First Reading: Isaiah 9:1-4
1But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 2 The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. 3You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. 4For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian.
Psalm 27:1-14
1The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid? 2When evildoers came upon me to eat up my flesh, it was they, my foes and my adversaries, who stumbled and fell. 3Though an army should encamp against me, yet my heart shall not be afraid; 4And though war should rise up against me, yet will I put my trust in him. 5One thing have I asked of the Lord; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; 6To behold the fair beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. 7For in the day of trouble he shall keep me safe in his shelter; he shall hide me in the secrecy of his dwelling and set me high upon a rock. 8Even now he lifts up my head above my enemies round about me. 9Therefore I will offer in his dwelling an oblation with sounds of great gladness; I will sing and make music to the Lord. 10Hearken to my voice, O Lord, when I call; have mercy on me and answer me. 11You speak in my heart and say, “Seek my face.” Your face, Lord, will I seek. 12Hide not your face from me, nor turn away your servant in displeasure. 13You have been my helper; cast me not away; do not forsake me, O God of my salvation. 14Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will sustain me.
Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
10I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. 12What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” 13Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. 16(I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) 17For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. 18For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
Gospel: Matthew 4:12-25
12When {Jesus} heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew into Galilee. 13And leaving Nazareth he went and lived in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, 14so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: 15“The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles — 16the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” 17From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 18While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” 20Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him. 23And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. 24So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. 25And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis, and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
Follow Jesus
For those of you my age or older, you may remember the comedy duo Homer and Jethro. They were a comedy team who specialized in country music parodies and satire. They were sometimes referred to as “the thinking man’s hillbillies.” One of their routines went like this: HOMER to Jethro, if you was to win the Irish sweepstakes for two million dollars, would you give me half? JETHRO: Why, Homer, you’re my best and closest friend. You know I would. HOMER: I do know you would. That’s what friendship is all about. HOMER to Jethro, if you had two big luxurious houses like those ones in the Beverly Hills and I was livin’ yonder under the bridge without no home, would you give me one of your big luxurious houses? JETHRO to Homer, you’re my best and closest friend. You know I would. HOMER: Yessir, we’re best friends. Didn’t I know you’d say that. HOMER to Jethro, if you had two prize winnin’ Holstein cows and I had nary one, would you give me one of your cows? JETHRO to Homer, you wouldn’t even have to ask. You’re my closest friend and you know I would. HOMER to Jethro, if you had two really great huntin’ dogs… JETHRO: Hold on a minute, Homer. I got two huntin’ dogs. Homer and Jethro knew that charity is easy to idealize, but difficult at times to practice. It’s easy to be generous when there’s no real skin in the game. It’s easy to be committed when there’s no real commitment involved. How does that response go…talk is cheap? You gotta walk the talk.
The story was shared by another pastor who said he saw a routine like that of Homer and Jethro played out when he was in seminary. The professor was lecturing on the gospel of Luke, and he had come to the third chapter where we find John the Baptist’s sermon to the people who had come to hear him. John called the Religious Leaders a brood of vipers and said they needed to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. They asked what they could do to be saved and he said: “If you have two coats and your neighbor has none, give one of your coats to your neighbor. And do the same with food.” He also admonished the tax collectors to be fair in their tax collecting and soldiers to not extort money from people by threats and intimidation.
The professor then pointed out that St. Luke was the only gospel writer that recorded this story about John the Baptist in this manner and, since Luke was the only one who recorded these specific events, it may be an embellishment or a tradition from within the Lukan community and not, necessarily, an authentic, historical account of something John actually said. Now to be clear, I believe the professor was deliberately being provocative in order to invite discussion; St. Matthew does record a similar event as well. But the professor never got the chance to invite discussion because one of the other students in the class jumped up and responded in angry indignation.
Standing to challenge the professor, the student asked, how could you, Professor R.T., suggest that something in the Bible was not absolutely authentic? How could you imply that this was not the word of God? He then accused the professor of everything from heresy to treason for offering the possibility that St. Luke’s account might not be a literal, authentic, historical rendering of something that actually happened.
According to the pastor, Professor R.T. was, like most professors, not one to be easily rattled. R.T. was a smallish, soft-spoken man, and his list of credentials and accomplishments is longer than he is tall. The professor replied very softly to the student, “So, let me be clear. You hold that the words recorded in the third chapter of the Luke’s gospel are, in fact, absolutely true and authentic, to be taken, believed, and acted upon as God’s literal word.” The student set his jaw and nodded his head. “That’s absolutely right,” he said. “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” The professor stroked his chin and nodded in thought. “So,” he said. “How many coats do you have?”
It’s an easy thing to believe the Bible. It’s an even easier thing to idealize and idolize God’s word. However, it’s quite another thing to follow it. Philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard put it in more strident terms: “The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly. Take any words from the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?” The problem Christians face is, it’s easier to idealize and idolize Jesus, to admire and worship Him, than it is to follow Him, so that’s what we do.
For many Christians today, they want to idealize Jesus. They set Him up as an ideal that can never be achieved. Too often we place Jesus so far above us, so high on a pedestal of admiration that we know that we will never be able to do what He did or live like He lived. The excuse is then offered, well, that was Jesus, and I’m not Jesus. He was perfect, and I can’t be expected to be like Him. In a way Christians want to make Jesus into a spiritual Tiger Woods.
Tiger Woods was, in his prime, the best golfer in the world, on a track to become the best golfer who ever played the game. It was said by other professional players that when Tiger was having a good tournament he won by ten strokes, but when he was having a bad tournament, he only won by five. Most serious golfers would have loved to be able to play golf like Tiger did. But then they look at what it costs to be able to play like that, even if you start off with an ocean of talent, and things change.
Tiger started playing when he was three years old. To be a golfer at Tiger’s level, you must give yourself 100% to the game. You must practice eight to ten hours a day until you have accumulated 10s of thousands of swings – with each club. You have to take lessons upon lessons and then more lessons. You must think golf, eat golf, and sleep golf. And then, if you have the talent, you get to play on your college team. If you do well in college, and on the amateur tour, and the minor tour, then maybe you’ll make it to the PGA, where you can drive yourself to tournaments, sleep in the back of your car, eat at McDonalds and hope to pick up a caddy at each location.
And then, and only then, when you’ve paid your dues, maybe you get good enough to be one of the ranked players so you can wake up early and go out and hit three buckets of balls every day before you tee off. And on and on it goes until we realize that we don’t really want to play like Tiger at all. What we want to do is admire the way he played the game and go on playing the way we do. We idealize him.
That’s Tiger Woods, the ideal in golfing, an ideal that I have neither the talent nor the inclination to achieve for myself, an ideal that is out of reach for people like me. That’s what many Christians do to Jesus. They admire Him and then they count the cost of living their lives the way He lived, and they say, no thank you. Rather than follow Jesus and doing as He says and does, they choose to idealize Him. Many Christians admire the way He lived and then they go right on living the way they always have. In essence, they become fans rather than disciples. And then there are those who idolize Jesus.
Idolization is idealization taken to its logical extreme. Instead of both admiring Jesus and following Him as we should, we turn what should be a relationship into idolatry. We put His picture on our wall, and we speak of Him in hushed tones. We tell stories about Him and make dolls and statues of him. We paste bumper stickers on our cars and call to Him in prayer. We sing about Him in songs, old and new. We undertake activities in His name, and we invoke His blessing upon our meals and our efforts. We tack His name onto the ends of all our prayers. We talk about our walk with Him and our personal relationship with Him. Now up to this point, you’re asking yourself, isn’t this what were supposed to do, worship Jesus, pray to Him, sing songs about Him, talk about Him, and do things that identify Him as our Lord? The answer is yes! But it’s more than being religious, it’s about discipleship.
The problem is, too many people are simply religious. By this I mean they go through the motions of being a Christian, but it has no real impact on their lives. St. James in the first chapter addresses one aspect of being religious and not a follower when he said, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (vs. 26-27). Being a true follower of Jesus means our lives are impacted more than simply following religious observances. Our whole lives focus on following the commands and statutes of God’s word, and our desire is to model our lives increasingly more like Christ’s. To be a disciple, we must follow.
Famed pianist, Oscar Lavant, used to say that people would tell him, “I’d give anything to be able to play the piano like you do.” Then he would say, “Oh, but you can play like I do.” He then would explain to them what it would take — the hours of practice, the years of study, the lifetime of dedication — and they would become angry and accuse him of being rude. They wanted to play like he played; they didn’t want to pay what he paid. We all want to admire Jesus, to hold Him up as an ideal, to idolize him and worship him. The problem is, are we willing to follow Him?
Nowhere, in the gospel accounts, does Jesus ask anyone, ever, to admire Him. The phrase, “admire me” doesn’t appear in the New Testament. Neither does “idolize me” or “idealize me.” Jesus used the phrase “love me” only twice. They both appear in the gospel of John and are followed by admonitions telling His disciples what to do. If you love me, keep my commandments. If you love me, feed my sheep. The phrase “worship me” appears only three times in the gospels — once in Matthew, once in Mark, once in Luke. And it wasn’t spoken by Jesus. Not surprisingly, it was said by satan as he tried to tempt Jesus.
Jesus asks His followers to believe in Him only five times, and three of those are in John’s gospel. The other two times are in Matthew and Mark. The thing Jesus asks us to do most often, the commandment that He utters more than any other, twenty times in the four gospels, is not “admire me,” not “believe in me,” not “worship me,” or “sing about me,” or even “love me,” but “follow me.” Follow me. Do as I do. Walk where I walk. Go where I go. Relate as I relate. Talk as I talk. Follow me. In other words, walk the talk. That is the call of the gospel.
Sell all that you have and give it to the poor and come, follow me. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people. Follow me and let the dead bury the dead. Take up your cross and come, follow me. And for most of us, that’s fine as long as we understand it in that safe, detached, metaphorical way. Again, Kierkegaard puts it in more forceful terms: “To want to admire, instead of follow Christ is not an invention of bad people; no, it is more an invention of those who spinelessly want to keep themselves detached at a safe distance from Jesus.” But it’s not to the safe, detached, and metaphorical understanding that Jesus calls us. It is, rather, to the frontier of our spiritual lives.
If we follow Him, really follow Him, it means we’re going to have to take risks and live life at the edge of our resources — our mental, spiritual, and emotional resources, as well as our physical ones. It means we’re going to have to start forgiving those who treat us badly and loving our enemies, even those who would undo us. It means that we’re going to have to be forgiving and self-sacrificing. It could mean that we must give up what we want, what makes us happy, what makes us comfortable and satisfied, for the sake of others.
Following Jesus means we do for others with no expectation of getting anything in return. It means we must love people who are hard to love, and helping people who may not appreciate our help. It means we must be willing to suffer falls and failures, defeat and death, for the sake of God’s kingdom. Following Jesus is a demanding business, the cross Jesus asks us to bear can be weighty. A life of discipleship is demanding, but it is worth the commitment. Jesus promised, “My yoke is easy and my burden light” (Matthew 11:30). Following Jesus isn’t all demand. There are promises and rewards given as well.
When we follow Jesus, He promised to never leave us, or forsake us. He promises those who follow Him, life now and in eternity. And scripture tells us, He will lead us to that place where life is more real, more authentic, more vibrant, and more exciting than we ever imagined possible. Following Jesus means people of every faith and every nation will point to us and say in wonder: “These are the people of God. These are they who live in the kingdom of everlasting light. These are the ones who truly walk the talk and follow Jesus.”
Amen.