Sunday’s Sermon – Follow Me – Matthew 4:12-23

Follow Me
Matthew 4:12-23, Psalm 27:1, 4-9

It was mid-afternoon on a fall day in Knoxville, Tennessee. College students met in a parking lot after another day of classes, suitcases in tow. A caravan of five cars or so formed, ready to travel the long road of I-81 to a Mock Trial competition held at Yale University. After some negotiation, all the baggage made it into trunks in what was at best a jigsaw puzzle. Riders divided, front seats were claimed. Walkie talkies were distributed to keep in contact. Everything was ready to go. And then someone asked, “where are the directions?” Our leader, an imposing 6 foot plus senior named Chris turned around with a somewhat irritated look. “Follow me” was his only reply. A few drivers persisted, “of course, we’re planning on staying together, but it’d be nice to have the directions, you know, just in case.” “Follow me.” “It’s just a long trip. What if we hit traffic? Look, we just want to know where we’re going.” “Follow me.” Needless to say, it was an order that was not an easy one to follow.

“Follow me.” Jesus says to Simon, also called Peter, and his brother Andrew. Then, down the shore, a similar invitation is issued to two other brothers, James and John. Can you imagine the scene? Here are two sets of brothers, working hard in the family business, casting nest into the sea, hoping to catch enough fish to make a living. And here comes this man with an invitation that on first glance probably didn’t fall into the category of “something too good to miss.” And yet, the brothers do respond. There must have been something about this stranger on the shore that gave the disciple’s confidence to drop their nets.  Both times, Matthew uses the same word to describe the timing of their reaction – IMMEDIATELY – and both times, Matthew tells us how the respond – they follow him. Clearly there was something different about Jesus than my Mock Trial group leader.

The great theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that the call to “follow me” was a call to “absolute discipleship,” and that it came at a pretty high cost. But, he also noted that it was only in surrendering ourselves to Jesus’ command that we could, paradoxically, know our greatest joy[i]. There must have been something so provocative about Jesus’ invitation that these four fisherman were willing to take a risk.

Perhaps it was because of where they were going. The verses that follow this one immediately go into Jesus’ ministry of healing and teaching throughout Galilee. Then we have the Sermon on the Mount, four chapters in Matthew’s gospel of Jesus’ instruction. Christ takes the disciples on one wild ride, continuing to say “follow me,” and then teaching them, by word and example, just what that means. It should be no surprise, then, that by the end of the gospel, Jesus sends out these disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. And in this powerful charge, he also includes the pivotal reminder that he is with them always, even to the end of the age.

But the disciples wouldn’t have known any of this while they were pulling in their nets, struggling to make a living. No, there had to have been some other hook, pardon the pun, that Jesus used to lure them in. Perhaps it is because rather than just some blind directive, he provided additional information that resonated with something they knew. He said, “I will make you fish for people.” Jesus peaked their interest, speaking to something that was close to their hearts and perhaps at the root of who they were. He nurtured and kindled a part of them that became inspired to move forward and join him.

“Follow me.” It’s a command that comes over and over again in Scripture. God called Abraham and Sarah to leave their home, their family, their identity, and sojourn into an unfamiliar land. God called Rahab to shelter undercover agents sent to Jericho. God called Samuel, three times as a young boy, to be God’s servant, who later would anoint Israel’s first king. God called prophets like Isaiah to summon the people of Israel to open their prosperity-glazed eyes and see God in their midst. God called Mary to give birth to God incarnate. And God called fishermen from their nets to follow Jesus.

As James O. Chatham notes:

From the beginning, God has called people; God has stepped into their lives and pointed them in new directions. God does this throughout the Bible; few pages go by without it. Is this not a strong signal that God is going to call us too; that in some moment when we are involved in a normal day’s pursuits, God will walk up to the lake shore and beckon us to leave our fishing boats for a future we had not planned?[ii]

A lot of times we believe that God’s call is reserved for a select few, you know, those of us pastor types. Maybe we allow ourselves to believe that they are for non-clergy, but even then, only a select few. However, in Matthew’s gospel that idea is challenged by the very fact that these first disciples were fishermen. They were ordinary, everyday people, going about their very ordinary, everyday lives. They were people who worked with their hands, who likely lived day to day, hoping they would catch enough fish to survive. Their hands and faces were weathered by wind and sea. They probably said things they shouldn’t. And yet, this is Jesus’ target audience. Just like the shepherds on the hillsides heard the news of his birth, God again brings in unlikely people into the extraordinary story of our salvation. This should cause us to take note. Maybe, God will even call us into the story – if we are open enough to hearing Jesus’ voice, “Follow Me.”

Follow me – on a cold morning in January, when the warmth of a cozy bed is even more alluring on a Sunday morning, into a time of worship, prayer, and study with a community of faith.

Follow me – when you see that coworker, classmate, or neighbor who seems to not have anyone to talk to, who is longing for someone to hear his or her story and offer support.

Follow me – at a dinner party where jokes become increasingly crude, and you can’t quite bring yourself to laugh at yet another joke that brims with racism or sexism. Follow me – to speak out for what is right.

Follow me – when you see those who are hungry, or without shelter, or who lack decent clothing, or who are oppressed and without voice; recognize them as fellow children’ of God and respond in action – from loading produce at a mobile food pantry to tagging items for our clothing closet to working for real changes in the systems that have failed.

Follow me. God’s calls are all around us. James Chatham goes on to say,:

If the Bible says anything clearly, it says this: God calls us. Calls us to do whatever God has in mind. Calls us to set a great many other things aside and follow God’s bidding[iii].

Of course, it can be difficult to hear God’s call. There are many other places in our lives and world that make a lot of noise, too, in hopes that we will follow.

Follow Me – you need this list of products in order to make yourself look or feel your very best. With the right combination of them, you will be successful.

Follow Me – on social media, so you can keep up with the latest news and thoughts of celebrities, politicians, and friends.

Follow Me – just make up some plausible excuse, even if it isn’t quite true, to spare your friend’s feelings and avoid an invitation. It’s just a little white lie, after all.

Our work, it seems, is to discern which of these “follow me”s are from God, and which might be from places that don’t quite lead us down the same path of discipleship. To do this, we have to be open to hearing God’s call in the first place, making space in our lives, minds and hearts to be open to the kind of change God’s call might bring to us.

This is the process of discernment, and it helps us discover our vocation, that call that God issues to each of us as disciples. It is a unique call, based on the skills and gifts and passions we have, and balanced with the needs of the world. Frederick Buechner is often quoted for his definition of vocation as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” but he goes on to further explain it in this way, saying:

By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you  have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren’t helping your patients much either. Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do[iv].

The disciples were working as fisherman, but when they received the call, they enthusiastically followed. And Jesus gave them a new vocation – to fish for people. He took the skills they presumably already had – fishing – and used their abilities (learned and innate) to help them learn how to be disciples. I believe God’s call works in many of the same ways today. God nurtures in us the talents, gifts, and interests that we have, and helps us find ways to use them to be a part of what God is doing in the world. These often become identified as spiritual gifts, and range from beautiful singing voices and compassionate hearts to the ability to organize and understand numbers. All of these are needed for the work of Christ’s kingdom – therefore, all of us are called. We just need to know how to discern what that means for us.

In the movie, Dead Poets’ Society, a boy’s boarding school experiences the creative and dynamic teaching of a somewhat renegade English teacher, Professor Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams. In one of the early scenes of the movie, he provides commentary on how to approach reading poetry that I believe is very much akin to how we should approach discerning our calls. After opening a poetry textbook, he asks a student to begin reading the Introduction, “Understanding Poetry.” the students find a boring rubric for interpreting the merit of a given poem – paying attention to rhyme, meter, figures of speech, etc. Professor Keating toys with it for a moment, illustrating the line graph quantitative analysis of different poems. Then he calls the whole introduction “excrement.” There’s something more to it, he says, than being able to graph a poem’s perfection and merit. It’s not about following a prescribed checklist of things. Instead, Professor Keating instructs them to rip out that page – and then the entire introduction. He gathers the boys in close, then urges them to approach poetry in this way, saying:

We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business and engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life – but poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life! . . . of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless – of cities filled with the foolish . . . What good amid these, O me? O life? Answer. That you are here – that life exists, and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.”  What will your verse be?[v]

What will our verse be? That is the question of call, and how we will be a part of what God is doing in the world. Discerning it is less like reading an instruction manual, and more like reading poetry. It requires interpretive work. Not just what the author, God, is saying, but what we are saying in response. Call and Discernment is a two way street between us and God. It evokes a relationship, and action. But it begins with God coming to us, in the midst of our everyday, ordinary lives, and saying, “Follow Me.”

The verses that follow? They are up to us. Amen.

~Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford

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[i] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, (New York: Touchstone, 1995), as referenced by Greg Garrett in “Matthew 4:12-23: Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the World: Year A, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010).

[ii] James O. Chatham, Is It I, Lord? Discerning God’s Call to be a Pastor, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002).

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).

[v] Haft, Steven, et al. Dead Poets Society. Burbank, Calif: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2006. Start at 25:20, end at 26:48.