"Simple Words, Huge Impact"
Christ's call to "Follow me" means taking concrete action
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, March 18th, 2001
Text: Matthew IV: 18 - 25
It never ceases to amaze me how one phrase can sum up a particular idea or ideal, can define a particular generation or even genre. For, just by saying a particular phrase, a theme or an image will be conjured up in your mind that you will recall, or remember or even have uttered. I think, for example, of the phrase the shot that was heard around the world, referring, of course, to the shot by the Minutemen in Concord, Massachusetts, that began the war of revolution against the British in 1776. Or I think of those words on November 22nd, 1963, when Walter Cronkite came on the air and said: "President John F. Kennedy is dead." That phrase alone conjures up for many people where they were, to whom they were talking, what they were doing, the moment that they heard that phrase. Or that wonderful line, in 1972, that said Henderson has the puck. Henderson shoots. Henderson has scored for Canada. Who will ever forget that particular phrase - the highlight of Canadian culture, don't you agree? But just one phrase, and you remember where you were and what you were doing when you heard it. It doesn't have to be eloquent. It doesn't have to be particularly strong, or particularly wise, but it has a grasp on you.
I want to look this morning at two words, two words which, in many ways, sum up the very nature of our Christian faith and life. They are not credal words, so they do not conjure up the intricacies of our faith. They are not moral words to speak or conjure up the demands of our faith. They are not even poetic words to instill or conjure up within us the emotion of the faith. They are just simple words, spoken by Jesus to men on the shores of Galilee. They are the simple words that have such a profound meaning: Follow me. In these words we find, I believe, the very cornerstone, indeed, the very core of the Christian faith and life.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in writing his epic book The Cost of Discipleship said that the power of these words is such that there is no need for us to contemplate them. There is no need for us to muse, or to think philosophically about them. They are simply a clarion call that requires one of two responses: either a Yes, I will follow, or a No, I won't. They do not give any room for anything in between. They do not ask us to think about how we can improve ourselves before we decide how we are going to answer them. They are the words of Jesus to the fishermen and they will always be at the heart of the Christian faith: Follow me. In the power of these words, I think he talks to us as much about those who are called, as those who called and the nature of that call.
To understand the power of them, we need to understand first of all those who were called. We are told in the Gospels that the ones who are called are fishermen from Galilee. I think it is singularly amazing that very little information is given about those who first heard the words Follow me. You would think, would you not, because of the apostolic foundation of the New Testament, that those who were the source of all the Gospels, those who had given the information to others to write down about the life of Jesus, would have thrown a little more biographical information into the mix to tell them more about themselves, what they were thinking, what they were doing, what had been going on in their lives before Jesus ever came and issued the words to them, Follow me. But there are no intricacies, no such details. We are simply told that they were fishermen and they heard the words Follow me. In light of the fact that in the time of Jesus, in first-century Israel and Palestine, there were many rabbinic movements with rabbis wandering around asking people to follow their example, asking people to interpret the law as they did, asking people to change their character, to mold to a particular rabbinic thought, you would think, would you not, that in this Gospel story there would be more details about Jesus, more details about the followers, but there are not. For in fact, the very disciples themselves are seemingly irrelevant in this story. What is central is the one who calls, not, in this case, the one who is called.
I think too, of how ordinary these particular disciples were. By ordinary, I do not mean that they were of little or no significance. I just mean that they were like everybody else in their time. We read that James and John were boat owners. They were not particularly impoverished people, looking for someone to come and bail them out of trouble. Some of them were strong-willed and tough-minded, like Peter, but we are not told much more about him throughout the Gospels, except for the few moments when he is encountered by Jesus and Jesus corrects him. We are told about an ordinary man called Andrew who was loyal, and kind-hearted, and wanted to introduce people to Jesus. We are told about Thomas; but all we know about Thomas is that he was inquisitive and always wanted a little extra information. We are told about Levi; but the only thing we ever hear about Levi is that he was doing his ordinary job at a toll-booth on the day that Jesus came by him and said Follow me. We are told little about Judas Iscariot, the one who was eventually to betray him. Yet we know that this was a man who, as many human beings are, got caught up in greed and the impulse of the moment. We are told that they are just twelve people, individuals.
Yet, from these twelve individuals arose a whole movement. From the witness of these twelve individuals came the whole apostolic movement. The Gospel went into Greece and into Asia Minor. A woman called Lydia would be the first person baptized in Europe. Even you and I this very day, sitting in Toronto, are here because of the witness of twelve people who literally responded to an invitation. The invitation was Follow me. That is the power of those words. They talk to us about the ordinariness of those who are called into the Christian faith. For example, there is no sense in which any of these disciples were called to be great intellectuals or scholars. They were told simply to send a message to the world. They did not have to be morally pure, or righteous. They did not have to know their books very well. They were people who were in ordinary things, living an ordinary life, but were called with a command: Follow me. My friends, it strikes me that one of the great things about the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is how it calls ordinary people, in their ordinary lives, doing their ordinary, everyday things, to commit themselves to a man from Galilee.
This was brought home to me very powerfully this past week. I was lining up in the grocery store There was a huge line-up and only about three tellers in a very large store. I looked down the aisle in front of me, all three or four people. At the very front of the aisle there was an extremely well-dressed, young woman, a professional, no doubt, wearing a beautiful suit, and lovely, crisp shoes. Behind her was a little boy, immaculately dressed, pushing one of those little mini-carts that children have and which look so cute. I saw this woman and I saw this little boy. Behind the little boy, there was a man. It was that man who really caught my eye. He looked terrifying. He was wearing a leather jacket, and ratty jeans. He had chains around his wrists. He had tattoos all over his arms. He had a pony-tail, but was bald (doesn't go). He had ear-rings that pierced his ears, and he had a huge moustache. I thought he was about the meanest thing that I have seen in years. Behind him were a couple of other people and yours truly. Now, I want you to pay attention, because when I looked at this young woman who was paying for her groceries, I noticed that she must have left her son behind, because she paid for her groceries and she walked on. Then I realized that the young boy who was pushing the cart was in fact the son of the man wearing the leather jacket and the chains, etc. This young boy was treated with the greatest affection and care by this father. He picked up the little boy and sat him on the counter. He got out the groceries and he put them into the basket and they were paid for.
As this tough-looking man leaned over in front of the counter to pay, I noticed a huge brass cross hanging from his neck. The young woman who was the clerk said to this young man: "I love the cross that you're wearing. Are you a Christian?" He said: "Yes I am a Christian." She said: "Well, I am a Christian as well." And they began to talk. He said: "But I'm not only a Christian, I'm actually a minister." I nearly dropped my baggage. Here I was, dressed in my navy, three-piece suit, my black, polished shoes, immaculately prepared shirt, beautiful silk tie, standing there. I felt like saying: "Just a minute. I am the minister of Timothy Eaton Memorial Church." But nobody would have been impressed. This man started to talk to her about the faith and the Gospel. There was I, looking at my watch, reading these magazines about three-headed babies coming from Boca Raton, Florida, and thinking to myself, this is the man who is having the witness for Jesus Christ right now, not me. It was a wake-up call. I was struck. I came home and I said to Marial: "You are not going to believe what happened to me today. I have been outwitnessed by a man in a leather jacket and chains, with tattoos on his arms. He's the one who gets to talk about Christ, not me. There is something wrong with this world." I won't begin to tell you how nice she was with me, and comforting, at that moment, but it really was a salient reminder. It was a wake-up call to me: namely, the fact that Jesus Christ calls people out of the ordinary; that there are no qualifications, no established credentials. There is only one thing that one needs to do. When Jesus issues the words Follow me, like that man, you say yes. You never know what will lie before you.
This leads me to the one who does the calling. The power of the one who does the calling is captured in the Bible, for it says that he was mighty in word and deed. The one who gave the call was Jesus Christ. In many ways, Jesus Christ was just like a prophet of his day. In fact, many people are going back now and looking at the similarities between Jesus and the prophets. There is a sense in which he was an oracular prophet, one of those who spoke in oracles and in wise phrases. There is a sense in which Jesus of Nazareth was a popular prophet, because the people followed him gladly. As Dr. Webb of Tyndale College has suggested, he was also a leadership prophet, someone who had the leading of people. Indeed, Jesus was also very Jewish. He fit very firmly within the Judean tradition, and the rabbinic tradition. But, in addition to simply being from the rabbinic tradition, he was also unique.
Jesus was unique, as N.T. Wright points out, just like Mozart. Before Mozart was Haydn and Bach, and without Haydn and Bach there would probably have been no Mozart. But Mozart, because he was unique, also led the way for the likes of Beethoven and Schubert. In other words, there is a tradition that led the way for Christ, but Christ, who was also unique, would lead the way for others. And the Gospel message, therefore, is about someone who, while he was within the Jewish tradition, while he was a prophet in the prophetic tradition, was also unique. He was unique in a couple of ways. The first of these, I think, is that it was his authority that really grasped those who were beside the Galilean Sea. I am sure they had heard many different people call them and ask them to follow; to subscribe to a community such as the Essenes or to join to a zealot movement, or a pious movement, within Israel. There were many people who came along in the time of Jesus and used religion in a fraudulent way.
They remind me of a story that I heard from someone who is involved in the insurance business in San Francisco. I guess this is a well-known story. It is the story of a man who really tried to con an insurance company. He did so by arriving in court in a wheelchair. He had a collar around his neck. After the hearing was over, he was awarded damages of $200,000. One of the insurance agents went to him afterwards and said: "Now, I want to tell you that I know what you have been doing. You are a fraud. I'm going to follow you every step of the way. There will be an agent that goes with you every moment. As soon as you get out of that wheelchair, as soon as you are able to walk better, we will be on you so fast you won't believe it." He said: "All right. Go ahead and do that if you want. This week, I am going to be staying at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Next week, I'm going to be staying at the Savoy in London. Follow me there. Then I'm going to the Ritz in Paris. Then I am going to the Costa Brava and the Costa del Sol. Then I'm going to go to the Riviera, and finally, I am going to go to the shrine at Lourdes and have a miraculous healing."
There are always those who will use religion for their own purposes. There are those who go around and propose their own agenda by using the powerful force of religion. Jesus of Nazareth was not like that, and the disciples knew it. There was an authority in this Jesus. This wasn't just another rabbi who was going around speaking Midrash, which is an interpretation of the law, here was a man who was announcing something new. Here was a man who wasn't just interpreting what they had already read, here was a man who was proclaiming something profound: that the Kingdom of God, that the reign of God, was actually going to be manifested through his life and witness. So, when he said to those disciples on the shore of Galilee, Follow me, he was doing so with authority. He was making an announcement. He was calling them to something radically new and those who responded knew and understood the power of that message.
So what can we glean about the calling to discipleship today? Is there anything that we can learn from this encounter between this man Jesus and those who were on the shores of Galilee? Oh yes, there is. The very first thing that we find out is that there is an immediacy to the call Follow me. I think it is singularly amazing that, as the gospel narratives show, in every single case, no matter whether it be the call of Simon Peter and Andrew, of James and John, of the sons of Zebedee or of Levi, we are told they immediately followed. They were grasped so much by the power of this man Jesus Christ that there was no room any more simply to contemplate and pontificate; rather there was this immediate surge within their hearts and souls. He whom they saw was demanding their allegiance; calling them to follow in obedience. But in that call to obedience, in that call that was immediate, there was also the call that was intimate.
The Apostle Paul pointed that out in a passage from First Corinthians I: From the moment that you say Yes to the call Follow me, there is an intimate fellowship, a fellowship that lasts forever; a fellowship that takes you into the ordinary, into every single aspect of your life. From that moment on, those disciples would never be the same, because they went with Christ and Christ went with them. Even after he died, they believed that he was still with them and that the bond of that fellowship would go with them forevermore. My friends, that is the nature of Christian discipleship. That is the nature of answering the call Follow me. It is immediate, it is intimate, and it is interactive. From the moment when those disciples said that they were willing to follow Christ, when they dropped their nets, when they left what they were doing, when they walked out of the toll-booth, whatever the moment was, they knew that from that moment on, the primary relationship they were going to have was with this man, Jesus of Nazareth.
But there is something more than that, and on this the Gospels are very clear: Jesus says to the disciples, particularly to Andrew and to Simon Peter: "If you will now drop your nets," (remember the classic line from Sunday School) "I will make you fishers of men." Here was a call that was also for the rest of humanity. Now, in the Book of Jeremiah, the catching of people in a net is a negative thing, like entrapment. But Jesus didn't mean that. Jesus didn't mean to entrap people: He meant to liberate them. Jesus didn't mean to constrain people: He meant to free them. From that moment on, as St. Augustine rightly said, Simon Peter exchanged the nets that were catching fish for nets that were catching people; but he's still in the same business of going out in the name of God and reaching out to humanity. That, I think, is one of the great powers of the Christian gospel: The call to discipleship is a call to be there for the other. It is a call to transform the world in which we live, from the ordinary into something that is Godly.
Vincent van Gogh once wrote these words: "Man is not on this earth merely to be happy, nor even to be simply honest, he is there to realize great things for humanity, to attain nobility, and to surmount the vulgarity in which the existence of almost all individuals drags on."
On the same day as I read those words of van Gogh, I picked up a copy of the Globe and Mail and I just couldn't believe what I was reading. I was reflecting on the power of Christian discipleship and the perverse nature of the decadent culture in which we live. I thought, You know, Lord, there really is a need for people who will follow Christ today, just as those disciples did on the Sea of Galilee. For, in one of the sections of the Globe and Mail, I read an article by a prostitute, extolling the virtues of prostitution. I thought to myself, if I were a young person, a young girl or a young man, and I picked up the Globe and Mail and read an article like this, I would ask myself: What kind of a world am I living in? The headline has after it these words: Life as a prostitute doesn't have to be dreary and demeaning. It has meant money, travel, meeting interesting people. What more could you want in a job? And this in the Globe and Mail, of all places. In the world in which we live, with all the things that face our young people, we have a terrible headline that says "I Love Sex and I'm Good at It." I said to myself: "Is there not a need for people in this generation to say in the name of Jesus Christ: I follow you, and when I follow you, My Lord, I follow you completely because I know that the world in which I live can very often follow other things."
At the same time, I received a magazine article about the plight of children in India who were working in factories that make fireworks, and how many of them, by the time that they are thirteen or fourteen years old have so much aluminum in their lungs that they can't breathe. Many of them die because of explosions. As child labour, they are having to work in confined situations. I couldn't help but think, "How are these children, and most of all, those who are employing them, going to hear the words of Jesus of Nazareth, Follow me?" Because the call of Jesus Christ to those disciples, as it has been in every single era, is a call to a way of life, a call to a state of being that has authority and power in his name, but changes for the better, the lives of human beings.
There is one final point, and that is, that it is always a call into the unknown. When Jesus walked by those disciples in Galilee, they had no idea what they were to do. They did not know what lay before them. What lay before them was the cross of their Saviour; what lay before them was the day of Easter; what lay before them was Pentecost; what lay before some of them was martyrdom; what lay before others was rejection; what lay before others was sainthood. The moment they heard the word, they did not know. In the same way, you and I cannot calculate the nature of the call of Christ. We cannot understand where it will lead from the moment that we respond to the words Follow me. We, just like those disciples, go into that unknown. But, in many ways, we go into that unknown, being called to put our body where our mouth is.
There is a true story, and I notice we have a Haligonian in our choir this morning, of a man who was an insurance agent in Halifax. He was sitting on the seventeenth floor of his building, looking out on to the beautiful harbour. His boss came to him, and to all those others that were working with him, and he said: "Now then, you have got to have a greater sense of urgency. I want you to demonstrate imagination and courage. You've got to get out there, and you've got to sell more policies." So the young man who was sitting there on the seventeenth floor looked out the window. As he looked out the window of his office, he saw that there were men working on scaffolding outside. He decided to write them a letter. He asked them if they would like to have some accident insurance, or a life policy, or a disability policy. If so, he asked them to come and see him later. The men who were on the scaffolding outside said: "All right. We'll consider that, if you'll come onto the scaffolding and join us." The young man went out onto that scaffolding and, according to him and I know him, he sold a $50,000 policy. My friends, that is the nature of the call into the unknown. You can't go into that unknown, unless you are willing to put your body where your mouth is.
The call to discipleship, then, the call to Follow me, is not just a word. It is not just a phrase. It is not an assent, or an acquiescence to an idea: It is a concrete call to follow, and when you do so, like the disciples, you know you are following the one who leads to life. Follow me. What amazing words.
Amen
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.