Genesis 12:1-9 & Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26
First Reading & Gospel Reading for the Second Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
“Follow me.”
It seems really, really simple. In some ways it is. One of the lyrics that feels like it came preloaded in my memory is “I have decided to follow Jesus / I have decided to follow Jesus / I have decided to follow Jesus / No turning back / No turning back.” As a kid, following Jesus felt simple because the world is a lot less complicated. Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God? Do you feel sorry for the wrong you’ve done and want to try to do what’s right? Then let’s go.
And even all these years later? Some days, it still feels kind of simple. Not simple as in easy but simple as in I still think Jesus is the best way we can encounter God, I am sorry for the wrong I have done, and I do want to try to do what’s right. Sign me up. Let’s go.
Yet other days I am reminded that biblically speaking, this whole “Follow me” business requires more than sign me up and let’s go.
God came to Abram and offered to make his family a great nation. Again, it seems easy. Our family gets to be a great nation? Sign me up. Yet what God asked was for Abram to leave his family, his friends, his home, and his very country. Pull up every root that Abram had planted and venture into the unknown.
Matthew was asked to leave behind home and an incredibly lucrative (albeit crooked) career for a rabbi who could technically be described as a vagabond.
With his daughter at death’s door, the leader of the synagogue had to leave behind a grieving family and respectability (Pharisees were literally in the middle of dragging Jesus for spending time with tax collectors and sinners) to ask Jesus to come to his house. When the teacher came to the man’s house, the mourners laughed at the first thing that came out of Jesus’ mouth.
The woman who had been suffering for twelve years? Actually, the odds are she was the one who had been left behind. In the midst of this scene, she probably had more faith than most of us because she believed that just touching the edge of Jesus’ clothes would heal her.
All of these people ultimately followed the way of God, but they took ridiculous leaps of faith to begin that journey. They left home, family, careers, respectability, and more. That is the story that we see again and again of those who are asked to follow God. Leave home, turn your life upside down, associate with these people considered outsiders. Take the world you know and leave it all behind.
That “follow me”—the one that requires more than just walking down an aisle, getting baptized, or joining a church—is not for the ones who like comfort. And honestly, I often wonder if I have ever truly sniffed following God to that degree. I am not talking about what “saves” us. That is something we cannot earn. I am talking about doing the simple yet profoundly challenging thing that Jesus asks us to do in following him.
This far down the rabbit hole (or chasm, since I have been playing way too much Tears of the Kingdom lately), I realize that it is easy to get ensnared in the trap of comparison. If you stack what you have left behind against what others have then you are always going to find yourself lacking in some way. You will always find someone else who has left behind more, who is doing more, and who is serving more. I am reminded of a conversation when Jesus is trying to get Peter back on track after the latter’s three denials. Peter wants to know what’s going to become of one of the other disciples and Jesus basically says, “What’s that to you? I want you to follow me.”
Which makes me realize that we are not the only ones being asked to make a leap of faith. God has been making leaps of faith for eons inviting us to be a part of this thing. To call Abram out of Ur, to commission crooked tax collectors like Matthew, to resurrect daughters, and to forgive screwups like Peter. To leave behind whatever existence a deity might have and become human, live alongside us, love us in spite of our flaws, and die. To invite each and every single one of us to participate in God’s great plan to make all things new.
That is Someone I want to follow. That is something I want to be a part of. I can try to shed some things that I need to leave behind for that. I will take a leap for a God who is always taking a leap for us.
