Jesus came as one unknown, and passing along the sea of Galilee, spoke two words to the fishermen Andrew and Simon, James and John, “Follow me.” “Immediately, they left their nets and followed him,” the Gospel of Mark recounts. Nets represent wealth, livelihood, slow and steady accumulation and investment, security, a financial future, the ability to provide for family, status, accomplishment, and prestige, and they just leave them behind.
James and John leave more than their nets; they leave “their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed Jesus.” Hired men? Scripture is sly. Zebedee’s operation is large, complex and profitable; James and John are in for a considerable inheritance, but they leave that wealth behind in an instant, or as we hear over and over in Mark’s Gospel: “Immediately.”
“Jesus never asks for admirers, worshippers or adherents,” rants Kierkegaard. “No, he calls disciples. It is not adherents of a teaching but followers of a life Christ is looking for.”
This story challenges the very idea that there is a “Christianity,” that is composed of doctrines, dogmas and rituals that can be described and analyzed by those wanting to be Christian, who after careful assessment decide to become one. Our four fisherman were not preoccupied with trying to understand Christ, or what it meant to follow him. They followed regardless of the risk and difficulty.
I am often asked if Jesus really meant it when he said, “Love your enemies,” as if the answer to that question would determine whether it made sense to become a Christian. But there is no answering this question in the abstract. The only answer is, “Love your enemies, and from the prospective of following Jesus discern if he really meant it.” Indeed this makes the faith more costly, risky and difficult: Did Jesus really mean that when I am struck on one cheek, and I am to turn the other? There is only one way to find out why Jesus told his followers to do this. If I have two coats, am I really to give one to the neighbor how has none? Give the coat away and see. The problem of being a Christian is not being able to cleverly interpret what it means to be Christians. The problem is acting like a follower of Christ.
I don’t want to give the impression--for it would be sheer hypocrisy to do so--that I have been loving enemies, turning cheeks and donating coats. It is not that I don’t want to be; it is that being a follower of Jesus, as those first disciples were, requires too much risk. I cannot leave everything behind; I cannot risk all that I have.
I often think that the most significant spiritual resistance we commonly suffer from is the fear of risking our security for the sake of the good news we believe in and for the Kingdom of God that has come near. We don’t risk enough money; we don’t risk enough time; we don’t risk enough prestige and reputation to be followers like the fisherman were. The person to whom I relate best in the Gospels is the man who, having kept all of the laws and commandments, asks Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him, “Sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.” He slinks away, “grieving, for he had many possessions.”
I am still living under the assumption that I have more time to organize my spiritual life. The four fisherman heard Jesus loud and clear: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The four fisherman could leave everything behind because they understood that time being fulfilled meant there was no more time to align themselves with love of God (a better way to say “repent.”)
A personal story might illustrate the myth of “more time.” On my 52nd birthday, my doctor told me to lose weight, lower my cholesterol, and get my blood pressure in check. Have you had doctor’s appointments like this? She told me that at my appointment on my 53rd birthday, I would need to show significant improvement, or else. I believed her, and certainly said I would take decisive action, but with every month that passed, I would not be so rigorous about what needed to be done because I believed that I had more time.
Now, my 53rd birthday is less than two months away, and I still think I have enough time to get in shape!
So many of us do this in myriad of ways. We know we shouldn’t smoke, but we’ll quit later. We know the pornography we indulge on the computer is destructive and oppressive to our own souls and the ones objectified, but we figure there is more time to give it up. We know that it is time reconcile with a child, parent, etc., but later. Yes, we may be accumulating wealth at the unjust expense of others, but just a little bit longer.
Jesus told the four fisherman, “There is no more time to be aligned with God’s justice and love.” They believed him. We who still struggle about what it means to be Christian haven’t realized that time is up. To be a follower of Christ means that there is no more waiting to live out fully the promises of our baptism. Now, not later, is the time to resist evil, proclaim God’s love and justice, love neighbor, and respect the dignity of every human being. A Christian disciple rejects the notion of progress, and demands, “Now!”
That’s what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did. I re-read last Monday on his birthday his most important work, “The Letter from the Birmingham City Jail.” He is writing to pastors and good religious folk who believe he is not being patient enough--that racial justice will come in time. He need not be so provocative, controversial and defiant of laws. They write, “It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth.”
“Such an attitude,” King wrote, "stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills . . . . Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make the real promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity."
Bishop Gene Robinson speaks similarly in the new documentary, “Love Free or Die,” about his prophetic witness to the Anglican Church to embrace fully gays and lesbians and bar them not from the sacraments of the church, including ordination and marriage. He says, "We’re told in scripture that the truth will set you free. Not only will the truth set you free, but not telling the truth will absolutely keep you enslaved. Who are we to change what we’ve been teaching for 2000 years? Well, why not us? But it is going to take a lot of us. And all of a sudden, we will have changed 2000 years of teaching. That time begins now."
Now, maybe you did not agree with Dr. King in the 1960’s, and maybe you do not agree with Bishop Gene Robinson now. I have certainly been wrong, and there are plenty of others, while still having the prophetic certainty (albeit erroneously) that Now is the time and The time begins now.
But if we are followers of Christ, and through Christ subject to one another, and disciplined in our discipleship to the Church that binds us to God and one another, I trust that we will find our way rightly. We may detour, but we do eventually find our way.
But, as followers of Christ, we do not have the option to say, “this is not the time” for the gospel to be preached, and to align ourselves with God’s love and the demands of that justice. We must incarnate the urgency and the abandon of the four disciples who risked everything, and followed.
I do pray that I have the time to run catch up to Jesus before he gets too far ahead of me.