CALLED TO FOLLOW
Scriptures:
Isaiah 9:2-3, 6-7
Matthew 4:12-22
How many of you participated in the Democratic or Republican caucuses a week ago? No, you don’t have to hold up your hands – I’m not trying to embarrass anyone, and our voting record is still supposed to be private (although the caucus system really doesn’t lend itself to voter privacy very much, does it?). But if you were like 154,000 other Nevadans (there, I pronounced it right, unlike Brian Williams at the debate!) you were at one of those caucus sites. It was chaos, wasn’t it? Is this any way to choose a leader?
For that really is what this whole process is all about. From the first “toe-in-the-water” testing of the political winds (to mix a metaphor!) – which usually begins right after the last election – on through the primaries and caucuses and debates and conventions right up to Election Day what each of those candidates is seeking to do is project an image that he or she is a leader who deserves to be followed. By us. By you and me. Every candidate’s words and actions lead to that bottom line: will this help me be seen as a leader worthy of commanding followers?
And, of course, in order to try to be seen as a leader a candidate usually winds up saying what they believe people want to hear and doing what they believe people expect of them – especially in the nominating process when a candidate must pay particular attention to their core constituency. So, this leads to an increasingly cautious approach in order to pile up the votes – or, in other words, to try to enlist followers. The paradox in our political process is that the more someone wants to be seen as a leader, the more that person is molded by public perceptions.
A 1972 movie, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford as Bill McKay, makes this point in a way that is still relevant today. Initially, McKay is recruited to run against a “can’t lost” senator, and so he is free to get out on the campaign trail and say exactly what he wants because none of it matters anyway. McKay accepts the idea of running for the senate because it gives him the chance to speak to groups of people and spread his liberal values. But as he becomes a more-and-more viable candidate his early support of abortion rights and gun control fade to mush, while his stump speech is reduced to the same few clichés and a new slogan: “For a better way: Bill McKay!” The new approach causes McKay to gain in the public opinion polls, and eventually he wins. But in a famous final scene he turns to his campaign manager and asks, “What do we do now?” It was all about the winning, and now that he has won how can the governing make good on the promises to his followers? As one analyst said about this film, “[It] highlights many criticisms of modern day American politics, such as the importance of money and the emphasis on the image of political candidates. In particular, the degeneration of McKay from an idealistic public-interest lawyer working for unpopular and then-little-known causes [became] a construct of his campaign, dominated by idiotic little slogans and a road-weary nervous wreck, to boot.”
The other paradox about the American politician as leader is that no one – no one – is going to appeal as a leader for everyone. No matter how any of you individually may feel about Hillary or Barack or Mitt or John McCain there are going to be many people here in this same room who are going to violently disagree with you and find that this one does not have the chops to be a leader at all. That has been true throughout our history. A Kennedy, a Roosevelt, a Lincoln – none of the revered leaders of our political past received universal acclaim during their time in office. It is simply not possible in the American political system to be a leader that everyone will follow. And as we certainly know from the past eight years, leadership is something that can easily get eroded away with the decisions made by the person sitting in that Oval Office.
Change of scene. You are at home, sitting in front of the TV set, or perhaps enjoying crafting something at your workbench, or darning, or working a jigsaw puzzle; or, you are at your place of work, struggling with a personnel problem, or trying to make that day’s quota; or, you are at school waiting for that end-of-the-class bell to ring, or making plans with friends to get together later that afternoon – and this stranger walks up to you and says that if you will just drop everything you are doing, which means, in effect, completely changing your way of life, and follow him he will make you someone who can transform people’s lives. The thing is: you’ve already got a pretty good idea of what your life is all about and what the next few months and years will look like. Even if you’re a young person in high school or college, you have some rather pleasant ideas of how you’d like your life to go. You are not looking for what would be a complete topsy-turvy change. Remember what we said a couple of weeks ago about being prepared for surprises: “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans.”
What’s more, this man is saying some strange things: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” He’s saying that he is the one you are to follow. Do you get up from your sofa or workbench or dining room table or school desk and immediately go after him?
This is what if must have felt like for Simon Peter and Andrew there by the sea. They had a perfectly comfortable life, one quite well molded into the society of their time. They were not expecting anything like this encounter. They were content with their lot in life
Put yourself in this picture. For a moment, stand with Andrew and Peter fishing by the sea, or sit with James and John seated in a boat with their father. The familiar salty air is saturated with a sense of security. Would you suddenly drop everything known best to you and go traipsing off to who-knows-where with a man who shows up one day and speaks with an authority that suggests he can change everything? When you hear this man say “follow me,” would you not first want him to tell you something about where you would be going and what you would be doing? Would you not want some assurance of a worthwhile pay-off for embarking on such a risky journey? Perhaps you would think to yourself: “Fishing on the Sea of Galilee may not seem like much, but it is a means of making a living. And this is my home.”
So, it has to come as a surprise, not to say shock, that our rather terse Biblical text leaps to the conclusion: “Immediately they left their nets and followed him…. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.” But I’d be willing to bet that you weren’t terribly shocked when you heard me read those words a few moments ago. We have been inured, haven’t we, through 20-now-going-on-21 centuries of seeing the impact of the life of Christ on others, so that Peter’s and Andrew’s and James’ and John’s reaction and subsequent action seems more like a “been there, done that” than the incredible leap of faith that it must have seemed to those 1st century Galileans. C. Welton Gaddy has said about this passage: “We have read the stories of discipleship and heard the words of Jesus so many times that their sharp edges have been blunted, their propensity to shock have been stifled, and their radical nature erased. And they seem to come from a time that is no more. Often I wonder if we even can hear those words from Jesus today, much less obey them and follow him.”
What makes following Jesus so much more different from following a political leader who wants to be our president? Possibly because it’s so counter-intuitive. Think about what he demands. Think about what he has to offer. Nothing about him meets our expectations.
Here’s C. Welton Gaddy again who puts this in perspective (he, by the way, is pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, LA, and President of The Interfaith Alliance):
“If we are really honest, most of us may admit that we do not really believe a person can live in the world today as Jesus instructed us to live. Just when we think we can agree with him on something like the authority of the law, he breaks a law in the interest of compassion. We cannot abide that – law subjected to compassion. Think of what chaos that would cause in our communities. We understand justice, but Jesus elevates grace and mercy over justice. How on earth could we expect anyone ever to learn the important differences between right and wrong when Jesus makes forgiveness and rehabilitation superior to punishment? This is no way to run a church, much less a society.
“Jesus’ vision defies reason. He knows the power of coins, the might of military forces, and the influence of government control, but he insists that nothing equals love in importance. What’s more, he expects us to live by such love. Why, Jesus commends help for the poor as the ultimate indication of authentic religion. He seems to honestly believe that responses to the poor reflect people’s love for God or lack of it. And if that is not enough, Jesus tells us to forgive people who have done us wrong, to pray for our enemies, and to return good for evil. Can you believe it? Literally, can you believe it?
“Look carefully at this man from Nazareth. He does not invite our reflection on a theory. Rather he asks for obedience to his summons that can alter reality. He is serious – not dead serious, but alive serious.”
I love that phrase: “not dead serious, but alive serious.” It really sums up the whole paradox that is Jesus for us. When we speak of someone as being “dead serious” that’s really almost an oxymoron – the importance of what he or she has to offer is off-set by the deadness with which it is imparted. Maybe that’s why the appeals to us to be their followers from politicians tend to fall on deaf ears. But if someone is “alive serious” – as Jesus most certainly is – than what he is offering enlivens us, makes us buoyed up to want to follow, gives us a sense of the kind of aliveness that can transform the world.
You know, in retrospect it’s somewhat hard to believe that Peter and Andrew and James and John would simply respond so immediately to his call. They didn’t have our advantage of thousands of years of evidence of the credibility of this man’s vision, the power of his authority, and the healing in his ministry. Even so, there must have been something that spoke to them, that told them here was the one who can indeed change the world. And so we stand in awe that they could respond so immediately and so completely, give up everything that they had previously known, and answer his call to follow.
It’s not enough, you see, just to accept Christ and receive him into our lives. We have to actively follow him. This often means making hard choices and doing things when our common sense tells us to go in the other direction (as that great line at the end of “A Miracle on 34th Street” has it). The importance of Jesus’ words –“follow me” – is found not in how a group of fishing buddies responded to him by the Sea of Galilee long before we were born, but in how we respond to him today. He comes to us with a claim on our lives, a claim that is all too easy to overlook amidst the pressures of modern-day society, but a claim that once we have accepted it frees us to be his loving servants. As did Peter and Andrew, it is a claim that we welcome because it is what ultimately empowers us to do God’s will in each of our own Seas of Galilee.
Paradoxically, being called to follow often means taking positions of leadership. We are about to hold an Annual Meeting where new Board members and new chairpersons of Boards will be elected. As a church community we are grateful to these persons for their willingness to accept these positions of leadership – which really means, in a church context, becoming servants on behalf of the whole community. None of the people being elected today, I would venture to guess, are looking to build up bands of followers by making political promises. But what they are doing by taking this action is saying, in effect, “I have heard the call of the Christ to follow, and I will do so to the best of my ability, seeking only to become (as the United Church of Christ Statement of Faith has it) ‘your servants in the service of others’”. Each one of us, then, seeing these examples, can find our own ways to follow the call of the Christ. And in so doing we discover that the promises of God and of Jesus-who-is-the-Christ are so much more than any political promises we have ever heard, as that same Statement of Faith confirms:
You promise to all who trust you
forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace,
courage in the struggle for justice and peace,
your presence in trial and rejoicing,
and eternal life in your realm which has no end.
Amen
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
January 27, 2008