Jonah 3:15,20; Mark 1:14-20

Leadership is very much on our minds these days.  Leadership is an important ideal in American society.  Following is not an activity that has a positive connotation.  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 a whale 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: imagining being a leader/ 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 his or her 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 this congregation.  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 in the Jonah story 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 help us.