On January 29th I preached at a congregation in Auckland as part of the call process we use in the Presbyterian Church here in New Zealand and it gave me the opportunity to preach on a passage that has been challenging me recently and reflects my recent reading of Leonard Sweet's new Book "I am a Follower" and also to articulate briefly a vision of ministry that revolves round following Jesus into relationship, community, ministry and mission.
Jesus said “Follow
me”
In his new book “I am a follower” Leonard Sweet says that
the church has for the past few decades become obsessed with leadership not
follow-ship.
Churches and pastors
have become all about developing leadership.
In the past decades leadership conferences have replaced billy graham crusades
as the number one gatherings for Christians in the west. People travel
thousands of miles and spend thousands of dollars to listen to the captains of
commerce and the pastors of the latest megachurch talk about leadership.
There are shelves of
books written on the subject.
In the face of that we need to again hear that call Jesus
gave to his first disciples “follow me”. His first words to Peter and Andrew,
“follow me.” His first words to John and James “Follow me”. The call to all of
us, Jesus said “follow me”.
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus
walking into the lives of those first disciples with the call to follow , comes
right at the start of Jesus public ministry, after John the Baptist had been
arrested Matthew tells us that Jesus came proclaiming “repent, for the Kingdom
of Heaven has come near”. We tend to
think that the word repent means to feel sorry for what we have done wrong. But
it actually means to turn around to go a new way, to live differently. We are
to do that because the kingdom of heaven has come near. Matthew uses kingdom of
heaven whereas the other gospels use the kingdom of God. Scholars say this
reflects a Jewish reluctance to use the name of God, but also as Jesus will
teach us to pray “you kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in
heaven’ it reflects the idea of being a place where the will of God is worked
out.
In Jesus coming the long looked for reign of
God was breaking into the realms of humanity.
The hope the Jews had been looking for of God’s justice and mercy having
authority in the world was at hand. We tend to have a static view of kingdoms
as nation states but in the ancient near east people were used to seeing
kingdoms as places where a particular empire or emperor held sway and these
borders were fluid. Like in first century Judea where the Romans had conqueror
and imposed their law and there rule through a puppet king Herod and his
descendants. Where before that had been Greeks and Babylonians and Assyrians.
So the kingdom of heaven was where the reign of God would have authority: Where
God’s justice and mercy would be reflected in every aspect of life, as it had
been given in the Torah. It would herald just treatment of everybody and
everything, including slaves and foreigners, livestock and land use. Where the
established order will be turned on its head and the poor and least would be
cared for and treated with honour. What has been called God’s up side down
kingdom, or as NT Wright says It is the world and the realms of man that have
it the wrong way up and Jesus kingdom was
the right way up kingdom. For the Jews this kingdom would extend to all
nations to the whole world as the waters cover the sea as the prophet Habakkuk
had declared. It was a kingdom that had near because its true king had come.
But this Kingdom of heaven with its world changing
perspective starts at a personal level. It started with Jesus call to “follow
me” to a group of fishermen and the
first disciple’s response. It starts with that same call to you and I.
This call to follow me at the start of Jesus public ministry
shows that at its centre the Christian faith is a call to a personal relationship
with the person of Jesus. It’s not an invitation to follow a new set of
religious rules, or to practise a new set of religious traditions, but it is an
invitation to connect and to follow Jesus. Even Jesus commissioning of his
disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel starts with that promise of Jesus
continuing presence and “ lo I am with you to the end of the age.
It’s easy to think
when you read the gospel narrative that this call to follow comes in a vacuum. But
there is more to the story that Matthew tells us. The other gospels fill us in.
In Luke’s gospel we are told that Jesus
had used Peter and Andrew’s boat as a first century PA system and after that
had told them to go out into the deep to put down their nets after a
frustrating and fruitless nights fishing and they had pulled up a miraculous
catch. This convinced Peter that this Jesus was someone special, a man of God. In John’s gospel we see some conversations and
meeting that went on beforehand and are told that Andrew was a follower of John
the Baptist’s and told by him that here was the one John was waiting for. But for Mark and Matthew, Jesus simply calls
the disciples to follow him.
But again it’s not in a vacuum. In Matthew’s gospel in
chapter 1 we have been introduced to Jesus through his genealogy we see that he is a descendant of David and
Abraham, we are told more than this we are told that he is the messiah, that he
is God’s own son. The long looked for new king, this is backed up by Matthew’s
birth narrative where we are told all that had happened was done in accordance
with the scripture.
So the call to follow
Jesus to have this relationship with him is based on who this person Jesus is. He
all us to follow because he is the king of the kingdom of heaven. We who are called to follow him from beyond
the cross and the resurrection, have the gospel s that show us that Jesus is
the son of God. We are shown the love of God for us through his life, his death
and his resurrection. To be a Christian
is to know and to follow Jesus.
However right from the start this call to ‘follow me’ is not
just a call to an individual relationship with Jesus, a private faith, but it
is a call to be a community. Right from the start we see two sets of brothers
called ‘to follow Jesus’. They might not
be the people we might automatically pick as Mark Woodley says “peter has
issues with control and impulsiveness. James and John, nicknamed “the sons of
Thunder,” had issues with anger and volatility.” He goes on to say that “By calling these four men and then Matthew
the tax collector, Mary and Martha, and the whole motley crew- Jesus was making
a clear statement about his kingdom movement: it does not exist was out
community. " A new people of God with a
new king called to the demanding work of shaping themselves into a group that
reflect Jesus love for each other. To follow Jesus is a call to community.
I was talking to a student during the week who last year had
become aware of what he called church politics. He was upset about the way people
in his church treated each other. I reminded him that sadly this has been part
of our struggle to be church from the beginning. In the epistles Paul
wrote to those first churches were written to groups wrestling with what
it meant to be this new community. A community of ordinary broken prickly
people like you and I and Paul has to apply this new kingdom way of living to
the situations they found themselves in.
Application that is full of words such as forgive, long suffering,
patience and the reality of a nittygritty working out of loving one another.
For those first disciples to respond to Jesus call to
‘follow me’ meant that they had to leave things as well. It says they left
their nets and boats to follow Jesus. For them it was not simply leaving the
physical nets but what these nets represent.
It meant leaving their Net worth. As fishermen they made
their living from catching fish, it was how they feed themselves and how they
supported their family…
It meant leaving their networks the way they made sense of
their world through the relationships they had in their community and changing
that to one where those networks were mediated through a new identity as
follows of Jesus.
It meant leaving their network, the way in which they would
have seen their identity as fishermen, to adopt a new identity as followers,
disciples and after that as apostles, someone who is sent, sent as a witness to
what they knew of Jesus.
It meant leaving their safety net, what they familiar with
what was safe for the sake of following Jesus. We see this in after Jesus
crucifixion that Peter says to the rest of the disciples lets go fishing, let’s
go back to what we know and in John’s gospel we see Jesus has to come and
restore a relationship with Peter and give him a new purpose for life.
In Philippians 3:1-11, Paul himself talks of
having to reconstitute his life and reality round Jesus and he talks of all he
had left behind, all the things that had made his life and his identity and he
says that he counts it as nothing compared to the surpassing greatness of
knowing Jesus. All that he had held as important that was the network of his life
he says it’s like I put it out on the edge of the road for the inorganic
rubbish collection because I’ve found his pearl of great price in Christ.
That’s part of the challenge for us who would answer the call to follow Jesus,
that to follow means to leave.
Finally when Jesus says follow me, it’s a call not just to
leave but a call to allow Jesus to make us fishers of men. Matthew’s gospel
moves straight from this call narrative to a summary of Jesus ministry. For
those who answer the call to follow Jesus it is a call to follow Jesus into the
ministry of Jesus. It’s a call to proclaim the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Because we know that Jesus its king is present. It’s a call to follow Jesus
into the lives of the sick and oppressed, the lost and the poor, with the
reality and good news and power of God’s kingdom. It’s a call that in Luke’s gospel will lead
the disciples into loving and caring for the outcast and ostracized in their
society, welcoming them back to God and to fellowship with us and with God. It’s a call that we will see moves on into
being and living a different way in this world, as straight after this passage we
read today Jesus will sit down and teach his disciples in the sermon on the
mount, what has been called the manifesto of the kingdom, what it means to be
like the one who we follow.
Leonard sweet says there is usually an audible ‘gasp’ when
he introduces himself at conferences when he introduces himself by saying I do
not stand here as a leader. I make no pretence to leadership. My fundamental
identity is not as a leader. My fundamental identity is this: I am a
follower”. He says sometimes the only way to get the audience back with him is to invite them to sing what he calls his
leadership anthem, ‘I have decided to follow Jesus’. As I am here today
preaching to a call, I think its apt that I let you know that my key call in life is
this ‘I am a follower’. My understanding of the faith and of our identity as
the church is that we are celled to be follows. To follow Jesus.
Jesus said ‘Follow Me’. At the centre of who we are as a
church is that relationship with Jesus. Ministry for me is growing in that relationship and encouraging other people deeper and closer in
that relationship.
Jesus said ‘Follow me’ and it’s a call to community, but not a static community a settled community, in a call for the church to be a pilgrim
community, who are prepared to move and to change, to follow as Christ leads.
To be prepared to change and to allow Jesus to lead us out of our comfort zones
to where he leads. Humorist Garrison
Keller challenges us with this quip “Give up your good Christian lives and
follow Jesus’
Jesus said ‘Follow me’ and I will make you fishers of men’
To follow is a call out into the lives of people around us and the world around
us, following Jesus and bringing near the kingdom of heaven because we are with Jesus.
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