Follow Me

The Sunday evening message in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on April 30, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Luke 5:27-32.

            Our Bible reading for tonight gives us yet another example of an ordinary person, sitting around minding his own business, doing what he does every day.  And suddenly, the Lord comes along, and in a few seconds the Lord completely changes this man’s life.

            It’s amazing to me how often this happens in the Bible.  And it’s also amazing to me how matter-of-factly the Bible always tells these stories.  I mean, here’s Levi, changing his entire life to follow Jesus, and the Bible handles it in two verses.  “Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth.  ‘Follow me,’ Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything, and followed him.”

            That’s pretty incredible, don’t you think?  For someone to just immediately leave their entire way of life behind to follow Jesus?

            But you know, that seems to be how it worked with all of Jesus’ disciples, at least the ones we’re told about how they were called.  Jesus sees Peter and Andrew casting a net into the lake, fishing, and he says, “Come, follow me, and I will sent you out to fish for people.”  And we’re told, “At once they left their nets and followed him.”  Jesus sees James and John out in a boat with their father.  We’re told, “Jesus called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.”

            Think about that in the context of Levi.  After all, who was Levi?  Levi was a tax collector.  Tax collectors were not popular people in Jesus’ time.  I don’t suppose tax collectors have ever been popular people, really.  But Levi was a wealthy man.  Most tax collectors were, because they were allowed to charge people as much as they wanted and keep any excess over what Rome wanted.  It was not necessarily an honest way to make a living, but it was a way to get rich.  

And Levi was rich.  You can tell that because he was able to pull off this huge banquet in Jesus’ honor at barely a moment’s notice.  He must have had servants and a large room and the money to pay for all this food and wine and everything.  Levi was leaving behind an awful lot of wealth to follow Jesus.

            I wonder if, when Jesus came along, Levi know who Jesus was?  Jesus had started his ministry by this time.  He’d healed a lot of people.  He was attracting crowds.  Levi certainly might have heard of him.  He might have even been curious about him.  

            And maybe, Levi knew he needed to change his life.  We’re into speculation now, but again, think about how Levi was.  A wealthy man, but not popular.  Maybe friendless.  Maybe Levi had looked at his life and said, you know, I have all this money, but what’s it getting me?  What good is it all?  

            I wonder, too, if Jesus knew Levi before this?  I mean, as the divine Son of God, I’m sure Jesus knew who Levi was when he called him.  But had Jesus seen Levi before?  Did He know Levi had his tax collector booth in this spot?  Did He deliberately go there that day for the purpose of calling Levi?  Or was he just walking by, when suddenly He got the divine inspiration that Levi needed to be one of the twelve disciples?  

            And that makes me wonder, were the twelve disciples the first twelve people Jesus called?  Again, of those disciples that we’re given a call story for, Jesus comes up to them, says “Follow me”, and they immediately follow.  Were there people Jesus came up to, said, “Follow me”, and they said no?

            We’re not told that, but it seems like there could’ve been.  After all, in John Chapter Six, we’re told about a lot of people who had followed Jesus, and then stopped, because he was saying things that were too hard for them to accept.  In Luke Chapter Nine, we’re told about people who said they would follow Jesus, but they had to do other things first.  It seems to me that it’s at least possible that the disciples we know as the Twelve may not have been the first Twelve Jesus called.  They may have just been the first Twelve who said yes.

            What the twelve disciples did was not easy.  They left everything behind to follow Jesus.  You know, we talk sometimes about how Jesus came for the poor, but the disciples for whom we know something about their background don’t seem to have been poor.  We talk of James and John, and Simon and Andrew, as fishermen, but it’s not like they were just fishing for pleasure or for sport.  This was their business.  They were commercial fishermen.  I don’t know how good their business was, but it was good enough that they could afford the boat and nets and all that.  

            And not only that, they walked away from their families, too.  James and John left their father behind.  We know that Simon, at least, was married, so he apparently left his wife behind, too.  The twelve disciples walked away from everything to follow Jesus.  It’s not everybody who could do that.

            Now, it’s certainly possible that Jesus knew the twelve would say yes before he asked them.  But I think it’s possible that He asked some others and they said no.  Or, it’s also possible that there are some others Jesus would like to have asked, but He knew they would say no, so He did not bother to ask them.

            So you probably know where this is going.  You and I would probably consider ourselves ordinary people.  Suppose that tomorrow we’re just going about our business, doing whatever we do every day.  Maybe we’re at work.  Maybe we’re at school.  Maybe we’re out doing errands.  Whatever it is.  And all of a sudden, Jesus comes along.  And Jesus says two words:  “follow me”.

            What do we do?  Do we follow?  

            We’d like to think we would.  But would we really?  Would we walk away from everything we own?  Would we walk away even from our own family?  Would we leave everything behind, the way the twelve disciples did, to follow Jesus?

            It’s a hard question to answer.  Because the truth is that when we hear a question like that, we think of it as just theoretical.  We don’t really believe Jesus is going to come along and ask us to leave everything behind to follow Him.  And so, while we might give an answer to the question, we don’t really know what the answer is.  And we cannot really know what our answer is unless and until we’re faced with the situation, which we don’t really expect to be.

            But I still think it’s worth thinking about.  We talked sometimes about the kingdom of heaven being worth more than everything else in the world.  A situation like this is where we would find out if we really believe that.  I mean, we may say we believe it, and maybe we do.  But Simon and Andrew, James and John, Levi–they proved it.  They actually did give up everything to follow Jesus.

            And they did that, not really knowing all that much about Jesus.  We don’t know how much they knew, but Jesus was just starting his ministry when he called these men.  They had no idea what they were in for.  They had no idea what they were going to see.  They did not know the tremendous power Jesus had.  They did not know they were going to see Jesus do miraculous healing, feed five thousand people, and even raise someone from the dead.  They did not know they were going to hear Jesus arguing with the Pharisees and the other religious leaders and make them look like fools.  And they certainly did not know that Jesus was going to die so that they and all of us who believe in Him can have salvation and eternal life.

            You and I know a lot more about Jesus than the first disciples did.  We have the advantage of being able to read the end of the book, so to speak.  We may not know everything we’d like to know about Jesus, but we know all we need to know.  We know that He was and is the divine Son of God.  We know that faith in Him truly does lead to salvation and eternal life.  We know that the day will come when Jesus will come again, even if we don’t know when that day will be.  We know that, no matter what the world might look like right now, in the end, Jesus will win.  And we know that, if we stay faithful to Him and serve Him and love Him, we will win, too.

            Jesus calls each of us to follow Him.  What that looks like may be different for each of us, but Jesus does call each of us to follow Him.  We don’t expect Jesus to ask us to leave everything to follow Him, and maybe He won’t.  But those first disciples probably were not expecting Jesus to ask them to leave everything to follow him, either.  And He did.

            And when He did, those first disciples were able to say yes.  I don’t know whether I could say yes.  I’d really rather Jesus did not ask me to.  But if He does, my prayer is that all of us will be able to say yes.  It won’t be easy.  But it will be worth it.