Sermon
for First Midweek Lenten Service
February
25, 2014
“The
Jesus Family Follows Together”
Philippians 2:1-8
If then there is any encouragement in
Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion
and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same
love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than
yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests
of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing
beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the
word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the
fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into
one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little
way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When
he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and
let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked
all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the
nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets
were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other
boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they
began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees,
saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’For he and all who were
with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also
were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus
said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching
people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything
and followed him.
Last week,
as we received ashes on our foreheads and remembered our brokenness and
mortality, we also remembered that we have been baptized, not just into a
religion or spirituality, but into the very family of God. We have been made a part of the Jesus family,
eternally bound to Christ as children of God and to one another as brothers and
sisters. Now, we begin exploring what
this means for our lives. How are we to
live as “the Jesus family?”
The first
thing to know is that, as the Jesus family, our lives are going to be
different. This claim on us changes
us. Just like being a part of your
particular human family sets you apart from other families, being a part of the
Jesus family sets you apart from the rest of the world. I mentioned last week the phrase that is
often repeated by parents to children: “I don’t care what they do at so and
so’s house. In this family, we…” Have you heard or spoken those words
before? By relating to God as “our
Father”, we not only recognize the dependent nature of our relationship to God,
but also God’s authority over our lives.
As with any other family, there are expectations for how we live as the
Jesus family. So we are adapting this
phrase to say, “I don’t care what the world says, in the Jesus family,
we…”
This week,
we say, “I don’t care what the world says about leadership, in the Jesus family,
we follow together.” “Leadership” is
perceived as a desirable trait in nearly every aspect of our culture. From the athletic field, to the battlefield,
to the business field, to college applications, as Americans we value and even
idolize leaders. We like to think of
ourselves as a nation of pioneers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and
risk-takers. We associate leadership
with strength, intelligence, and success, whereas if you say you’re a follower,
you’re perceived as weak-willed or weak-minded or less successful. This glorification of leadership is all
around us. As usual, the advertisers
know what sells:
“Stay out in
front when you choose Epax condition-specific EPA/DHA concentrates. For over 170 years, we’ve led the pack in
implementing global purity and quality assurance processes to keep our products
ahead of the competition. As a leading
global competitor of Omega-3 marine oils…”
It doesn’t really matter what the product is. Maybe you use fish oils, but I’m not entirely
sure what Omega-3 marine oils are. If
I’m going to be buying some, though, I guess I’d prefer to buy them from the
leading company.
Or there was
another one I found that includes just a picture of a watch and this simple
phrase: “Engineered for men who don’t need a co-pilot.” We could talk for a good long while about how
many assumptions are working in that advertisement about what it means to be a
man and to be a leader. “Engineered for
men who don’t need a co-pilot.” It would
be laughable if it didn’t work so well. There
was a part of me that thought, “Yeah, I don’t need a co-pilot, but I need that
watch.” (It was a pretty cool watch.)
Finally, I
found another one that showed just the Cadillac logo (it’s sad that I
recognized it immediately, isn’t it?) and these words underneath: “Mark of
Leadership.” How about that? Buy this car (which isn’t even shown in the
advertisement) and just the hood ornament will let people know that you are a
leader.
Maybe even
worse than the messages about leadership in advertising, are how many things
come up when you simply search for “leadership conference.” There are leadership conferences on
everything! “Wharton Annual Leadership
Conference: Preparing for Growth and Innovation in a Changing World”, “National
Young Leaders Conference: Skills in Leadership for Change provides real-world
experiences and strategies you need to succeed.” There’s the “American Student Dental
Association National Leadership Conference” and even the “International
Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions Leadership Conference.” Ok, so I kind of want to go to that one. Who wouldn’t?
Listen to
this: “In today’s competitive arena, winning retailers and suppliers know that
innovation is the essential building block to constructing a highly successful
and profitable business. But with
today’s plugged in, connected consumers seemingly changing the game on a daily
basis, today’s business leaders have had to take innovation to an entirely new
level to stay ahead of the pack.” Any
guesses about what in the world they’re talking about? Here’s the next line: “in recognition of this
paradigm shift, Furniture/Today’s Leadership Conference, set for Dec. 2-4 at
the Ritz Carlton Beach Resort in Naples, Florida, is appropriately themed: Are
You In(novative)?” Again, we could spend
a long time unpacking everything that is swirling around in the assumptions
about business, our culture, and leadership in this conference for furniture
retailers. Do you hear the mixture of
anxiety over the fast pace of change coupled with that familiar buzzword:
innovation? And of course, above all,
the goal is to be a “winner.” We
associate being a leader with winning and being a follower with losing.
One final
place to note how prevalent all of this is in our culture is in the online
community, where people have “followers” on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram
and who knows what else. No one cares
how many people you are following, they only care about how many other people
are following you. “How many followers
do you have?” is a question attached to value and self-worth. Have a lot of followers? You must be somebody. Are you only a follower? You’re just one face in the crowd, a
nobody.
The church is
not immune from these things, either. We
have our own leadership conferences. We
talk about building up “servant leaders” within the church. At Wartburg Theological Seminary during my
time there as a student, the tagline they formed from the institution’s mission
statement was “Engaging God’s Future: Forming Valued Leaders.” You hear that? I am a “valued leader” (in case you didn’t
know).
The
temptation is so great, even within the church, to think of ourselves first as
leaders instead of followers. Jesus is
clear, though. His family is one of
followers, not leaders. There is but one
leader of the Jesus family: God. When we
allow our own ego and ambition to get the best of us, we find ourselves trying
to usurp God’s place as the head of the family.
The only way to keep this in check is to continually insist on being
known as followers, to constantly recognize God’s ultimate authority in our
lives.
So what does
it mean to be a follower? Let’s put
aside the negative connotations of that word that our culture would like us to
buy into and think about how being followers together is a good description of
being a part of the Jesus family.
First, following
means there’s movement. You can’t follow
someone if they’re staying in the same place.
If I say, “Follow me!” and then just stand here, it wouldn’t take long
for you to ask, “Ok, where are we going?”
Being a follower means Jesus’ family, the church, is first and foremost
a movement. The church is not an
institution or a congregation or a building.
It is a movement. This is hard
for us to hear because a lot of times we like it where we are. Sometimes the problem isn’t that we want to
go a different direction than Jesus.
Sometimes the problem is that we just don’t want to go anywhere at
all. We like things the way they
are. The calling of the Jesus family is
to a movement, however. It is a calling
to leave the familiar, perhaps comfortable life that we’ve known, and follow
Jesus. The first members of the Jesus
family literally did just that, leaving their boats and nets on the shore and
immediately following him. So it’s
clear: we can’t follow Jesus and stay where we are and as we are.
It’s not
just about being a movement, either, though.
If all we said about the Jesus family or about the church is that it’s a
movement, then there’s still the chance that we could be a leader of it. By saying we are followers, we mean that we
are a part of a movement that we are not fully in control of (if at all). God is in control of this movement. Instead of seizing power for ourselves,
casting our own vision for what this family should be, or claiming our own authority,
we relinquish all of those things to God as followers of Jesus.
The famous
Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer has this to say about the
temptation to such individual visions of what the church ought to be in his
book “Life Together.” I don’t typically
include such a long quotation in my sermons, but I think what he says perfectly
describes the danger of individual leadership in a community that is called to
be full of followers:
God hates
visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who
fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by
others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands,
sets up his own laws, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. He
stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the brethren.
He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream
binds men together.
When things
do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is
destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an
accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing
accuser of himself.
Do you hear
already the danger of what can happen when we insist on our own leadership
ahead of God? Do you hear how quickly we
become the center of the community instead of Christ? Hear, then, the promise of a community of
followers that Bonhoeffer so eloquently describes:
Because God
has already laid the only foundation of our fellowship, because God has bound
us together in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ, long before we
entered into common life with them, we enter into that common life not as
demanders but as thankful recipients. We thank God for giving us brethren who
live by his call, by his forgiveness, and his promise. We do not complain of
what God does not give us; we rather thank God for what he does give us daily.
Did you hear
it? Our animosity, our judgment of
ourselves and others, our selfish demands: in light of God’s forgiveness of all
sinners in Christ, these are replaced by thanksgiving for that which we receive
only by God’s grace. That’s not all,
though. He goes on:
And is not
what has been given us enough: brothers (and sisters), who will go on living
with us through sin and need under the blessing of his grace? Is the divine
gift of Christian fellowship anything less than this, any day, even the most
difficult and distressing day?
Even when
sin and misunderstanding burden the communal life, is not the sinning brother (or
sister) still a brother, with whom I, too, stand under the Word of Christ? Will
not his (or her) sin be a constant occasion for me to give thanks that both of
us may live in the forgiving love of God in Christ Jesus? Thus, the very hour
of disillusionment with my brother (or sister) becomes incomparably salutary,
because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own
words and deeds, but only by the one Word and Deed which really binds us
together--the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. When the morning mists of
dreams vanish, then dawns the bright day of Christian fellowship . . .
And my heart
sings, “Oh that it would be so!” As
members of the Jesus family, we must pray that our individual visions of what
this family ought to be would perish, that the family with Christ alone as our
head would emerge. For Christ alone and
the forgiveness found in him is the ground we stand on. It transforms the way we view one another,
the way we see our sins and the sins of others, and it transforms the role we
play in this family. We are set free from
selfish desires for power and leadership and called to take on the role of
followers, being humbly obedient to the one who gives us life and
salvation.
Even as we
engage in various roles and responsibilities in the church and in our lives, we
must remember that we are all followers.
Jesus himself provides the example for us by forsaking all power and
authority that were rightfully his as God’s only Son and walking the way of the
servant, of suffering, of the cross.
In a culture
that wants us all to be leaders, let us boldly proclaim ourselves faithful
followers of the one who has given himself for the sake of the world. Following, and especially following Jesus,
may be seen by the world as a sign of weakness, but as Bonhoeffer later
concludes: “What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious
to God.” That’s why we don’t care what
the world says about leadership. In the
Jesus family, we follow together.
Your
Mission: Jesus Family for the week is as follows:
For families
with young children, play a game of “Simon Says” or “Follow the Leader,” then
talk about Jesus calling us to follow him.
For families
with older children or for adults, share with each other an experience you’ve
had both leading and following. Talk
about what it means for you to say you’re a follower of Jesus.
