Matthew 4:12-23
“Followership”
January 26, 2020
We’re following the leader, the leader, the leader.
We’re following the leader wherever he may go.
So goes the song from the Walt Disney movie of Peter Pan. Leaders are the ones we look up to, sometimes putting them too quickly or easily on a pedestal that can lead to idolatry. We seem to be on the constant search for the person with the charming personality or the take-charge attitude or at the very least the one willing to make unpopular decisions with fairness and grace. They are often sticking their neck out on important issues or the rights of others that can leave them vulnerable to attack, with detractors whittling away at their authority, undermining them in small and large ways.
Many of us at some point have served in a leadership role be it in the work place, an organization in which you’ve volunteered or been a member or within your own family, neighborhood, community or in this church. Here’s the thing, though. Even if you’ve never viewed yourself as a leader I know you have been a follower – we all have. It could have been in the home you grew up in or the school you attended or the girl scout troop you were a part of or the branch of the military in which you served and if we want to include even more of us – we’ve all lived under a variety of elected local, state and national leaders over the course of our lifetime.
Here Jesus is making an offer to four different men. When he says “follow me” he is not ordering them to do so. He is inviting them into a way of life that won’t be easy. His invitation is to a life in which the fishing they’ll do may pit them against the powers that be, the Roman Empire. They are to turn away from a top down form of leadership and followership where threats and coercion were the tools to keep people in line. Instead Jesus wants participants. The Roman rulers and their lackeys thought that when they threw John in prison that this would deter folks from challenging their control. Instead the opposite happened and the resistance grew in strength and numbers of followers involved.
The word follower in today’s culture has taken on an additional meaning. With the spread of social media in the last decade, folks are tracking the numbers of those who they think might be hanging on their every word and photo and meme on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. The name we use for these individuals who want to keep up with what any person or organization is doing so that it automatically appears in their feed is follower.
We here at the Federated Church of East Arlington currently have 204 people that follow us. This is good news but it is also the ultimate in passive followership. It allows someone to see what’s going on but they don’t have to commit to anything else. They can also make helpful or hurtful comments without leaving the comfort of their screens. Of course, there are those who engage and will offer constructive feedback or “like” the posts we put up a few times a week. The thing is they may be following but it’s not clear exactly what they are looking for. Some of those followers are us, we active church members. Some are members of the past who want to stay in touch. There are some who, like those generous folks in the community who helped us paint the steeple this past year, are what we would call neighbors, friends or supporters and then there are the just plain curious folks. You could say, in a way we sent out a call of sorts with our social media presence and what we got back was a mixed bag of followers…maybe not so different from what Jesus, over time, has amassed in the form of followers throughout the history of Christianity. We can be active or passive. Active can be a little scary but that is what distinguishes us. It gets less scary the more we engage as followers because we recognize our fellow fishermen.
One of the best parts of this story of the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, after he went through his forty day exile in the wilderness where the devil worked hard to tempt him and before he delivers the powerful words of his Sermon on the Mount is that he issues this call to two men at a time. First one set of brothers and then another so that in seeking them out he did it in community. He immediately created teams of disciples or followers who would act on the call because, let’s face it, it is a lot easier to take a risk when you know you have company. That’s a big part of being church. We have fellow followers to lean into, work beside and gain strength from.
The recognition that you need to foster a sense of community, a shared purpose, in order to more effectively follow, speaks to us today on this Annual Meeting Sunday when we will lift up the ties that bind us and elect those who will serve in leadership roles. With our ultimate leader being God, we will empower and support those individuals who will represent us in promoting the mission and ministries of this congregation. The various roles within our church structure rely heavily on others to make it possible to carry out our vision and the wide variety of tasks that are involved in being church. We need each other’s gifts.
Jesus issued a call saying, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” The operative word here is not the verb “fish” but rather the noun “people.” It is the people who are always of primary concern to Jesus and this should be the primary concern of this unique enterprise that we call church. All the worries about buildings and money should not be just about dollar signs and architecture. Rather our greatest concern is how we, as followers, who come together in Jesus’ name, are going to serve people and sometimes more difficultly, be served by people. That is our call – what will we do to commit ourselves in big ways and small ways to God within the context of this church? We know that as church together we can do so much more than any of us alone is capable of.
What gifts could you share in 2020? The secret to the success of any organization in general and a church in particular is to use the gifts of every single member. We also must recognize that we are an organization going through change.
We are changing every day. Perhaps not as rapidly as some would like or maybe faster than others would prefer but we are shifting because our world is not standing still. The economic priorities of our country, our state and our own local community have shifted – we witness that in the prices we pay, on the return in our investments, and on the cost of being church. We also see it in those we work to serve.
The population of the poor and needy to whom we reach out to is also shifting. They include folks for whom one full-time job may not be enough to support a family. They include older retirees who saved all of their lives only to get to the supposed golden years and discover that they do not have enough resources to make it on their own. Families look different – both parents are often working, more and more children are being raised partly or entirely by grandparents or other relatives, many families include stepchildren and remarriage and single parenting. The traditional version of a family with Mom and Dad and two kids is often a minority perspective.
We must change, regardless of pace, in order to respond. We must not let fear of change stop us because whatever change we go through, we are not alone. Jesus was calling for a new world order when he drew in these first disciples. He needed these men for their ability to withstand the changes ahead. He counted on them to be active followers once they committed.
What new thing do we have to look forward to? What new part of yourself are you willing to offer this year to this faith community? It need not be large and grandiose but we must each be willing to take at least a small step for we cannot continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.
In following the example set before us with Jesus’ call to these four fishermen they are not being told what to believe or how to believe. They are instead being asked to act on whatever faith they have. This call of Jesus’ was not about a future in heaven but rather about creating the kingdom here on earth. He was beginning his ministry with a call to join this new thing and that new thing is still unfolding for us today. What will we be? To what are we called as Jesus followers?
Perhaps the secret to being a vital living church is how deeply we must lean into God and continue to strive to follow the example of Jesus. That means looking out for each other, continuing to use the lessons from scripture as a guidepost for navigating an ever-changing world. It could be that the call doesn’t have to be a lightning bolt experience but rather making time in prayer and meditation, in reflection and discussion with others and in all of that, listening for God’s still-speaking voice which may appear in snippets, popping in and out of our days. If we don’t lean in we may miss it.
In our increasingly separated world where so much divides us, let us consider these words as followers, from a poem titled “Stay Close:”
The bee works its way
deep into the blossom.
Go into that extravagance.
The Beloved enters this day
and bids you follow.
The Divine Presence
moves through this moment
with grace and power
and invites you:
Stay with me.
Follow hope
into the moment,
follow grace
into the passageways
of time and space,
follow love
into the intricacies of relationships.
In the crowd
of the day
stay close
to the Beloved.
(Steve Garnaas-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net)
We stay close to God, the beloved, by following Jesus. Let us be followers with our hearts and minds, our hands and feet – with our very being. Amen.