Dear friends,                                                                             

Today’s texts are about following. Following is not an activity that has a positive connotation in this country.  Everything is about being a leader. Go to any bookstore and you will find a big section on following.  There are plenty of books with ten to twelve points or principles for leadership.  Often these methods are not more than an inch deep.  I think it’s a pretty good guess that you will find no books on following.  A funny cartoon shows a pack of scraggly dogs following the head of the pack in a single file.  Says one dog in the middle of the pack to another:”unless you’re the lead dog, the view is always the same. “ I’m sure you can get the picture of what the dogs who are not the leader see.

Friends, we often confuse ourselves with contradictory statements that we embrace with equal enthusiasm.   We value leadership, but we also value team players, meaning people who not feel they have to be out front all the time.  We expect both at the same time.  Again, I don’t think there are books that tell you how to be both.  Dear friends, how can we a follower and still keep our head high?  In our text in Mark, Jesus calls his disciples to follow. The text does not go into detail.  We wonder: did these fishermen really drop their work like that? What happened to their boats? What happened to their family’s livelihood?  That Jesus had enormous charisma and radiated personal power is beyond question.  The Gospels are full of people being awe struck by Him.  You and I, however, do not have the benefit of a personal face-face to encounter with Jesus. So how do we follow Him?  Perhaps we can learn from the experience of Jonah?  Jonah is a minor prophet, so minor in fact that is difficult to place him historically.  But Jonah’s story is without a doubt one of the greatest stories in the Bible.  He refuses to follow God, boarding a boat instead of heading to Nineveh.  He goes west instead of east.  Jonah doesn’t care about the job, doesn’t care about the people he’s supposed to rebuke.  Jonah’s not into following. As a result he winds up in a pickle, or rather, he winds up in a fish after having been thrown overboard.  As hard as he wants to escape his task, he winds up in Nineveh.  So in our Gospel text we have eager followers while in the book of Jonah we are introduced to the most reluctant of followers.  So, friends, where do we fit in?  Are we eager followers or reluctant followers of our God?  That we not be a question we often ask ourselves.  Earlier we saw the five characteristics of good followers: recognizing that leadership is an important and difficult task, sharing a commitment to a larger purpose rooted in mission, cultivating relationship and trust, practicing the art of learning and giving good feedback, and keeping boundaries.  It gives us clues on how the be active rather than passive followers.  In a way to be an active follower is the happy medium between being a leader and follower.  Did you notice how in literature and tv there are many great active followers like Watson to Sherlock Holmes and Tonto to the Lone Ranger.  These are followers who do what needs to be done to improve the situation.  They do not just wait for orders.  I have always been impressed by the way Parkview family members step up when we special events.  You are active followers. You never have to be told what to do. You pay attention to what needs to be done next, which person is trying to pack away left over food or store a table on their own.  Active following is in intentional and attentional following.  The Presbyterian Church is set up for people to be active followers, because the congregations are led by representative known as “ruling elders.” The pastor is officially a “teaching elder.”  That creates a culture of participation in our denomination.

This may answer the question of how we can be followers in the church a bit, but we still need to think about how we truly follow God.  This is both a practical and a spiritual question.  It involves the conscious decisions of “being ready” and “letting go.”  The Disciples did this and Jonah didn’t.  Being ready means that we are ready to pay attention to the nudging of God’s Holy Spirit and the subtle opening and closing of doors in our lives.  Letting go means not clutching to everything so tightly in our lives and insisting on always having our ducks lined up.  You see, our culture encourages us to be control freaks. Did you ever notice how many sitcoms have a control freak and a lovable disorganized person play off each other, going back at least as far as the Odd Couple?  I can tell you that whenever I think I have everything lined up nicely, something happens to mess it up. Usually I will do something thoughtless or embarrassing.  It keeps me humble and makes me more conscious of the power of God’s grace. That grace runs like a current through our lives. We can ignore at our peril, as Jonah did on the sea or follow it as the new disciples did by the lake. When we truly actively follow God is it never because of force or coercion, it is because of our being ready and our letting go. May God hel

Reflection January 15, 2001; I Samuel 3: 1-10; John 1: 43-51

Dear friends,

Imagine these two situations.  A young boy is an apprentice to great teacher. It is a time of apathy in the land.  The great exodus has been nearly forgotten.  The kings have not yet emerged.  People are not hearing much from God and God is certainly not hearing much from people.  The faith of the people is hanging on by a thread. But the young boy hears a voice. He thinks it is his master, because it is the only voice that he is hearing these days.  He goes to his master. His master sends him away.  He goes into his little room overlooking the desert hills and as he looks at the clear starry sky, he hears the same voice again, calling him by name.  Again he goes to his master. Again his master sends him away. Back in his room again, he is wide awake. He peers at the stars from his bed and the voice comes another time, clear as a bell.  He returns to his master.  The master, one of the few truly spiritual men in the land, finally gets it. “Go back and when the voice returns, just say: “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.”

It is centuries later, three men meet each other.  Again the religious future of the country is hanging on by a thread. One is called Philip, one is called Nathanael, one is called  Jesus.  Philip is taken by Jesus. There is an instant connection and Philip follows Jesus. Philip is excited and introduces Jesus to Nathanael as Jesus from Nazareth.  Nathanael is not excited. Jesus’ origins do not impress him. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” It’s as if they are in Beverly Hills and Jesus is introduced as the man from Bakersfield.  Jesus uses his gift of knowing people’s hearts and as Nathanael comes to him Jesus says: “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile.”  Jesus can see instantly that this man Nathanael does not have a bad bone in his body.  Jesus has already seen him under the fig tree.  Nathanael then makes an about turn, turning the hick from Nazareth, or Bakersfield, into King and God in an instant.  This annoys Jesus.

Friends, I want to recapture these stories because they share the same them.  It is all about looking below the surface, looking beyond  what we usually see.   Samuel and Jesus have a gift of communications beyond words and gestures. It is communication of the heart and soul.  There is something special about them.  They are in touch with something deeper, something we don’t see.

Friends, you and I are fascinated with the supernatural and the metaphysical, with the unseen world. Movies are always going there.  Most of us can’t read it. Sometimes it seems animals can. It has to do with energy.    I know I have told you the following several times and I don’t mind telling it again, because I still haven’t figured it out. If you have remember it, please bear with me. Once on a trip to the Caribbean, I stopped at some information booth . I was dressed like a tourist.  Just like all the other cruise ship people and the woman at the booth said:” You are a priest.”  I still don’t get it.  Maybe it was nothing, but wouldn’t you sometimes want to be able to know things about what people did for a living or what they were like?  Wouldn’t you love to look beneath the surface and find something.  I think this is related to this whole question of Tim Tebow, the quarterback with his “in your face “Christianity.   I think he annoys many people yet they envy him.  He annoys them, because he isn’t the first deeply religious football player and he won’t be the last. Others, such as Kurt Warner who won the Super Bowl with number 13 on his back and coach Tony Dunghy seemed to be a lot more low key and humble  about it.  It is almost as if he is pretending to be a better disciple than others.  On the other hand people envy him because his faith seems to make him tap into a spiritual energy and it isn’t so much about him, but about God.  But they can’t figure out if he’s special.

Friends, in many ways our religious life is hanging on by a thread also.  Christians on the left seem to have lost their commitment and Christians on the right have aligned themselves with greed.  It is another one of those days when we are looking for a new way of seeing below the surface or people who can, whether those are Buddhists masters, or Hindu gurus, or new age practitioners or Tim Tebow among others.  We know that we are seeing so little of what matters. We want to connect with God and we want to see into people’s hearts and we want to know what’s in our own hearts.  We want to be able to do what Samuel did and we want to do what Jesus did.  Instead we are focused on the material and on status and on looks.  So what’s the answer?  Well, when it comes to communicating with people, we may want to start by truly paying attention and by noticing that guy under the fig tree Jesus spotted or the guy with the sleeping cart who is sleeping under the oak tree. When it comes to connecting with God, our faith makes it very clear. To get below the surface, the place we go for seeking the truth about God is still the Bible.  We may not always come up with the same interpretation, but that is the place we must start. Everything else comes and goes. Thanks be to God. Amen.