Jerusalem Presbyterian Church

No, that’s admittedly a pretty strange question to ask in the pulpit, and it’s connection to the gospel of Jesus Christ is not very instinctual.  What did you have for breakfast?  But the sermon went on to be about choices—about choosing to follow Jesus or choosing not to follow Jesus.

Another reason I remember the sermon so clearly is because the occasion was our last Sunday worshipping in our home church before we were to move across the country to California.  I’m sure that what I had for breakfast that day was whatever dregs of cereal we were trying to clean out of the house before we dumped out everything in our cupboards and wiped them down for the final time, or maybe the last two eggs in our refrigerator before we sanitized it for its new owners.  But it doesn’t matter, because the sermon was not about food; it was about choices.  Later on in the text of that sermon, cleverly tucked in was a reference to the drama that my family and I were playing out—the choice to sell our home, quit our jobs, and begin a new life 2,000 miles away.

Here’s the thing: it didn’t really feel like much of a choice.  Eggs or pancakes, milk or lemon, convertible or minivan—those are choices.  But the call of God? That seldom feels like a choice.  When the call to “follow me” comes, it feels more like a responsibility, a compulsion, a command than a choice.  Maybe the question should never be “Will I follow Jesus?”  But should always be “Will I live authentically as someone who believes in the good news of the gospel, or will I walk around like a big phony, denying who I really am, who God means for me to be?”

It’s complicated.  On the one hand, I do not believe that the Christian life is one in which we just sit passively by and things just happen to us, but should be, in the best of all cases, an active life where we co-create with God.  On the other hand, I have known people who just chose not to believe.  I’ll bet you have too, or at least have heard of them, or read about them in the newspaper.

Sometimes people ask what the call of God sounds like, as if they’ve never heard it themselves.  (People are funny that way and assume sometimes that people in visible ministry roles are the only ones who’ve heard such a call.)  What if it was for us as it was for the three potential followers in today’s’ gospel?  What if Jesus Christ had walked up to us and asked us literally to follow him to Jerusalem?   Would we even know it was him, I mean really him? Chances are, no.  Even a cursory reading of the gospels tells us that much.  When the first person volunteers—volunteers— to follow Jesus without even being asked, Jesus pretty much tells him not to bother, since following Jesus means really roughing it, not knowing where your next meal comes from or where you’ll lay your head the next night.  Perhaps the first fellow would have just kept his mouth shut if he’d known who he was really talking to.

Today’s gospel reading also tells us something else: God always has the unfair advantage.   Take today’s three potential followers, for example.  The words Jesus has for them concerning following where he is going are very, very harsh.  They are as hard for them to understand as they are for us to hear, hundreds of years later.  A friend pointed out to me that the reasons given by at least two of them for needing a little more time before starting out were not unreasonable—they are not petty, small reasons.  The friend who needed to bury his father was no doubt trying to follow the Jewish imperative—to have not buried his father properly would have been unthinkable in his community and according to his religion.  Jesus must have known that.

Another one wanted to just get his home life settled—maybe say goodbye to his family.  And why shouldn’t he?   I took my time getting my life ready to move to California.  I prepared my family and friends for the changes that were going to happen, we sold our house, we made sure we had some source of income in California, I sent paperwork to my children’s new schools.  Decently and in order, that’s how we did it.  We didn’t run off willy-nilly without a plan.  We chose.  

Or did we? Remember, it doesn’t feel like much a choice, now that I have had the chance to look back at it.  God really does have the unfair advantage.  No matter how many times I fumbled and fell, no matter what mistakes I made, or how I got distracted, God relentlessly kept calling me back.  It was as if there was some plan I couldn’t quite grasp, a path I had not determined for myself, a journey I could not have mapped out even with google earth.

“Follow you, God?  Sure, okay, but first I’d like to finish school, get the kids through soccer season, find a new job, save up for retirement, take care of my aging parents, finish helping my kids raise their kids, get the canning done for the season.  And for just once, I’d like to finish a book that I started.  Is that too much to ask?   I mean, honestly, God, you sit up there in heaven watching over stuff, don’t you have any idea what it’s like down here?”

God always has the unfair advantage.  It’s called Incarnation.  When Jesus was asking his friends to follow, it was an invitation to follow along as he journeyed to his death. You see, God knew a thing to two about what it is like to be down here.  God knew what the urgency was in the “fish or cut bait” decision Jesus asked his potential followers to make.  God knows that sometimes we will take our sweet time making the decision, and that sometimes we will fumble and fall, that we will be tempted and we will fall off the wagon, and sometime we will screw it up royally.

God asks anyway.

Thanks be to God.