Sermon for Friends Congregational Church
“Listening to Jesus”
Delivered by Reverend Dan De Leon
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Matthew 4:13-21
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He’s a spiritual icon, a strong prophetic voice, a symbol of social justice, and a warrior for God. When we ponder all the things that King did to spark the discussions about racism in this country, and all he did to bridge the racial divide, we can’t help but think of him as great. In fact he’s so great that in some respects he’s reached a kind of mythical, spiritual status. I saw a candle with a picture of the Virgin Mary on it the other day, and right next to it was another candle with a picture of Dr. King on it; his mouth open and one hand held high.
Just six days ago we observed MLK Day, which is supposed to be set aside as an additional day of Sabbath rest when we intentionally focus on the contributions of Dr. King in light of our present social climate regarding race in America. I had a seminary professor who taught a course on the African American Experience in Social Ethics, and he once suggested to our class that if we were to ever reopen the canon of the Bible, if we were to ever reexamine the books chosen by men to share the story of God, then the Book of King should be added.
I think if MLK could have looked that shooter in the eyes in the seconds before his assassin pulled the trigger, Dr. King could have quoted Obi Wan Kenobi and meant it: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” (Or maybe George Lucas fashioned those words after the life of King.)
But Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t start out at this level of greatness. He was raised a PK, a preacher’s kid, and he vowed early on that he wanted to be a preacher just like his father. So, he prepared himself appropriately. He studied hard and it paid off. His scores were so high on the college entrance exams in his junior year of high school at Booker T. Washington that he advanced to Morehouse College without formal graduation. He went on to get his B.A. in Sociology, his Bachelor of Divinity, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Systematic Theology.
Then he became a preacher of a Baptist Church. He was polished. He knew how to talk the talk, and that’s all he was supposed to do. In this sense, MLK was no different from anyone: he was going through the motions of life.
Along comes a woman named Rosa Parks who is jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus. And her decision to stay seated was the last straw for the Black community. It was time to protest. It was time for a change. But who would lead this revolution?
Martin Luther King, Jr. was not chosen to lead the bus boycotts in Montgomery because he was smart. He wasn’t selected to be the face of the protest walks because he was great. King ended up leading the bus boycotts because he was young, and the leaders of that movement figured that if the bus boycotts were a failure, then a young pastor had a better chance of finding another church than an older pastor. It was that simple.
But King wasn’t uninformed. He didn’t jump into this situation blindly. He knew what he was doing. He listened to the winds of change and the voice of God before he made a decision to follow Rosa Parks’ lead.
Stacy and I were in the ER of St. Joseph’s Hospital on January 8th. She had an appointment for a c-section to deliver our baby girl, but we had no idea where we were supposed to go. They just told us to show up at the ER, which we had done. Now we were standing across a check-in desk from a kind woman who was busy typing, shouting orders at people in another room and talking to us at the same time. All of a sudden, she says, “Those doors behind you will open up, just come inside and follow me.”
So, we walked through the open doors and found the woman on the other side already walking ahead of us. And Stacy and I looked at each other and shrugged, saying, “I don’t know; she just said to follow her.” So, we caught up with our guide and just kept following her through the halls of the ER.
But then the woman leading us starts saying things and pointing in different directions, and we don’t know if she’s talking to us: “You need to pick up your stuff and go in that room and just wait for me. I’ll be there in a minute. Don’t worry about getting undressed. It’ll just be a minute.”
Well, we were really confused at this point, so finally one of us says to the woman, “Excuse me, are you talking to us?” And the woman turns around but keeps walking backward. She smiles and says, “No, no, no. Don’t listen to me. Just follow me.”
How often do we do that? How often do we follow blindly thinking that whatever it is that we’re following is heading in the right direction. “We don’t know where they’re going, but it looks like they know where they’re headed, so let’s follow them.”
We follow a lot of things in life without really thinking about it. We don’t take the time to discern much of anything before we walk through those double-doors and start following an unnamed person who’s moving faster than we can keep up.
In our everyday lives, we follow alarm clocks, dress codes, traffic signals, memos, and medication instructions without question. I’m not suggesting anarchy or some revolution against the routine maintenance of our civilized society. Most guidelines are put in place for good reason, and let’s render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
But in our lives we also follow advice from people we don’t know that well. We follow trends and fashions. We follow degree plans and the general direction of our peers. We follow the legacy of our forebears and the wishes of our parents. We follow the cultural writing on the wall as it’s spelled out by the media. We follow public policy and political persuasion. We follow enticing advertisements and the latest craze on facebook.
We follow a lot of things. And when we look at all the things that we follow blindly, it’s staggering to think that we are where we are right now based on thousands of decisions we made in our lives to follow someone or something without question. We just shrugged our shoulders and said, “I guess we’re supposed to follow.” And then we wake up where we are right now.
We can take a page right out of a Talking Heads song:
And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself living in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Good question. Do we really know? The first four disciples do. Simon, Andrew, James and John were fisherman. They were going through the motions, exercising the craft they knew so well: cleaning their nets, casting them out into the sea, repeat process. And Jesus sees that they are well-informed, clear as to what their tasks are. And he calls out to them in the middle of their purposeful routines, “I see what you’re doing, and it’s good. But come follow me and I’ll make you fishers of people.”
And so they dropped what they were doing, and they followed Jesus. Now, this story sounds naïve. It sounds like just another example of the mindless discipleship we give in our lives to the voices of authority that call out to us: “Buy me and you will be happy. Vote for me and I will give you what you want. Watch me and you will be better-informed.”
But the disciples, like Dr. King—they were prepared. They were well-informed, polished and ready. They had spent their lives seeking this Jesus. They did go through the motions of learning a trade, making a living, being decent citizens, etc. But all the while, these men were seeking to follow something that would make everything else make sense. They wanted to follow something that would make everything else fall into place. And that’s where Jesus finds them: Going through the motions dutifully, practicing their craft, and waiting for more.
When you think about it like that, it doesn’t seem so naïve or even that amazing that Simon, Andrew, John and James just dropped their nets and followed Jesus.
Now, last week we talked about the importance of following Jesus, but we really didn’t look at what that means: to follow Jesus. So, this sermon is part two on that message, because we need to understand that this story about following Jesus is about us, too.
We come here on Sundays and Wednesday nights to learn about following Jesus. We come to church to polish our discipleship and to inform our faith. We come here to find that invitation from Jesus to follow him, and that is good. But if we’re here this morning, sitting where we are right now, because we’re just going through the motions; if we come to this house of worship because we shrugged and said, “Well, this is what we’re supposed to do,” then we might never hear Jesus calling out to us like he did to the men on the Sea of Galilee: “Hey, I see what you’re doing, and it’s good, but follow me.”
Following Jesus is a life change that leads to another life change and another life change where we wake up basking in the glory of God, dancing in the splendor of God’s righteousness, drawing living water from the well of Christ’s abundance, resting in the cool shade of the Holy Spirit’s guardian cover, and we ask ourselves, “How did I get here,” and we look back and say, “Oh yeah! That’s how.”
On this third Sunday after Epiphany, you might just have yourself an epiphany right here in this very room. You might hear the whisper of Christ saying, “Follow me,” right here in this context of worship. But more often than not, God reaches out to us where we are, just like Jesus reached out to those fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.
It’s when we’re busy preparing a syllabus for another semester or grading a heap of papers that Jesus might say, “Hey, follow me.” It’s when we’re practicing piano or rehearsing with a choir that Jesus says, “I see what you’re doing, but follow me.” It’s when we’re researching our retirement options or studying the stock market that Jesus says, “Very wise. Now follow me.” It’s when we’re doing our jobs and maintaining our house that Jesus says, “Good work, now follow me.” It’s when we’re working hard on our marriage, or working hard on our relationship, or we’re busy raising the kids as best we can that Jesus says, “Give yourself a pat on the back and follow me.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. was going through the motions. He studied his subject matter: theology. He polished his craft: preaching. And he could’ve done this indefinitely. But in the middle of this process, he received word that a woman had been jailed for refusing to give up her seat to a white man, and the whisper of Christ reached his ears, “Follow me,” and Dr. King dropped his net, and he followed. And look at the paths that were paved for us because of his faithful decision.
I’d been thinking about the very kind ER worker who led Stacy and me to where we needed to go. Her words were flippant, but they stick with me, “Oh, don’t listen to me. Just follow me.” We do that too often in life. But with Christ it must be both. With Christ we must listen to what he is saying and follow. It can’t be one or the other.
To follow Christ blindly leads to assumptions about what it means to be a Christian, and the next thing you know we’re memorizing Bible verses, despising other religions, offering a hand of support to our neighbor only if they live like we do, looking at the brokenness of the world and blaming it on the immoral behavior of other people, looking at God’s grace as something you earn by upright and pious living, and then we wake up and say, “How did I get here,” and God says, “Yeah, how did you get all the way over there?”
And to just learn about the teachings of Christ, to just apply the ethics of Christianity to our routine living, is good, but it only takes us so far. Social justice and spirituality are two sides of the same Gospel coin, so we can learn all we want about good Christian living, but if we do not follow Christ into the world and off the beaten path of our routines, then we’ll never have the chance to put those ethics into constructive practice.
Remember the message of Christ’s love: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing.”
I hope all of this makes sense: Seek Christ so that when the call comes to follow him, we will be ready today, tomorrow and every day. Let’s follow Jesus, but let’s listen to him, too. Amen.