Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of people.”

Mark 1:17

The story is told of a young woman applying for college. She felt that her application was strong, until she got to the question that asked, simply, “Are you a leader?” Her heart sank. Being both honest and conscientious, she wrote, “No,” and returned the application, expecting the worst. To her surprise, she received this letter from the college: “Dear Applicant: A study of the application forms reveals that this year our college will have 1,452 new leaders. We are accepting you because we feel it is imperative that they have at least one follower.”

The world may be looking for leaders, but the church is looking for followers. And today’s gospel reading is all about the importance of being a follower, not a leader. We often think of leadership as being an important gift. And it is. But what about followership? We don’t usually think of it as being an important gift. But it is a vital aspect of living in God’s Kingdom. In fact, when it comes to being a disciple, and living out our Christian faith, the most important quality is not leadership, but followership: The willingness to follow Jesus.

Last week (Why Follow Jesus?) I began a 2-part sermon on following Jesus. We looked at the basic question of why this is so important. Why are we followers of Jesus? The simplest answer to that is because Jesus has called us – he found us, and invited us to follow him. And we are here because we have accepted the call. 

Last week we also looked at another “why” question: Why should we follow Jesus? The answer to that is a simple invitation: Come and see. Come and see what a difference it makes in our life when we put Jesus first. I am convinced that there is no greater gift or blessing than to go through this life as a follower of Jesus. But the only way to discover that is to do it. Follow him and see. 

But this week, I don’t want to think about the “why” questions so much as the “what” question: What does it mean to follow Jesus? What can we learn from today’s gospel reading (Mark 1:14-20)? I want to offer three aspects of what it means to follow Jesus, then and now.

To Follow Jesus Means to Trust Jesus

First, to follow Jesus means to trust him. Why did Simon and Andrew, and later James and John, immediately leave their nets and follow Jesus? Because they trusted him. 

We are tempted to think about how much easier it would have been for those first disciples to do this, to trust him. But that’s not necessarily the case. Think of the challenges they would have faced to placing their trust in Jesus. All four of these first disciples left their nets and immediately followed Jesus. Just like that. They left their jobs, their livelihood, even their families, to follow a stranger from Nazareth, simply because he invited them to do so. Before he performed any miracles; before he proved to be the promised Messiah. 

It couldn’t have been easy for them. But they chose to put their trust in Jesus. We know that these first disciples would go on to have their moments of doubt, and many moments of confusion as well. It’s fair to say that they really didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, the day they dropped their nets to follow Jesus. But what kept them going was that they trusted their leader. They trusted Jesus enough to follow him, and to keep following him, despite their doubts and uncertainty. And that could not have been easy. 

We sometimes wish that it would have been easier for those first disciples to trust Jesus. After all, they could be with Jesus in the flesh. They could literally and physically follow Jesus. They didn’t have to believe without seeing. They could see and believe, and follow Jesus in the flesh. 

But those first disciples had disadvantages, too. When they left their nets to follow Jesus, they didn’t know the end of the story. We do. They didn’t know that Jesus would perform all of those miracles, and then be crucified and raised again. They didn’t know that he would appear to them after being raised from the dead, and promise them the Holy Spirit. They had not yet seen Jesus ascend into heaven, and had not yet received the promised Holy Spirit. 

Those first disciples did not yet know the end of the story, when they left their nets to follow Jesus. We do. We know how this story ends. And that can give us the confidence and the faith to trust Jesus and follow where he leads us. To place our trust in him, despite our questions and confusion, despite even our occasional doubt. By reminding ourselves of the whole story: His death and resurrection; his promise to be with us always; his recorded words and deeds we find in God’s word; the community that he formed called the church. These can give us the confidence to trust Jesus, and follow him wherever he leads us. 

To Follow Jesus Means to Obey Jesus

This is part of what it means to follow Jesus, then and now: To trust him. But what else does it mean to follow Jesus? Following Jesus also requires obedience, a willingness to obey the one we are following. We can’t just trust him; we must also obey him. 

Trusting Jesus without obeying him is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously calls “cheap grace.” “Cheap grace,” he writes in the opening words of his great book on discipleship, “is the mortal enemy of our church. Our struggle today is for costly grace.” And by cheap grace, Bonhoeffer means faith without obedience. It is the “grace which we bestow on ourselves,” he writes. It is “grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.” 

Costly grace, on the other hand, is “the hidden treasure in the field, for the sake of which people go and sell with joy everything they have … It is the call of Jesus Christ which causes a disciple to leave their nets and follow him.” Costly grace is faith with obedience. It is to trust Jesus and to obey him. 

That is what it means to follow Jesus. It means to do as Jesus commands. It means to love our neighbor as ourselves; and to pray for our enemies. It means to bear one another’s burdens, and to pray without ceasing. It means to make disciples of all peoples and all nations. It means, ultimately, to lay down our lives for each other, and for this beloved world. To trust Jesus means to die to ourselves and to live for him. And this, too, is what it means to follow Jesus. Not simply to trust Jesus, but to do as he asks, to live for him. To love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self, just as Jesus taught and did.

To Follow Jesus Means to Be With Jesus

And this isn’t easy. And that is why there is one more very important aspect of following Jesus to mention. Along with trusting Jesus, and obeying him, following Jesus means being with him. We don’t follow someone by leaving them. And they can’t expect us to follow them if they leave us. Jesus invites us to follow him, which means to be with him. He promises to be with us, come what may, wherever this life takes us. 

But how? He is with us through the gift of the Holy Spirit; and he is with us through the gift of the Church. 

The very first thing that Jesus did when he began his public ministry was to bring disciples together. And even as he brought them together, he invited them to follow him and to become fishers of people. Jesus was creating a community that would eventually become the church. He was teaching those first disciples that following Jesus means getting caught in his net, and it means to help him cast the net. 

“Follow me,” Jesus said to Simon and Andrew, “and I will make you fish for people.” Jesus wants everyone to get caught up in his love. And he wants us to help him. It is part of what it means to follow Jesus – to help him build this community. The Church is not perfect – we all know that. But it is the place where we come to follow Jesus. There is no way to follow Jesus alone. 

As Martin Luther himself once put it: “We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” The faith that saves brings us into community. Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it this way: “Everyone enters discipleship alone, but no one remains alone in discipleship.” And here is how a modern writer, Ronald Rolheiser, puts it: “We go to church so as not to be alone.” 

This life is too hard to go it alone. But we don’t have to. It is why Jesus founded the church. 

Following Jesus always places us into this community that we call the church, a community where the only real thing that we have in common is that we are trying to follow Jesus. We come together, and declare ourselves brothers and sisters in Christ, and bear each other’s burdens, and pray for each other, for one reason and one reason only: Because Jesus has called us, and we have chosen to follow. And if we are going to follow Jesus, we are going to do so – not by leaving our nets and following a man from Nazareth – but by joining and being active in his church.

Closing 

And this brings us back, I think, to the first two aspects of following Jesus. It takes trust to believe that coming together in this way is the best way to follow our Lord. And sometimes it takes obedience, showing up in this or another church even when we are not “feeling it.” Why? Because Jesus wants us to. 

“The time is fulfilled,” Jesus said at the beginning of his public ministry, and at the beginning of today’s gospel reading. “The kingdom of heaven has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

Repent, Jesus says – change the way we are living. And believe in the good news, the good news of Jesus – that he is the Savior of the world; that he came to earth to save us, and to lead us; and that invites us – each and every one of us – to believe in him and to follow him. 

How? By trusting him, obeying him, and being with him in this community, the church. May we do this faithfully, to the glory of God. Amen.