Text: Mark 1:14-20
I’m wondering if you find this gospel from the first chapter of Mark as shocking as I do. The Scripture has an innocent man arrested and a strange rabbi comes along collecting disciples like vacation spoons: “Here we’ve got Oklahoma and Texas…Oh, don’t forget that we’ve got to stop again in Nevada and California!” And the disciples go along with it. They’re like “what else are we going to do?” and so they leave everything behind and follow this stranger. Let’s acknowledge how shocking this really is.
As usual, Mark hasn’t really fleshed out this story, which makes the disciples’ response all the more bizarre. We read this gospel in the teachers’ meeting and Kevin said: “I bet Zebedee wasn’t too happy that he lost a couple of workers—couldn’t they at least stay and finish their job?” We don’t know.
Jesus is pulling families apart, demanding immediate returns, and Mark doesn’t let us in on what is really going on. He doesn’t tell us how the disciples come to say yes. Has Jesus’s reputation preceded Him? Does he give them a more compelling argument than ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people,’ such as travel, riches (in heaven), and groupies? Can you imagine a modern response to this:
As Jesus passed along the Lansing Mall, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew delivering pizzas—for they were pizza deliverypersons. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you deliver people.’ And immediately they left their pizzas and followed him.Jesus’s argument has to be more compelling than what’s here, right? Perhaps they know that Jesus is a rabbi, which would give him a special station—and that his offer to these common people is like winning the lottery.
We don’t know because Mark doesn’t say.
We do know, however, that Jesus is in the business of making offers that we can’t refuse, right? Jesus invites each of us to come along and follow Him—expecting us to drop everything and go—damn the consequences. For some of us, Jesus pulls us away from our families—away from husbands and wives, away from children and families, and away from parents and mentors. Jesus calls us, He gets us, but He doesn’t always get those sitting next to us—not yet anyway. And we have to deal with that choice—that choice of dropping the line, hopping out of the boat, and leaving loved ones, perhaps for ever.
And Jesus intones that this is immediate—we must act quickly. We do it now. He makes a simple request: “Follow me” and we are to make a decision. Not a “oh, I might like soup for lunch—or a sandwhich…no, soup” type of decision. We’re talking about a clean break, decisively setting off in a new direction. Getting our butts out of the boat and following Him into the unknown.
It would be one thing if Jesus sat us down and told us where we were going, right? He pulls out the map and says that we’re going to take a left at the second light, go down Saginaw a few miles, and so on. But he doesn’t. He says “Follow me.” He might throw in “don’t be afraid” for good measure. And that’s it.
John Shea, in a commentary on the lectionary, suggests that there are three elements in this gospel that seem to be coded into our DNA: call, leave, follow. Jesus calls the disciples, and their natural response is to leave. They then naturally follow. Each element of this structure is a decision, a response to external stimuli. This doesn’t imply that the disciples didn’t have a choice or that Jesus gave the disciples an opportunity that they should refuse. No, for Mark, the point is not what brought the disciples to hear the call, leave their families, and follow Jesus, but those actions in and of themselves. Those actions, call, leave, follow, are the actions of discipleship. They are the foundation of discipleship. Call, leave, follow.
This is where Jesus is clear. Remember, the destination is not the worry, it’s the following, right? Jesus gives clarity to the relationship, to what it means to be a disciple. What it means to follow a rabbi—this rabbi/teacher. Call, leave, follow.
This clarity is achieved by removing the very things that might distract us. We don’t know when John the Baptizer is arrested, but Mark gets him out of the way here so that the story’s central focus is on Jesus and His disciples. That way, we can fix our vision on the call; on that central relationship; on that moment in which the biggest decisions are made: call, leave, follow.
On Tuesday, in the midst of a most historic inauguration, the ascent of the first African-American president, a day in which millions gathered in public squares to witness an astounding, earth-moving moment, we heard our nation’s leader call us. He said: “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He is asking us to respond to the needs around us: to move decisively. President Barack Obama is no messiah, but that fact makes his words no less prophetic. That he is an American president makes his words no less appropriate for our congregation, our denomination, and our church.
And when he says: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he isn’t just talking in the abstract—about D.C. or Congress or K Street—his words apply to all of us: to our culture, our society, our church—every place in which politics are perpetually present. The ground has indeed already shifted. We are truly in a defining moment. A church moment and an American moment.
We know the stuff in our DNA, the stuff that makes us anxious about the shifted ground and presidential transitions; challenges from the pulpit and from the podium; ministry concerns and economic ones. But we have something else in our DNA: that response to call: leave, follow. We have Jesus’s teaching, the Spirit’s inspiration, and God’s love. And we have the opportunity. An opportunity that is, itself, historic. An opportunity that can forever define who we are and who we are called to be. An opportunity to allow God to guide us where we need to be, not where we want to be or where we are most comfortable. We have an opportunity to live like a people called.
Today and tomorrow. This month and next year. We are called. Let’s leave and follow.
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