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Follow Me
A sermon by Dr. Jim Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
January 25, 2009
Third in the Series, “The Seven First Words of Christ”
Mark 1:14-20
I think I have
told you before that when I was a pastor in North Carolina I also served as an
adjunct professor on the faculty of Wingate University. Three mornings a week,
for most of the time I was there, I would walk from my office at the church to a
classroom on the campus where I would try to teach religion to college
freshman. One of my regular offerings was a course called “Jesus and the
Gospels,” and on that first day of class—after I had gone over the syllabus and
answered any questions—I would give my students their first homework assignment,
which was to read through the Gospel of Mark in one sitting.
“Make sure you have good light and a
comfortable chair,” I would say. “Don’t forget to visit the restroom first.
And then sit down and read through the whole Gospel as if you were reading a
very short novel. It should take about an hour.” I don’t know how many of them
actually did it, but when they came to class next time I assumed that they had,
and I would ask them about their impressions of the Gospel. Many of them were
impressed by how quickly the Gospel moves: “Immediately,” Mark says, “Jesus went
from here, to here, to here.” Some were impressed by how impatient Jesus was
with his disciples, and how dense they seemed to be. And someone would always
ask why Jesus cursed that poor, fruitless fig tree in Chapter 11.
Reading the
Gospel in one sitting gives you a different feel for it than hearing a few
verses at a time in a worship service. You come away with an overall impression
of the Gospel, and probably an image of Jesus that is not as gentle, meek, or
mild as you once imagined. He seems to be in a hurry in this Gospel, anxious to
get somewhere or accomplish something, and impatient with those dim-witted
disciples who couldn’t seem to keep up. He turned over tables in the temple,
and on at least one occasion, yes, he took out his frustration on a fig tree,
and withered it to the roots. Not all of my students were churchgoers, and some
of them would ask about Jesus: “Who is this guy? And what does he want
anyway?” “Aha!” I would say. “That’s just what we’re going to talk about . . .
next time.”
At the
beginning of that next class period I would pull out a copy of an article that
I’ve had for years. It’s by a writer named Genni Gunn, and it’s called,
“Getting Your Novel Started in Ten Days.” I found it when I was thinking about
writing a novel and I’ve kept it because I sometimes still think about it. But
I’ve also kept it because it helps me understand the Gospel of Mark. “OK,” I
would say to my class, “let’s change the name of the article slightly. Let’s
call it, ‘Getting Your Gospel Started in Ten Days.’ And let’s imagine that Mark
is reading it as he sits there at his desk getting ready to write.
“Day 1,”
Ms. Gunn suggests: “Define your idea. Begin by asking yourself, ‘What is my
Gospel about?’ Write a one-sentence summary.” “Hmm,” Mark says. “What is my
Gospel about? It’s the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God” (and
by the way, if you look up Mark 1:1 you’ll see that’s exactly the sentence he
wrote down. And then, I imagine, he took the rest of the day off).
“Day 2,”
Ms. Gunn continues: “List your characters.” “Not so hard,” Mark says, chewing
the end of his pencil. “There’s Jesus, and Peter, and the other disciples, and
all the people he healed, and the Scribes and the Pharisees, and Pilate, and,
and…. That ought to be enough for one day.”
“Day 3,”
Ms. Gunn continues: “List locations and settings.” “Oh, that’s not so hard
either,” Mark says, taking out a clean sheet of paper. “There’s the Jordan
River, and the Sea of Galilee, and all those little towns around it, and then,
of course, Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, Golgotha….” And then he chokes
on the memory, and can’t bring himself to write anything else.
“Day 4,”
Ms. Gunn suggests, cheerfully: “Define your characters’ goals. Your main
characters must want something that they are unable to get. In one sentence,
define what each of your main characters wants.” And this is usually where I
would turn away from Mark, sitting at his desk, and turn to my students, sitting
at theirs. “In this Gospel,” I would ask, “What does Jesus want that he is
unable to get?” And then I would watch them struggle, those earnest young men
and women, many of whom had grown up going to Sunday School in Baptist churches,
wrestling with the idea that Jesus, the Son of Almighty God, might want
something he couldn’t get. And then light would break across the face of one of
my brighter students, and she would raise her hand tentatively, and I would say,
“Yes? Do you know what Jesus wants that he can’t get in this Gospel?” “I think
so,” she would say, gulping. “I think he wants to establish the Kingdom of
God.” “Exactly!” I would say, slapping the desk, making the whole class jump.
“That’s exactly right! Jesus wants to establish the Kingdom of God on earth as
it is in heaven but he can’t do it because we won’t let him.”
Again, if you
read the Gospels carefully, you will find that Jesus talks about the Kingdom
more than any other thing. 120 times, mostly in the first three Gospels, he
refers to the Kingdom or its equivalent. If I had asked you at the beginning of
the sermon to define the word “gospel” you might have said that the gospel is
the good news of how Jesus came to save sinners, or the gospel is the good news
that God cares for the poor, but honestly, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus doesn’t say
all that much about saving sinners. He gives passing notice to the poor. The
main thing he talks about—the main thing—is the Kingdom of God, and from
the beginning of the Gospel to the end you can see that he is trying to get that
project off the ground. So, when my students came back to class we spent some
time talking about the Kingdom of God, and what it meant to Jesus.
“A kingdom,” I
would say, reading right out of the dictionary, “’is a territory, people, state,
or realm ruled by a king or a queen. It is any place or area of concern thought
of as a sovereign domain.’ In other words, a kingdom is wherever the king is in
charge. The Kingdom of God, then, would be wherever God is in charge. That
could be a nation, or a city, or a household, or a human being. I think Jesus
would say that if God is in charge of your life, then the Kingdom of God is in
you!” And that’s usually where I had to stop talking about the Kingdom, because
there is only so much you can say in a classroom, even a classroom at a Baptist
university. You have to maintain a clear distinction between instruction and
indoctrination. But in the church it’s different. In the church you don’t have
to hold back.
You see, when we talk about the Kingdom of
God in church we remember that there was a time when God was king. When
Joshua brought God’s people into the Promised Land he challenged them to choose
whom they would serve, and they said they would serve the Lord. He would be
their god; he would be their king; they wouldn’t need anybody else but him. But
then they got into trouble with some of their hostile neighbors and God raised
up heroes for them, “Judges,” they were called, who helped them defeat their
enemies and restore the peace, people like Gideon and Deborah and Samson. But
soon the judges weren’t enough. The people wanted more. They wanted a king
like other nations, and eventually—in spite of Samuel’s protests—they made Saul
their king. What they didn’t seem to understand is that, before they could put
Saul up on the throne, they had to drag God down. And that’s just what they
did. In one of the most poignant moments in Scripture God tells Samuel, “Look,
they’re not rejecting you; they’re rejecting me.”
So, when Mark picks up his
pen to write, he writes to an Israel that has suffered the corruption and loss
of its earthly kingdom, an Israel that has been carried off into Exile in
Babylon, an Israel that has spent the last 400 years trying to recover. He
writes a story about a young prince who has come to reclaim his father’s lost
Kingdom, and that’s where our Gospel reading for today picks up, right at the
beginning of the adventure. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, freshly baptized and
full of conviction after 40 days’ testing in the wilderness, begins to make his
way up the road from Judea to Galilee, alongside the river and around the shore
of the lake, preaching to every person he meets along the way: “The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good
news.”
But here’s the catch: Although it is his
father’s lost kingdom Jesus has come to reclaim, it’s not a claim he can force.
Jesus has authority over the forces of evil and the forces of nature: He can
cast out demons and calm the wind and the waves. But Jesus has no authority
over the human heart, and in that sense it is true that Jesus—the hero of this
Gospel—wants something he cannot get. He wants to plant the flag of his
father’s kingdom in the life of every person he encounters, but he can only do
so with every person’s permission. He can only do so with your permission. And
if you know anything at all about yourself you know what a hard job it will be.
Because we love being in charge of our own lives. We love sitting on the
throne, and wearing the crown, and waving the scepter. In short, we love being
king, and to let someone else take over is hard for us. We lay down the scepter
reluctantly. We grudgingly give up the crown. We slide off the throne feeling
wretched and miserable—how will we ever adjust?
What Jesus has to convince us of is the truth
about his father: that his father loves us and knows us better than we know
ourselves. He has to convince us that if we will ever yield the throne we will
find ourselves in the care of one who can bring forth more from our little lives
than we could have ever dreamed or imagined. Our dreams for ourselves are too
often small and self-serving. God’s dreams for us are always large and
other-serving—world-serving. If we could ever give ourselves up to those
dreams, give ourselves over to that God, then I think his kingdom would come,
and his will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven. But just try taking a
scepter out of someone’s hand. Just try prying the crown off his head. You’ll
find out in a second what a big job it is, and I think Jesus figured that out
before he got halfway around the Sea of Galilee.
Mark tells us that when Jesus called Peter
and Andrew, James and John, they left their nets and followed him, but what Mark
doesn’t tell us is how many people Jesus called before he got to those four. It
may have been dozens, hundreds. There were lots of little fishing villages
along the shores of Galilee in Jesus’ time and at least one large city. He may
have said to everyone he met, “Follow me,” but until he got to Capernaum, until
he got to these first disciples, no one did. I thought about this last Tuesday
morning, in staff meeting. There were hundreds of people in worship on the
Sunday before, and thousands more watching on television, but the person we were
talking about that day was Jasmine Thomas, who had responded to the invitation
at the end of the service and come down the aisle to tell me she wanted to
follow Jesus. There may have been others who were this close to coming
down the aisle, but she was the one who came, and hers was the story we were
telling.
In the same way there might have been dozens,
even hundreds, of people who were this close to responding when Jesus
told them that the time was fulfilled, and that the Kingdom of God had come
near, maybe thousands who were on the verge of getting down off their thrones
and following when he begged them to repent and believe the gospel. But the
ones we hear about are the ones who actually did it: Peter and Andrew, James and
John. They left their nets and followed, even though they must have had little
idea of who he was and less idea of where he was going. It takes a lot of faith
to do that. It takes a lot of courage.
And so we come to end of this sermon, and to
the end of this service. We come to that time when I have the privilege of
extending to you the same invitation Jesus extended to those first disciples.
If he were saying it himself he would say it this simply, this directly: “Follow
me.” And then he would wait for your response. It is a simple invitation, but
it is not an easy one. Jesus is asking you to give up control of your own life
and hand it over to him, to step down off the throne of your own life and let
him sit there instead. He is asking you to fall in behind him and trust him
with your future. It is no wonder that so many people refuse that invitation.
The wonder, really, is that anyone accepts it
at all.
—Jim Somerville,
©
2009
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