Come and Follow!

1-22-17 (Epiphany 3A)

1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 4:12-23

Come and Follow

They left their nets, their boats, and even their father behind to follow the Christ.  They didn’t ask for a list of qualifications or a demonstration of proof; they just heard Jesus’ invitation to become “fishers of men,” dropped everything else, and went to follow him wherever he was going.  It’s a peculiar image that we’re given by Matthew, and vastly different from John’s account that we heard last week.  If we’re being honest with ourselves, in fact, John’s is far more believable - Andrew starts off as a disciple of John the Baptist in John’s gospel, so he’s already been primed and ready to recognize Jesus as the Messiah.  It’s why Andrew is so quick to invite his brother to come with him.  Peter and Andrew experience the Messiah and then become disciples.

Matthew cuts to the chase, and makes Jesus come across all the more powerful in the process.  And what fascinated me as I revisited Matthew’s more familiar disciple story is that it is this story that we know so much better in the first place.  This is the story that is lifted up over and over again as a model for what faith and discipleship should look like.  This is the sermon that has been preached, the Sunday School lesson taught, the song sung time and time again - the message that when Jesus calls us, we just get up and follow like Andrew, Simon Peter, James and John did.  It’s this model that is constantly elevated in our understanding, and it’s this model that we continually wish we could emulate.  God calls and we go, no second thoughts, no looking back, no asking questions like “how?” or “why?” or “what if?”

Unfortunately, it’s the mess we see in Corinthians that is more often than not what ends up being what actually happens.  Where Matthew gives us the expectation, Paul shows us the reality as he writes to the dissonant Corinthian church.  Paul writes to a group of people who have striven to walk in the footsteps of the disciples who went before them, to people who’ve put in the effort to drop everything and to follow.  The only problem is that they can’t agree amongst themselves just quite who they’re following - there’ve been so many different leaders, so many different encouragements to believe this or to practice that… the Corinthians are fractured into different factions, with each camp proclaiming its loyalties - “I belong to Paul,” “I belong to Apollos,” “I belong to Christ.” The call of Jesus gets lost in the campaign for loyalty among the messengers.

And let’s face it - it’s ever so easy to get lost in the rat race of competing gospels, competing churches, competing politics and competing presentations of which Jesus we should be following at any given time.  Is it any wonder that we’re so reluctant to drop everything to follow Christ when it’s so difficult to determine just whose Christ we should be following in the first place?  And in this particular time and our current situations, the viewpoints and camps are so visibly and openly competing for our allegiance - which do we follow?  Who do we say the Christ is?  Do we stand in solidarity with Social Justice Jesus, seeking to tear down the ivory towers and usher in the true justice of God’s Kingdom?  Do we stand with Fire and Brimstone Jesus, proclaiming with fire in our voices the message to “repent, for the Kingdom is near?”  Do we proclaim Republican Jesus or Democrat Jesus and look to the ways in which Jesus clearly supports the political ideologies that we ourselves espouse?  Or do we look to a simpler Jesus who preaches the Prosperity Gospel and promises us that all he’s ever wanted is for us to be happy and successful in all that we do?

It’s here that Paul’s question comes to the forefront - “Has Christ been divided?  Was Paul crucified for you?  Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?”  Jesus wasn’t meant to be sorted and boxed into any particular camp or agenda - Andrew, Peter, James and John don’t drop all that they’re doing because they caught onto a catchy slogan and want to “Make Jerusalem Great Again.”  The early disciples made a bold step forward in faith, led by the prodding of the Spirit, and took the risk to follow someone because of what they felt, what they saw, what they were already experiencing.  And the journey from that point forward wasn’t exactly easy, either - the disciples argued amongst themselves over who would be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, who would sit next to Jesus, and all sorts of other things.  As the disciples carried their message throughout the world, they continued to have their discrepancies - Peter preferred to keep his churches closer to the Jewish traditions and identity markers, while Paul reached out to the Gentiles and wasn’t afraid to eat a bacon cheeseburger that had been cooked on the altar of a foreign god every once in a while if it brought someone closer to Jesus.  And the theological and philosophical differences carried on beyond the disciples, even to the point that there are times when I’m sure we wonder if Martin Luther would have nailed his 95 theses to the door of the seminary if he’d known that it would result in hundreds of different denominations, hundreds of different interpretations of what it means to be a follower of Christ, even hundreds of different interpretations of Christ from which to choose to follow…

And yet despite all our differences, despite the things that divide our churches and keep us from worshipping together or sharing in a common table with one another… at the end of the day, we still worship the same Lord.  We may read different translations of the Bible and hear the Word proclaimed in different ways, we may profess different things about how Christ is present in our celebration of Communion, or whether babies should be baptized.  We may come down on different sides of the fence when it comes to how we understand God’s love, who God calls to service, or how our churches are supposed to work in ministry.  And yet in spite of all these things, Christ remains undivided.  Christ is still our head, and it is Christ who still calls us in the power of the Spirit to come and follow.  And so we do just that - we leave our old selves, our old lives behind, we put on Christ, and we follow - wherever Christ may lead.  And though we may not know the way, though we may not know the how and the why… we know that our Lord calls us together.  May God give us the courage to follow boldly, the direction and guidance to walk without stumbling too much, and the grace to embrace our companions in Christ as we walk alongside one another on this journey.  To God be the Glory.  Amen.