Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

All Sermons are © Copyrighted and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the author.

Jesus was shocked when they arrested his friend, John the Baptist. (He should have seen it coming, should have learned from it that truth must be spoon fed to people, not piled on with a shovel, as John did.) For his own safety, the Bible seems to say, Jesus left town -- went from Nazareth to Capernaum, which would become his headquarters. And here, in Capernaum, Jesus finds his disciples.

Follow the Lord Wherever He Leads

In a version that differs from John's, which we read last week, Matthew says Jesus found Peter and his brother, Andrew, at their trade, fishing, and promised to make them "fishers of men." He then found James and John, two more fishermen (for Capernaum is right on the Sea of Galilee), mending nets in their boat, and they up and left their father and the family business, apparently without hesitation, and followed him. The inner circle is now complete. They will all die (these young men who so easily give their hearts to Jesus), but that is a story for another day. On this fateful bright, sunny day by the sea, they had no idea what was in store for them.

The apostles heard it by the Galilean lake, turned from home and toil and kindred, leaving all for Jesus' sake. Matthew wants us to ask, "How does one become a disciple of Jesus?" Because, by the time Matthew writes his gospel, thousands are coming and wanting to join this community of faith, whose charter members were Peter and Andrew, James and John. This is the community we now call the church.

A Great Dawning

Matthew tells the old story of their calling as he knows it, but he also speaks to Christians in his own day. The "then and there" becomes the "here and now" -- which characterizes all good preaching. If we would be disciples of Jesus we must understand in our hearts that, in him, something utterly unprecedented occurred -- that his coming was unique, and was the most important event of all time. Matthew says that in the first section of this passage, when he explains why Jesus left Nazareth and went to Capernaum. From an earthly point of view, Jesus went to Capernaum to stay out of harms way. From a spiritual point of view, Matthew says, he did it to fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah (which words were our Old Testament lesson this morning), that the area of Capernaum (the land of Zebulon and Naphtali) would experience a great dawning some day:

the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.

For Matthew, the coming of Jesus was no less dramatic than the turning of night into day. Everything looks different in the light. Before Jesus came, we were as people stumbling about in the dark. Now we see. God With Us

That heart belief, that Jesus' coming was eternally important, an event exciting beyond words, and that it changed everything -- that belief was deep in the hearts of all the earliest Christians, including Matthew. To them, Jesus was not just another man, albeit a good one. Not just a teacher and healer. He was these things, but he was also God, God with us, Immanuel.

There have been other good men, good teachers, good physicians. But there has never been, and never will be, another Jesus. One theologian says that, when we read the works of Matthew, and the other New Testament writers, we are like soldiers behind the lines of a great battle. Because of our position we cannot see what is happening on the battlefield itself, but we can see our fellow soldiers on the front line (these New Testament witnesses), and we can see that they are very excited about something. They are jumping up and down and shouting and clapping their hands. They have seen something wonderful, up where the action is, and they are trying to tell us about it. We can't see what they saw, but we can tell from their ecstasy that something very important has happened.

What Gets Us Excited

We can tell a great deal about ourselves by noticing what gets us excited. A young man, explaining why he had lost faith as a youth, said when he was growing up he used to watch his father in church every Sunday. His father would sit there quietly and passively, half asleep, and he would say nothing about the service in the car. "But when we got home, my old man would sit down on the sofa, turn on the television, and shout and cheer and jump up and down for three hours about his favorite football team." The message: football is exciting, Jesus is not. Disciples of Jesus are excited about Him. He grabs their imaginations, inspires their creativity, raises their enthusiasms. It's a mark of discipleship, to know that the coming of Jesus was the pivotal event of all history, and (therefore) to be excited about it.

Total Faith: Simple Trust

And true disciples are also marked by their faith, which in the New Testament mostly means "trust." Look at these first disciples, just picking up and going with him! It's a powerful story. Didn't check him out. Didn't ask for references. Put their hands in his, as it were, not knowing where he was going, and followed in faith, trusting.

Jesus comes disruptively, intrusively into our lives. It is not that we are bored and looking for something to do. These men were gainfully employed. They were busy. They worried, I'm sure, about the bottom line, about their health, about their families. They had commitments. But when they saw Jesus, they dropped what they were doing and followed him, in simple trust.

Getting the Main Things Done

The theme recurs all through the gospels: true disciples will not hesitate, will not be sidetracked, will not be too busy, but (no matter what good things they are doing) will jump at the chance to follow Jesus. We say, "I don't have time to read. I don't have time for my family. I don't have time for religion." But the truth is we don't make time for reading, for our families, for God. The mark of true discipleship is not that we get everything done but that we get the main things done. It's not so much a matter of discipline as a matter of faith and trust. If we wont trust Jesus now, when the sun is shining, and he is popular -- how will we behave when he is arrested, and crucified?

Follow the Lord

"Follow" is an interesting word. Jesus doesn't say to these first disciples, "Believe in me" (which would suggest some kind of intellectual assent). He says, "Follow Me". A person can have a great intellect, and have the character of a goat, and we can believe his ideas without following him as a person. That is, we can take half a loaf. But, when we follow someone, we can only follow the whole person. And we, ourselves, cannot follow in part, but the whole of us must go. We give our hearts not to Jesus' ideas, but to Jesus the man. We must take the crown and the cross together. Millions over the centuries have opened up Thomas a Kempis' little inspirational book, The Imitation of Christ, and read those opening words, "He that followeth after me, walketh not in darkness, saith the Lord." When we follow Jesus we walk in the light. In fact, according to Matthew,light itself has dawned in Jesus Christ. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

So a true disciple knows that Jesus is central to everything, and is excited about that. A disciple responds to Jesus' call in faith and trust, not hesitating or making excuses, but going with Jesus wherever he leads, even if to a cross. A disciple truly follows: the whole man or woman going after the whole Jesus, a compulsion not a cool decision. We simply cannot know, when we agree to follow him, where he will take us.