This Way Up

About ten years ago I started climbing mountains. Not serious, scary, life-threatening mountains like Everest or Kilimanjaro, but smaller mountains in the Eastern and Pacific Northwestern regions of this continent.

I have occasionally toyed with the idea of doing more ambitious climbing, but three obstacles always come to mind: (1) a set of lungs weakened by childhood asthma; (2) a compromised inner ear that results in periodic bouts of vertigo; and (3) a wife who would respond to such an idea by handcuffing me to the water heater. Still, I have no complaints because I have found more than enough challenge in the little hills I have tackled.

I started climbing because there is a strong and longstanding association between the tops of mountains and spiritual revelation. Abraham offered to sacrifice Isaac on top of a mountain. That’s where God appeared to Moses in the flame of a burning bush, sealed the covenant with Israel, and spoke the Ten Commandments. Jesus gave us the centerpiece of his teachings, including the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer, on top of a mountain.

A quick review of a concordance shows about five-hundred references to mountains in the Bible. In a typical Bible, that averages about one reference every two pages. And the symbolism of high peaks figures prominently in other faiths, including the Buddhist and Native American religions.

So I went to the mountains in search of enlightenment. I think I got some. And I’m willing to share it and save you some scraped shins, blistered hands, and sore knees.

One of my moments of enlightenment came a few years ago when I hiked up a mountain in the Northeast. I prepared carefully. I joined the Appalachian Mountain Club and purchased several of their excellent guidebooks.

I bought a fancy new backpack, high-tech hiking clothing, and indestructible boots suitable for strolling on the moon. These days all this stuff comes in colors normally reserved for comic books, so I looked sort of like a plastic middle-aged action figure, Captain America on ibuprofen.

I drove to the park and stopped at the check-in booth. A young man in a ranger uniform looked through the car window at all my equipment, smiled admiringly, took my money, and waved me on.

I leaned out the window and told him I had never climbed this mountain before and asked if he had any recommendations. He thought for a moment and then said, “Yeah, you’ll want to follow the ‘red dot’ trail.” I thanked him, pulled into the parking lot, found the trailhead, and began to climb.

The “red dot trail” did not seem like anything I had read about in any of the books. As far I could tell it went straight up the mountain. I spent a lot of time on all fours, crawling over boulders, pulling myself up to get footholds, and walking at angles so severe they made my calves ache. Finally, after hours of very hard climbing, I neared the summit.

The last hundred feet or so seemed impossibly steep, and I breathed a sigh of relief when I finally lifted myself up over the topmost ledge. And there, there before me, there at the apex of the mountain, there at the limit of my endurance … was the moon-shaped face of a six-year-old child.

The boy was on his knees, looking over the edge of the mountain to see the source of the racket coming up the side. He made a gleeful noise, jumped to his feet, and then scooted off to rejoin his little brother and sister, who were also running around the top of the mountain, laughing and playing, as their mother and father watched a few feet away.

It didn’t take me long to figure out what had happened. The nice young ranger, seeing my expensive equipment and assuming a corresponding level of expertise, thought I would get the greatest pleasure from the toughest trail. So he dutifully sent me up the “red dot trail,” which I later learned to be the hardest route by far. In contrast, he pointed the family with little children to the “red triangle trail,” a nice, gradual, lazy series of switchbacks that meandered effortlessly to the summit.

Now, as I say, this experience brought me a flash of enlightenment, and here it is: always, always ask if there’s an easy trail up the mountain.

Of course, when it comes to spirituality there are no easy paths. All the trails are “red dot” trails. They all lead through rough terrain. They all have places where we stumble, slide backward, wander off the path, or get lost. In spiritual matters we travel the path with compasses we can’t always read and maps we don’t always understand—and, sometimes, we pick the wrong trailhead and make the hike up a lot harder on ourselves than it has to be.

To me, our youth is a lot like the foothills of the mountain, when we start the ascent. We have energy and excitement to burn. We wonder about the trail ahead, where it will lead, what we will find, and what the mountain holds for us.

But the foothills remind me of our youth, and particularly of our adolescence, for another reason—a darker one, if you will. It is usually in its foothills that a mountain seems most shadowy, most confusing, most disorienting, and, in its own way, most frightening. The bears and the mountain lions, they say, all live below the tree line.

Let me put this in perspective. If you celebrated your eighteenth birthday this year, here is what life has shown you: You were born in 1990, the year of the first multinational war of the post-Cold War era, the defensive Operation Desert Shield that became the offensive Operation Desert Storm. When you were one year old Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and charged with unimaginable crimes. When you were two years old the bloodiest European conflict since World War II began when Serbia initiated its “ethnic cleansing” campaign in Bosnia. When you were three years old the World Trade Center was attacked—for the first time. When you were four years old the massacre in Rwanda began. And so on and so on, through the attacks of 9/11, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a renewed sense of nuclear threat from North Korea, Iran, and the occasional itinerant terrorist.

Imagine yourself as a young person in our society, trying to find your way through that forest to higher, clearer, sunnier ground.

And yet today—as throughout history—the young people of our society find the faith and courage to do amazing things. By way of example, the church I attend has in its membership dozens of young people who devote countless hours to volunteer work. They travel to Appalachia to help with building projects. They send needed items to victims of natural disasters. They participate in a thirty-hour fast to raise money to fight famine. They collect food and clothing and Christmas presents for those in need. In myriad ways they serve the least in the kingdom. And that, Jesus tells us, is the path through the forest.

Of course, Jesus was once a young person, too, and the Gospel of Luke tells us a marvelous story about that time in his life. Every year Joseph and Mary traveled to Jerusalem for Passover. When Jesus was twelve years old, they traveled to Jerusalem together, celebrated Passover, and then set out to return to Nazareth. After a day on the road Joseph and Mary looked for Jesus but could not find him, so they turned around and headed back to Jerusalem. For three days they looked all over the city without success. Then, at last, they discovered him in the Temple, “sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking questions. And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and his answers.”

The Bible includes many remarkable stories, some so remarkable that they don’t fit very well within our human frame of reference. But this story fits perfectly. Isn’t it just like a twelve-year-old to worry his parents? Isn’t it just like parents to struggle with understanding their twelve-year-old?

I think this story seems so true to our experience, too, because of what it says about Jesus’s own spiritual journey. He stood on the threshold of young adulthood. His parents could no longer simply carry and pull him along as they could when he was a child. The time had come for him to begin to find his own legs, his own way, his own path. And Jesus chose to start his journey at the Temple.

A time of beginning came for Jesus, just as it comes for all of us. Most of us begin our spiritual journeys from home and take something of our home along with us. In the same way, Jesus began his spiritual journey at home, in the Temple, in—as he said—his “father’s house.”

This story also tells us something about our next stop up the mountain, that middle phase of life, and it does so by describing the actions of Joseph and Mary. I think that the gospel give us a delightful little clue here. It starts the story by noting that Joseph and Mary “went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of Passover.”

Now, why would the story tell us this? Surely, it doesn’t do so in order to convey that Joseph and Mary were people of faith—the text offers much more compelling evidence for that than attendance at a religious ceremony. So, why this detail?

I think that perhaps the story tells us this in order to suggest that Joseph and Mary had fallen into a pattern; that they followed the same course year in and year out; that they had done what so many of us do during the middle phase of life: do this year what we did last year, and next year what we did this year. Joseph and Mary had a plan, a method for managing the complex project of moving all of the family and relatives from Nazareth to Jerusalem and back again. The plan worked pretty well, had the virtue of predictability, and absorbed their attention.

But while they were focused on the minutiae of the journey, while they were following their reliable agenda, they forgot a little something: they left Jesus behind. As do many of us in the middle stages of life.

Again, the trip up the mountain tells us a lot about this. Midway up we start to get tired. The thrill of the climb wears off. Our beginning seems far behind us, and our final destination far ahead of us. Sometimes we wonder about the path we’re on, but mostly we just keep moving forward because every other possibility seems too hard. For many, it becomes a passionless time, a time for putting one foot in front of the other, a time of trudging.

For many of us the middle part of the mountain poses great risks. We stop cutting a bold path and start following an easy one. We keep going in the same direction even if it’s wrong. We stare at our feet and we miss the view. We forget all the promises we made to ourselves back in base camp. Our dreams become small, and we become small with them.

The Masters of Zen Buddhism understood this phenomenon. They understood how easily we become dull and detached, how easily we become deluded and diluted. And so their writings call us to wake up, to live in a full and focused way, to watch so keenly that nothing escapes our notice, to listen so closely that we might hear the sun set and the moon rise. “You must concentrate upon and consecrate yourself to each day,” the Zen Master told his student, “so that you live as though a fire were raging in your hair.”

Jesus calls us to rage—to rage with purpose. To rage for peace; to rage for justice; to rage for the downtrodden and the defenseless; to rage for an end to poverty; to rage for an end to prejudice; to rage for those in harm’s way when disaster strikes; to rage for love.

Midway up the mountain we have serious climbing at hand. Those who climb hard will face obstacles; but they will also find angels at their heels; and angels will bear them up.

And this brings us near the top of the mountain, our later years in life. We have some pretty clear instructions that apply to this part of the mountain.

The first is this: Do not forget that you are still in God’s service. God’s call does not include a retirement plan. Your employer might think of you as retired. Your employer might think of you as retired; the government might think of you as retired; the spouse you annoy on a daily basis might think of you as retired. But God does not retire anyone from any of the most important work we do in life: the work of forgiveness; the work of compassion; the work of building community; the work of sharing joy; the work of easing grief; the work of playing and praying and praising.

You see, in God’s eyes, our job description remains unchanged regardless of our age. And, in God’s hands, we find the strength to do that job—no matter how far up the mountain we have climbed.

The second instruction in the later stage of the climb is this: Watch out—God may still surprise you. Some of us, nearing the top of the mountain, think we have seen it all and that life can hold nothing new. I wonder if anything we think gives God greater reason to laugh at us.

Indeed, the Bible is full of stories of God’s surprises—including many visited upon people rather late in life. When Sarah concluded she was too old to bear a son God surprised her with Isaac. When Elizabeth faced the same disappointment God surprised her with John. When Noah’s children were grown and married God surprised him with a very ambitious project. It was probably later in life that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea encountered one of God’s greatest surprises to the world—a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus.

I know a little about late-in-life surprises. In her mid-eighties my mother relocated to a lovely retirement community in St. Joseph, Michigan. She’d had a rocky life. Her first husband died in the Second World War. Her second husband (my father) died in his sixties of a heart attack. She fell in love again, and that good man passed away as well. Throughout all of this she battled cancer, chronic heart problems, and a severe loss of vision in one eye. I’m sure there were many dark nights when she thought she was done with life, and wished life done with her.

But God had some surprises in store for my mother. She found a new community of friends. She did some creative writing, and rediscovered her joy of music. And she met Ed.

Then my mother did some surprising of her own—she and Ed eloped, got married, and moved in together. In the late days of winter, God surprised my mother with the bright sun of summer.

And this brings me to our last instruction about these later days. There is a story about Picasso that I think expresses it perfectly. In an interview near the end of his life someone asked Picasso why his early paintings were so formal, geometric, and studied, while his later paintings were so free, unstructured, and spontaneous. “Well,” Picasso replied, “it takes a long time to become young.”

It takes a long time to become young, indeed. Because it is only in wisdom that we rediscover the virtues of being open, innocent, accepting, non-judgmental, quick to laugh, eager to play, sensitive to suffering, and attentive to the soft still voice that comes to us at night and belongs to the Holy Parent who loves us all. Oh, how Jesus understood this. “Let the little children come to Me and do not forbid them,” he said, “for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 19:14)

And so, it turns out, my experience on that mountain in the Northeast provided a worthwhile flash of enlightenment after all. For, at the end of all our climbing, all our seeking, all our wandering and wondering, at the top of the mountain, at the limit of our quest—we find the moon-shaped face of a child. Staring back at us. Smiling. Laughing at how seriously we have taken ourselves. Puzzled at how long it has taken us to arrive. Inviting us to lift ourselves up over the top, join hands, sing loudly, and dance in a crazy and gleeful circle as if we were children loved beyond all describing.

Because we are.

And because of such indeed is the kingdom of heaven.

Amen.

That's How the Light Gets In

Scripture: Joel 2:21-27

The American artist Normal Rockwell painted one of the enduring images of thankfulness. You may know it.

A family is gathered around a beautifully set dinner table. An elderly couple stands at its head. The wife holds a platter bearing a gleaming brown turkey that looks like it weighs about two-hundred pounds. The husband, dressed in an immaculate dark suit and tie, looks on proudly. The seated family members—all smiling—chat merrily and prepare to dig in. Everything is perfect.

I’ve know this painting for as long as I can remember. When I was a child I loved and admired the perfection this image projects: perfectly prepared food arriving right on cue; perfectly mannered family members enjoying each others’ company; perfectly happy people relishing a perfectly wonderful Thanksgiving afternoon. Alas, things change. And as I have grown older I have come to find this painting, well, mildly irritating.

In my experience, things go wrong on Thanksgiving. Someone forgets to take the plastic bag of giblets out of the bird. When no one’s looking the dog eats the entire pan of stuffing. When everyone’s looking the dog gets violently ill. The only lawyer in the family breaks a tooth on an unfrozen pea. Somebody forgets to bring the pumpkin pie. Somebody brings a pumpkin pie but somebody else accidentally sits on it. Everyone’s favorite relative can’t make it. Everyone’s least favorite relative comes early and announces that they’re spending the night.

All joking aside, Thanksgiving can be hard, and not just because of our elevated expectations and our striving for perfection. Thanksgiving can be hard because it can arrive at a time when we just don’t feel very thankful, or, at least, at a time when our feelings of thankfulness are leavened by other feelings.

Life happens—we lose a loved one, we lose a job, we lose our health, we lose our way, we lose our hope—and Thanksgiving arrives in the middle of it. Perhaps we have an unsettled home life or no family around us when Thanksgiving—with its emphasis on home and family—appears and underscores our solitude and loneliness. And even when these things aren’t happening to us we know they are happening to others in the world who God invites into our care and prayer.

If we’re struggling with our sense of thankfulness right now then Rockwell’s painting may strike us as banal, even insulting. “Of course,” we say, “of course we would be able to feel thankful if the world looked like that.”

The text from the book of Joel may inspire the same response. After all, this passage makes it sound like the author had good reasons to celebrate. “The Lord has done great things!” the author tells us. There’s been plenty of rain; the pastures are green; the trees bear fruit; the fig trees and the vines have been full; there’s lots of grain; vats overflow with wine and oil. Indeed, one of the verses from Joel seems to convey precisely the same message as the Norman Rockwell painting: “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied…”

But let’s examine this for a moment. It turns out that Norman Rockwell painted his famous picture in 1943, when the world didn’t look much like that idyllic gathering around the Thanksgiving table. The United States was at war in Europe, North Africa, and the South Pacific. The Nazis had begun implementing a fully developed plan of Jewish genocide that would result in the deaths of millions of innocent people. Panic here at home had led to the interment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans who had done nothing except be Japanese-Americans. And, ironically in light of the plenitude reflected in the painting, there was rationing of meat, sugar, coffee, and gasoline.

The author of Joel had ample reasons to despair as well. We don’t know precisely when the book was written. Unlike many texts in the Hebrew Bible, this one does not mention any rulers or nations that give us a solid clue about its historical situation.

But the text does tell us something very important about the moment at which the prophet speaks. In the chapter preceding the one cited we learn that the community has just survived a calamitous invasion of locusts. The first chapter of Joel describes the event in alarming terms:

“What the cutting locus left, the swarming locust has eaten. What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten …[A] nation has come up against my land, powerful and without number, its teeth are lions’ teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines, and splintered my fig trees; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white.”

In short, the book of Joel—like the painting of Rockwell—is the work of a man living through desperate and broken times.

We, too, dwell in broken times.

Perhaps our lives feel broken to us. Perhaps we’re struggling with broken health, a broken relationship, a broken sense of well-being, a broken hold on our identity, a broken confidence in who we are and why we’re here.

Perhaps the world feels broken to us. Perhaps we see a world set upon by difficulties as numerous and relentless as the locusts that plagued Joel. We do not need to catalog those problems here. Tomorrow morning’s newspaper will do enough of that for us.

So, what are we to do?

Well, I think Joel invites us to do two things.

The first will probably strike you as obvious and as a commonplace sentiment. Joel suggests that we take stock of those things we do have to be thankful for. He tells us that a great plague threatened the survival of his community but then the rains came and conditions started to turn around. Joel looks at the state of things and says “Thanks be to God, who has dealt wondrously with us.” In that spirit, we can pause to express our thanks for all the wondrous things God has done for us, even in this our brokenness, even in these our broken times.

But Joel offers us something much more. For after Joel shares his great words of thankfulness he goes on to say this:

“And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even upon the menservants and maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

This may sound familiar to you even if you have never read the book of Joel.

If it does, that’s probably because these are also the precise words Peter speaks at Pentecost. In the second chapter of the book of Acts, Peter recites this passage from the second chapter of the book of Joel.

A prominent biblical scholar describes what this means for us:

“Peter, quoting Joel, imagines a community of free, bold, hope-filled men and women, boys and girls … What a stunning vocation for [us], to stand free and hope-filled in a world gone fearful … and to think, imagine, dream, vision a future that God will yet enact. What a work of visioning for [us] when society all around is paralyzed in fear, preoccupied by commodity, mesmerized by wealth, seeking endless power, and deeply, deeply frightened.” (Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text, 115)

Consider the thankfulness this should also inspire—thankfulness for our freedom to think, for our capacity to dream and imagine, for our ability to hope and have courage.

We strive to remember the blessing of what is. Here, the scriptures call us also to see the blessing of what might yet be.

I have to confess that this also softens my view of the Rockwell painting. For I have come to understand that Rockwell was getting at very much the same point. His painting does not offer us a conveniently and extravagantly retouched photograph of real life. It offers us a dream, a vision, an imagined world in which we gather in joy and peace and share in abundance and love. I understood this as soon as I learned about the context of its creation and the title of the painting: “Freedom from want.”

And what does all this mean for us as individuals? I think it means something very important indeed. For if in this idea lies the remedy for a broken world, in it also lies the remedy for our broken lives.

Let me put it this way. Many of us maintain a polite but distant relationship with God when things are going well. We draw an artificial line between the sacred and the secular and then dwell in the latter space. And in the process we come to confuse the idea that God made us free with the idea that God made us independent.

Then trouble comes. Tragedy strikes—or threatens to strike. We become aware of our limitations, our finitude, our weakness, our brokenness. In the midst of our freedom we discover our dependence. And then we throw ourselves at God’s feet or into God’s arms. As a friend of mine used to say, in our relationship with God we are often “foul weather friends.”

But here’s the amazing thing: God welcomes us, even us, even as we come, even as we are. We come to God like beggars at the door. And—astonishingly—God takes us in.

Of all the things for which we have to be thankful, surely this must be the greatest of all—that God works in us even through our brokenness, perhaps—I venture to say—especially through our brokenness.

I don’t have the right words to describe this. But I think the poets do.

The 17th century clergyman and metaphysical poet George Herbert wrote about how our “restlessness” tosses us to God for “rest.” The great Irish wit and poet Oscar Wilde put it this way: “How else but through a broken heart / May Lord Christ enter in?”

Or think of the lines of poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen. Cohen wrote a beautiful song about the brokenness of the world—and of each of us—that includes this refrain: “Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything … That’s how the light gets in.”

We must come to each day in search of thankfulness, fully awake to the blessings of this life, filled with gratitude for those with whom we share our days on earth. We must saying, with Joel, "praise God who has dealt wondrously with us."

But we must also come to each day aware of the hard news too, fully awake to the fact that we are a broken people living in a broken world, aware of the reality that there is, indeed, "a crack in everything.”

Still, that is also—in the true “gospel” sense of the word—the good news.

Because, my friends, in most of our lives that’s how the light gets in.

Amen.

Closely, Safely, Collectively, Immediately

Scripture: Matthew 4:18-22

Years ago my parents attended the funeral of someone they knew, though not very well. The funeral lasted for a long time and, just when my parents thought it was over, a family member announced that the service would continue at the grave site. My parents looked at each other, shared a silent moment of marital conspiracy, and decided to head for home. So they nodded politely at the other attendees, got in their car, and drove off. As my father was pulling down their street he happened to look in his rearview mirror, where he saw a horrific sight: a whole line of cars, assuming my father was in the funeral procession headed to the grave site, had followed him home.

Now, I think this story has a moral: you have to know who you’re following and you have to know where you’re going. The fourth chapter of Matthew also tells us some things about deciding who to follow, and how to follow, and even how to lead. I want to take a close look at this passage, and particularly at the wonderfully simple and wonderfully powerful invitation Jesus extended to each of the four fishermen and extends to each of us: "Follow me." And I’d like to take that close look with four words in mind: closely, safely, collectively, and immediately.

Let’s begin by remembering a bit about the context of this passage. It comes very early in Jesus’s public ministry. He had an amazing new message to bring to the world. He wanted people to listen to him. He needed to establish a faith that would embrace everyone and would endure forever.

If you or I were called to such a task we would probably be tempted to go to the best parts of town, the centers of political power, the universities, and the churches. We would try to recruit the wealthy, the influential, the educated, and the devout. We would establish committees, review resumes, consider credentials, develop a strategic plan, write a mission statement (no pun intended) and so on and so on. But God’s ways and our ways are often quite different. And thank heaven for that—literally.

So where did Jesus go to begin his ministry? To the Sea of Galilee. And who did he recruit there? Four fishermen. Working fishermen. Not four guys lazing around in a bass boat with nothing better to do. But four hard-working no-nonsense don’t-mess-with-me laborers. And when Jesus approached them they were deep in their task, nets in hand.

The Bible tells us, though, that when Jesus invited them to follow him they did so immediately. Immediately. For some reason, these four fishermen understood that they needed to make a decision, to choose, to go in a new direction, to leave old things behind—in short, to follow. So they did. Immediately.

This prompts an obvious question: why would they do that? Why would they walk away from their work, their families, and their lives to follow a relatively unknown itinerant preacher? Why would they up and leave poor old Zebedee? Can you imagine how amazed Zebedee must have been when his sons dropped their nets and walked off to follow Jesus? Can you imagine how awkward it must have been when Zebedee arrived home without them?

Why did the four fishermen follow Jesus, and follow him without hesitation? Well, we know why they didn’t do it. They didn’t do it because they were perfect or, to put it more pointedly, because they were better “followers” than you and me. It is true that they came to love Jesus dearly. But it is also true that they came to doubt him and deny him.

Nor do we have any reason to believe they followed him because he performed a miracle for them. Neither Matthew nor Mark talk about anything remarkable happening on this occasion, aside from the occasion itself, aside from four fishermen dropping their nets to follow a carpenter from Nazareth.

Luke does tell the story a little differently. Luke tells us that Jesus filled the nets of the fishermen and then called them to follow. Luke does not, however, say that they followed because he filled their nets. And it is a good thing Luke does not say this, since the claim would be unbelievable.

I have fished since I was a child. have known sport fishermen and professional fishermen, fly fishermen and bait fishermen, seven year old fishermen and seventy year old fishermen. But I have never known a fisherman who decided to quit just when the fishing got good. Those fishermen may have stopped fishing despite the fact that their nets were full, but they certainly would not have stopped fishing because their nets were full.

I want to suggest to you that the Bible tells us exactly why the fishermen followed Jesus. But it tells us in an indirect and subtle way. To understand why the fishermen followed Jesus all we need to do is look, very carefully, at what he said to to them. And then we need to listen, very carefully, to what he says to us.

Jesus said two things to the fishermen. He said “follow me.” And he said “and I will make you fish for people.” Let’s start with the first words, "follow me."

“Follow me” is a exquisitely simple phrase that does a lot of work. Those two words say many different things. When someone says “follow me” they are saying “come along with me.” To follow someone is to travel with them, close to them.

Have you ever had this happen: You are with a group that decides to drive somewhere. You have to go in your own car but you do not know how to get where everyone is going. So some well-intentioned person says “follow me.” But then they peel away from the curb, go thirty miles an hour above the speed limit, and race through yellow lights just as they change to red. Of course, you can’t follow them because you can’t stay close. Gradually, you fall behind. And then you are lost.

Jesus called the fishermen, and calls us, to a “closer walk.” We cannot follow at a distance.

“Follow me.” Having someone follow us also allows us to keep them safe. If someone stays with us, near us, right behind us, we can watch over them and help them arrive at their destination safely and securely.

Don’t get me wrong. When we choose to follow Jesus we do put ourselves at risk. We do put ourselves in danger of losing some things that are dear to us: like our anger; our intolerance; our prejudices; our complacency; our selfishness; our eagerness to judge others; our reluctance to speak truth to power; our indifference toward injustice.

It is one of the great paradoxes of our faith. When we choose to follow Jesus we risk losing everything—everything that finally doesn’t matter. And when we choose to follow Jesus we gain everything—everything that finally does matter. Jesus taught his disciples about this paradox when he said “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” With respect to the things that matter, we are never safer than when we follow Jesus Christ.

Some time ago Lisa and I toured the Park Street Congregational Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It has some famous Louis Tiffany stained glass windows we wanted to see. One of those windows shows Jesus walking along a rocky ridge. On both sides of the ridge the edge drops off dramatically. But Jesus strides along peacefully, confidently, fearlessly. Two lambs follow behind him as closely as they possibly can. They peer over the edges in wide-eyed astonishment. But they follow safely, because they follow the Son of the living God.

“Follow me.” I find it fascinating that in this passage in Matthew Jesus did not recruit one disciple—he recruited four. He built a community of followers that they might enjoy the blessings not only of His presence, but of their presence. They did not simply follow Him; they followed Him together.

This reminds me of a familiar sight on the streets of many towns. I’ll bet you’ve seen it, too. A teacher has drawn the unenviable assignment of taking a group of kindergarten students on a field trip. In an effort to maintain some sort of control over the herd the teacher has taken a long rope and given each child a place to hold. They follow the teacher along, safely connected to their leader and to each other. They yank this way and that and their path does not follow a precisely straight line. But they get where they need to go, and they get there together.

I think this depicts our own journeys perfectly. Along we go, children of God, trying to follow, sometimes wandering off to pursue a distraction, pulled safely back into line by those on the journey with us, tugged gently forward by the one we follow.

“Follow me.” Jesus said this, but he said something more. He said “and I will make you fish for people.” In other words, Jesus did not simply invite the disciples to follow. He also invited them to lead. He extended an extraordinary invitation to four ordinary people. It was an act of trust. It was an act of respect. It was an act of hope. It was an act of faith. It was an act of love.

Why did the four fishermen drop everything to follow Jesus? Because, as it turns out, he did perform a miracle for them. He loved them. And He loves us, too.

Jesus calls us to follow, and calls us to lead, and in order to do both things we need only do one thing: love. Oh, how simple the message; oh, how often we miss it. When the great theologian Karl Barth visited Princeton someone asked him if he could summarize the principal message of the dozens of volumes he had written. He thought a moment and said: “Yes, I can. Jesus loves me this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”

Oh, how simple the message; oh, how often we miss it. But Jesus calls us with a clear and unmistakable command. He calls us to love the sick, the imprisoned, and the oppressed. He calls us to love the poor, the ugly, and the addicted. He calls us to love the stranger we don’t know at all and the family member we know all too well. He calls us to love our neighbors. He calls us to love our enemies. He calls us to love ourselves, which sometimes may seem hardest of all.

Jesus calls us to love those we may find unlovable, and that poses a serious challenge. But, as C.S. Lewis suggested in Mere Christianity, even when you cannot love someone you can at least act as if you do. Lewis observes, “As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you love someone, you will presently come to love [them].”

When we love, we follow Jesus. When we love, we gather others to his flock. When we love, we serve the kingdom of God. As the old hymn says, it is with “deeds of love and mercy [that] the heavenly kingdom comes.”

Jesus calls us to love, and therefore also forbids us from hating. We are forbidden from hating someone because of the color of their skin. We are forbidden from hating someone because of their gender. We are forbidden from hating someone because of their politics. We are forbidden from hating someone because of who they love. We are forbidden from hating. Period.

To love—joyfully and fully and unconditionally, as God loves you—that is what it means to follow. That is what it means to drop your nets and come along. That is what it means to bring others along with you. That is what it means to lead, in Jesus’ name.

This day, and every day, Jesus renews his invitation to us: “Follow me.” And we know what we need to do to accept. Put aside old grievances; make a friend of a stranger; visit someone we know is lonely; invite someone to dinner, offer someone a ride, tell someone a joke, send someone a letter. Give. And forgive. Love.

It is the most wonderful invitation ever extended in the history of the world. Let us respond with all our hearts and minds and voices. And let us draw up to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—closely, safely, collectively, immediately.

And follow him.

And follow him.

And follow him.

Amen.