The Rev. Carl M. Saxton, II

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Mark 1.14-20

In today’s gospel reading we hear the very first words spoken by Jesus in the gospel accounts.  Scholars believe that Mark’s gospel was the first to be written down, the very first record of the life and ministry of Jesus that would be passed down to us, His followers who have never seen and yet believe.  So, in a strange and mysterious way this morning we hear the first words to pass the lips of our Lord and Savior: Follow me; and two thousand years later we are still answering that call.

But, long before us, Simon and his brother Andrew are the first pair of disciples to be called. Jesus sees them doing their job: throwing their nets, fishing.  Mark doesn't tell us any of the details--what Jesus and the brothers saw in each other, why Jesus picked them, what kind of conversation they might have had, what questions they might have asked, how these fishermen felt. Mark skips right to the heart of the story. Jesus says, "Follow me," and without a word they get up and they go.

James and John are next. A little farther down the beach these brothers are sitting in a boat with their father mending their nets. Again, Mark gives us the story in fast forward--Mark doesn't show us anything but the important points. Jesus comes to them, he sees them, he calls them, they go.

It can be difficult to have an emotional connection to these stories as Mark tells them. He doesn't give us any sense of the visceral inner struggle that's involved in making these kinds of  life changing decisions - in discerning a life's purpose. Mark completely leaves out the process of deciding, discerning, choosing--all the stuff that would be really helpful to us some two millennia later.

Perhaps Mark leaves out the process because, in the end, the process isn’t the point. The point is that Jesus finds us, calls us, and the call is to go with him. This is about entering into a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. It's not about committing to a doctrinal statement or a program, it's about coming face to face with Christ. Jesus didn’t say, "Come, be a Christian" or "Come, embrace this philosophy" or "Come, do this ministry." He said, "Come with me, belong to me, follow me."

When most of us think about the issue of "our calling"--we automatically think of something we're supposed to do or some career God may be asking us to embrace. Some of us can get really worked up about this, right?  We might even get a little frustrated that we don't have a better sense of what we're supposed to be doing. "God, why don't you show me what you want me to do? What's my calling? How can I find it?  If you’d just talk to me!!"

But here's the thing: The Scriptures are amazingly silent and calm about these things. For followers of Jesus, the most important calling comes first. Give yourself to the person of Jesus Christ. Know him, follow him, love him, listen for him; in doing that we will find that life opens up and we have freedom to do what we do best, to do what we love best, but we have to remember that that's not the main thing! Our first calling is to belong to God in Christ.

Isn’t that good news? If our essential calling is to belong to Jesus, then we are given enormous freedom to change the nonessentials along the way--to grow and to become! Jesus has no investment in putting anybody in any kind of vocational straight jacket. Who doesn't assume that the details of our lives are going to change over the next 10, 20, 40 years? We can’t begin to predict how our lives are going to unfold.

I recently read a story about a man in his late 60's. He studied at a prestigious university in the East some years ago, and then he moved to Texas to work on his doctorate. But somewhere along the way he became addicted to cocaine. He lost his family, lost his place in graduate school, lost big pieces of himself. Somehow he ended up wandering into a good church. When he did, he was so fragile--he looked like he'd been "rode hard and put up wet"--as they say in Texas, but the people in that church welcomed him into their community and slowly he started to heal. Eventually, maybe even miraculously, he was even reunited with his wife and children.

Talking with some of those wonderful people who welcomed him into their lives he said, "I want to believe that my best days aren't behind me, and that my life can still count, can still make a difference." He sat there with his head in his hands. "I just can't help but feel like I've blown all of my best chances," he said. That's when his wife reached over and took his hand and said, "Baby, you've got to take your sticky fingers off that steering wheel. If God could yank Jesus out of a grave, I figure he can make something beautiful out of busted parts."

Remembering our first calling - to belong to Jesus, to follow Him - gives us freedom to change, to grow, and even to mess it all up and find our way back again.

That our essential calling is to be in relationship with Christ is good news for another reason: In those long seasons when our calling doesn't change; and in fact sometimes seems unbearably demanding or dull, remembering our first call, to belong to Christ, will help us become better servants to His people. Ministry is hard. Sometimes it's hard being a Christian because even though you’re trying hard to follow Jesus people can make you nuts!  You can feel like Moses in the desert when he said

Why have you treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? ...If this is the way you are going to treat me, put me to death at once. [Numbers 11. 11-12, 15]

On those days you might want to crawl into a deep, dark hole and hide from the world, but God won’t let you hide away for long.  Whenever those times come, think of the story of Jesus recorded just a couple of chapters after this one.  After traveling all over Galilee, healing people and preaching the good news, Jesus returns home the Bible tells us.  But such a great crowd came together outside the doors of the house that Jesus and His disciples couldn’t even eat.  Weary, hungry, they sit down to eat but the lost and the forgotten of God’s children cry out to them.  Instead of sending a disciple to the door to tell the people to come back tomorrow, Jesus gets up and goes out to them.  Belonging to Jesus means that His light is there to shine into our darkness, and He’s there to hold us up when we think we’re too tired and hungry to move forward.

There is, however, one constant in the stories from Mark today and it's this: everyone who answers the call of Christ leaves something behind.  Andrew and Simon leave their nets; James and John leave their father. Following Jesus means being willing to change both what's in our hands and what's in our hearts, to leave more and more of the past behind to move forward in the light of Christ.

So I wonder, if Christ is calling you and me today--and He is, because His calling comes new with every day--what may we need to leave behind to be able to get up and go? To follow Jesus means to be changed, to grow, to leave some things behind. When Jesus says, Follow me, and we say, yes Lord, we can’t predict where that's going to lead us. It's all right not to be sure of what it all means and how it'll all turn out. All that matters is that Jesus sees you as you are, loves you and calls you to follow Him.