Sermon: Why Follow Jesus?

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Why Follow Jesus?

By Charles Rush

August 20, 2006

(First preached on January 23, 2000)

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 seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Mt. 6:25-33)

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. We are here to begin the healing process between our peoples for one day this war will be over. What better place for Christians to be than in prison?” Moltmann was so impressed by their character and witness that he picked up the New Testament and started reading it. We preachers are so thankful that he did.

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 conscience bespoke of a depth of conviction to men that were largely doing time for going AWOL in order to see their girlfriend. Sam Jensen said that seeing these men day in and day out planted an image that he could not erase for the rest of his life.

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 made all the difference and he was forever changed.

What is it that makes these people able to drop their nets and follow the man from Nazareth?

Fannie Lou Hammer[1] 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.

[1] Marsh, Charles. God's Long Summer: Stories of Faith and Civil Rights (Princeton, 1997), p. 17.