in German, and put on a show of singing. Any
thing was a remarkable break from a typical P.O.W. monotony. They
came back. They came back again. Shared news about their home in
Germany. Moltmann was very moved by their extraordinary expression of
goodwill. All of 19 himself, he asked them why they were visiting
prisoners and being nice to them. They said to him. "Because we
are followers of Jesus Christ, we have to be agents of reconciliation
What is it that makes these people able to drop their nets and
follow the man from Nazareth?
Sam Jensen was also in prison during WWII, though he never wrote
any famous books after the war. He, too, was profoundly moved by the
simple witness of a group of Christians. These were of a different
sort than those just mentioned. They were also in prison as
"Conscientious Objectors to the use of violence of any kind".
They were Mennonites. Think Amish. The guys with long beards that
ride in buggies and carts in the middle of Pennsylvania. During the
Great War, their objection to fighting was not looked upon with
respect. Most people were fairly horrified by anyone that refused the
draft, especially to fight Hitler. But Mennonites take Jesus seriously
and they oppose the use of violence under any circumstances. What
impressed this one prisoner was the ability of these Mennonite
Christians to endure monotonous suffering. Every day they were
handcuffed to a railing and made to stand all day long, every day for
16 hours at this rail. It hurt. It was boring. To endure this for a
matter of cons
What is it that makes these people able to drop their nets and
follow the man from Nazareth?
John Wesley was on a boat about 200 years ago, far enough out to
sea, that he was afraid for his life. If you have ever been on the
ocean when a storm comes up, and experienced the raw power of nature,
overwhelming the dinky vessel that you are steering, you know exactly
the depth of anxiety and fear that I am talking about. He was sure
that he would die, and not only die but the prospect of dying in a
raging sea troubled him to the depths of his soul. All the passengers
on the boat were thinking the same thoughts. They had gathered
together in the bow of the boat for protection. Wesley was moved by a
group of Moravians, Christians from Eastern Europe. They were singing
hymns together and it was filling them with a courage and peace that
was evident on their faces. Wesley was an Episcopal priest at the
time. He was thinking to himself how he had only known the faith
through the liturgy of worship but he had never really let spirituality
take root in his heart. In a moment of crisis, he knew that it ma
What is it that makes these people able to drop their nets and
follow the man from Nazareth?
Fannie Lou Hammer was a black woman that was a relentless witness for
Civil Rights in Mississippi 40 years ago. She had just been kicked out
of her sharecropper's shack and was staying with friends in Ruleville,
MS. Nightriders were trying to kill her. Ordinary people would have
taken this as an opportunity to relocate to Detroit, Michigan where the
neighbors would at least leave you alone. Apparently, that never
occurred to Fannie.
Bob Moses heard about her and went looking for her on a stormy night.
Finally, he found the little cabin where she was staying.
He knocked on the door and was asked in. He said, "I'm looking for
Fannie Lou Hammer."
She turned around and said, "I'm Fannie Lou Hammer."
He said that the people at SNCC wanted her to go with them to a
conference in Nashville, to talk about organizing effectively for Civil
Rights. This is exactly the kind of thing that made people want to
kill her. Bob said, She got up and went to gathering her stuff
...
she just got right up and came.
What makes these people able to drop their nets and follow the man
from Nazareth?
My friends, as you go through the week, try to keep a low profile.
God comes after ordinary people like you and turns them around in ways
they could not have predicted and did not particularly want. Watch
out. It is entirely possible that God might get a hold of you as
well. Watch what you do, it is conceivable that God just might fill
you with this Spirit that proves to be a profound enough witness to
change some one else's life forever, quite in spite of yourself. You,
too, just might find yourself dropping your net. So, friends, let's be
careful out there.
Amen.
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