January 24, 2021 “Following” – Mark 1:14-20

Mark 1:14-20
“Following”
January 24, 2021 – Third Sunday after Epiphany

We in America have just come to the peaceful conclusion of a bitter and contentious process of deciding whom we as a nation will follow for the next four years. Many of us felt that it was both a privilege and a responsibility to participate in that decision to the best of our ability and according to our place in life. Now that the choice is made, our laws and American tradition behoove us to accept the new leaders sworn in on Wednesday.

However, American Christians have often tended to regard our commitment to follow Jesus in much the same light, as a decision which we carefully and deliberately made at some point in our lives. We read a Scripture text like the one before us today, and note that it says twice, in verses 18 and 20, that some of the first disciples “immediately” left something or someone behind and “followed him.” We suppose that their following of Jesus is the result of a life-changing decision on their part.

So we imagine ourselves to be much like those ancient fishermen and sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” I chose Jesus as my leader and “wherever he leads I will go.” You might suppose that a proper sermon on these verses would be all about asking you to make or keep making that kind of choice. Choose to follow Jesus. Choose him as your leader. But is it really choosing or is it being chosen?

As far as I can tell, choosing to follow was the way it was done in regard to other rabbis in Jesus’ time. Young Jewish men with aspirations of holiness and devotion to God would seek out and select a rabbi to follow. They would then, in a sense, make an application to their rabbi of choice and, if accepted, begin to follow and learn from him. What we may not notice, because of American emphasis on freely choosing leaders, is that our Gospel message today shows it happening in a completely different way.

I’ve said before that Mark often tells the short version of the story. Matthew too tells this part like Mark does, short and to the point. Jesus comes and calls the men and they get up and follow, “straightaway,” in King James language. It’s very abrupt, and that abruptness forces us to notice that Peter, Andrew, James and John did not really choose Jesus as their leader. He chose them as His followers.

It’s a good corrective, then, to remember that it is always Jesus who takes the initiative with us. It’s not so much that we seek the Lord and find Him as that He came seeking His lost sheep and found us. That fact makes Jesus different from all the leaders we choose for ourselves, and thus from many of the leaders of this world.

Yet an element of personal decision, a choice, remained for those first disciples. Jesus first chose them as His followers, but they, in turn, had to decide to get up and follow Him. God takes the initiative, but He does not suspend or eliminate human choosing. He simply relegates it to its proper place in the order of things.

Thus we might still want to ask how the four fishermen made their decisions to accept Jesus’ call to discipleship. As Mark and Matthew tell it, it seems like Jesus just walks up to them “out of the blue,” asks them to come along, and they get up and go. From early on, Christian writers like Jerome imagined some mystical quality they discerned in Jesus. He writes, “There must have been something divinely compelling in the face of the Savior.”[1] As a woman might say about supposedly falling in love at first sight, “I just saw something in his eyes and knew he was the one.” Of course men say such things too.

The truth here, even about Jesus, is probably a bit more mundane at the same time it is even more miraculous. Luke in chapter 5, in fact, tells us that Jesus gave them a miracle catch of fish right before they “left everything and followed him.” And over in John’s Gospel, just before the text we read last week about Nathanael, we learn that John the Baptist introduced Andrew to Jesus and Andrew in turn introduced Peter to Him. So when Jesus walked down the beach and asked the fishermen to follow, they had already met Him. They didn’t just see something “divinely compelling” in His face, they had some idea of who He was.

Who Jesus was and is transformed something else about the typical rabbi/disciple relationship. Those who followed an ordinary rabbi had the understanding that, insofar as possible, they were to become just like their master. They were to learn from and imitate him to the point that they, in turn, would become rabbis themselves. They were following so as to become leaders.

As I wrote on my blog this week, that’s often the understanding behind much contemporary education. The Christian college at which my wife teaches part-time says that it “exists to disciple emerging Christian leaders.” That emphasis on raising up leaders is is not unusual in many, many institutions of higher learning. The University of Oregon’s mission statement says that it is, among other things, “devoted to fostering the next generation of transformational leaders…” Yet as we see the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, both here and as it unfolds in all four Gospels, isn’t the emphasis more toward following than it is toward leading?

Part of it is that, unlike the disciple of an ordinary rabbi, the disciples of Jesus could strive with all their heart and soul to be exactly like their Master, but it was doomed to failure. At the beginning of his Gospel, verse 1, Mark let us in on the secret that the disciples and others had to discover bit by bit. This is the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As that truth about the nature of Jesus was slowly revealed to them, they also had to realize that, no matter how much they learned, how well they followed, they could not become the kind of leader Jesus is. They would always and forever remain His followers, even if some of them did become leaders of sorts.

That basic fact about what Jesus set out to do that morning by the Sea of Galilee may upend our several-decades-long obsession with leadership both in education and in Christian churches. Rather than yet one more book or seminar on leadership, we might, more than anything, need to talk and think more about what following Jesus means. Yes, good leaders of good character are important, as recent events demonstrate, but even more important in the church of Jesus Christ are good followers of good character.

We can see the emphasis on following in who it was that Jesus chose and called. As Paul says in I Corinthians 1:26, “not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” In other words, Jesus did not choose those who might have been the next generation of up and coming leaders of society. Jesus wanted followers more than He wanted leaders.

Jesus started by choosing humble fishermen, people barely getting by in a survival trade passed down through the generations, people like some of the Native Alaskan pastors whom Beth and I met a few years ago, as they came from little villages to learn more about following Jesus. They didn’t come to learn how to lead ever-growing, bigger and bigger churches. They came to be better prepared to share good news in towns of a few hundred people living like they themselves did, a subsistence lifestyle of hunting and fishing.

Which brings us back around to one more thing Jesus said to those men as He called them to follow Him. Like a good teacher who offers a clear and distinct course description to prospective students, in verse 17, to Andrew and Peter, the first set of brothers, Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” He didn’t say, “I will make you a good rabbi like I am,” nor “I will teach you transformational leadership,” nor “I will appoint you to significant positions of power and influence.” Instead, He said He would take what they knew and did every day and He would help them use those skills in relation to other people and for the kingdom of God.

I could probably spend a lot of time drawing out the implications of that fishing metaphor. The sport of fishing is one of my favorite things in all the world. Yet even before I start in, I need to admit that what Jesus’ chosen fishermen did from their boats and with their nets out on Lake Galilee was far different from what I do standing in the McKenzie River or the Middle Fork of the Willamette in my high-tech breathable waders holding my super-light and strong graphite fly rod. I’m out there because it’s an enjoyable past-time, a hobby. They were out there to survive. It was a way of life.

Following Jesus is a way of life. That’s signaled by repeated mention of what they left behind in order to follow Him. Peter and Andrew left their nets. James and John left both their boat and their father. Following Jesus was not something they could do in their spare time and then just go home again and pick up where they left off. It was a commitment to a new way of living, of fishing in completely different waters.

If you and I want to know what it means to follow Jesus, then it might help to keep on unpacking that picture of fishing for people. It doesn’t take too much imagination to realize it could be a really negative image. In the Old Testament it is. You might remember from our prophets reading that in Jeremiah 16:16 God tells wicked people that He will “send many fishers… and they will catch them,” and not in a nice way, because that is immediately followed by the promise of many hunters to chase them down “from every mountain and hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.”

Yet the fishing Jesus promised His first disciples was not negative, not a judgment on people. Start from where our text began and remember that “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” Jesus’ message was first and foremost good news of salvation rather than the bad news of judgment. That’s especially important for us to remember as we approach and relate to people around us who haven’t yet accepted Jesus as Savior. We are bearers of good news rather than bad.

The idea of bringing good news fits in with more positive aspects of fishing. If we are talking about fishing with a hook and line like I do, and which we see Jesus telling Peter to do at least once in Matthew 17:27, then we might see in it a lesson about being attractive and winsome toward others who don’t know Jesus. Let us live our lives in such a way that they see and smell a beautiful, fragrant bait. Let them perceive in us something good they might desire, rather than a mean and judgmental spirit which repels them.

Which reminds me of probably the very first lesson I learned about fishing, standing beside my great aunt along the rocky bank of Oak Creek in Arizona. As my 8 or 9-year-old self would speak in a loud voice or knock a loose rock into the water with a splash, she would give me a look and hiss at me, “Don’t scare the fish!” And she was absolutely right. I’ve since learned that even my shadow stretched over the water on a sunny day or a poorly cast fly landing with a “plop” can send trout running for cover.

Many of us might have once gladly identified with the label “evangelical Christian.” That term just comes from the biblical Greek word for good news, euangelion. But the day is upon us when people may hear that word “evangelical” and run for cover because of recent actions by some people who bear that name and misuse the name of Jesus. The word may scare our neighbors rather than attract them. We’re going to need to reflect on that and acknowledge our own part in that and perhaps repent of that. Let it truly be good news on the end of our lines, not dreadful bad news.

Yet if I really want to be true to this text and to the fishermen Jesus knew and loved, I need to say, as I already began to do earlier, that sport fishing with hook and line is not the primary image here. They fished with nets. The picture is not one so much of drawing in individual souls as it is an image of gathering, of bringing people together, of creating a community of people who believe in and share the good news of Jesus.

To go back to the previous point, the disciples themselves were not chosen and called to be and remain individual leaders. They were called to be “the Twelve,” a community that represented the whole people of Israel and who followed Jesus together. Some of them rose to leadership. Peter seems to have had a special role. Later James the brother of Jesus became pastor of the church in Jerusalem. But first and foremost they were to become men—and we can see women too if we pay attention—who followed Jesus, rather than leaders who led their own disciples.

That’s what you and I must aspire to be if we truly want to follow Jesus. We are to be people caught together in the tender net of God’s good news, of God’s great love. Most of us are not leaders, but we are all followers, followers of a Lord who fished for humble fishermen, rather than for great and powerful people who are the sharks and whales of the world.

There is much more to say about what it means to follow Jesus. That’s a large part of what the Gospels are for. In Mark, along with Matthew, Luke and John, we see where Jesus went and what He did. We hear His constant call to come and follow, to be like He was, to do like He did. Part of our own following is to keep reading and listening to that call, and keep trying to be like the first ones who heard it, like fishermen who left their tools and their families and followed.

As I suggested a moment ago, following often needs to begin where the good news Jesus preached began. Yes, I also said, and I will keep insisting, that it is truly good news. But if you go back to the end of verse 15, you will hear Jesus announce that the time is at hand and that the proper response is to “repent and believe in the good news.” To “repent” means to “turn around.” The point is that we cannot follow Jesus if we are turned in the wrong direction. We cannot follow Jesus if we insist on going our own way and expect Jesus to follow us. Then we will be leaders, poor leaders, rather than followers.

One thing of which evangelical Christians may need to repent in order to believe and to share the good news is our desire, even our passion, for leadership, for positions of authority and power in this world. We’ve been confused, and I’d even say deceived, into thinking that if we belong to a party or follow an earthly leader who is in control, then we will share in that power and will lead the world toward Jesus. But instead we find ourselves merely leading the world toward more and more earthly power and to a false lord and master. Let us repent of seeking that sort of leadership, whether for ourselves or for some man or woman we imagine it is good to follow because they will raise our own status in society. Instead, let us turn our eyes once again toward Jesus and answer His call.

Insofar as there is to be leadership among us, let it always, always, always begin in and remain rooted first in following, following Jesus. Jesus taught that lesson over and over. If we want to follow Him, to be like Him, it will not be by aiming at leadership. Instead, it will be by becoming like Him, servants of those around us, people who gather and unite with the bait and net of love, rather than those who scatter the fish with shouts of condemnation and the shadows of fear. While loud and angry voice clamber for leadership, it is time for those of us who truly believe the good news to learn again to follow. Amen.

[1] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Mark, p. 20.