“Follow me.”  It pretty much all comes down to that.  “Follow me.”  I like the simplicity of it.  Jesus, at least here, at the beginning, doesn’t say “Believe in me.”  He doesn’t say “Learn about me.”  He doesn’t say “Worship me.”  It’s just “Follow me.” two simple words that call us to begin the most difficult of journeys.  The call is not about religion, or morality, or spirituality, or whatever other box we try to stuff all this Jesus business into.  The call is simply to follow - to pay attention to where he is going, and then follow him.

            In the spirit of the simplicity of Jesus’ call, I’m goin’ old school today.  A nice, simple, three point sermon about those two simple words.  What do those two words mean for us?

            “Follow me.”  First of all, we need to know that this is an invitation to a fabulous way of life.  Jesus does not call us to a life of misery and suffering.  He calls us to a life of joy and peace.  Of course, the joy and peace we find in following Jesus are not the joy and peace of the world – they are the joy and peace that Jesus himself knew.  To see them we have to get below the surface, to the deeper matters of life.  I don’t think you can read the Bible and conclude that Jesus led an easy, happy life.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  His life was full of conflict and confrontation and struggle.  But it was the conflict and confrontation and struggle of peace and righteousness against all the opposing forces of the world.  And in that struggle there is joy.  There is joy because we can’t possibly know the love of God until we learn that we are all in this together.  The world’s peace and joy, the peace and joy we often strive for, are the peace and joy known by those who live inside a walled compound in a city under siege, an island of tranquility in the stormy sea of humanity.  But the peace and joy of Jesus, the peace and joy of following Jesus, are those things that come not from living in isolation from the troubles of the world, but from living to change them, to improve them.  Every single person on this earth is a precious child of God, and therefore is our brother or sister.  And the peace and joy of Jesus is the peace and joy of serving our brothers and sisters.

            I think of Bono.  He’s the lead singer of the rock band U2, and probably one of the richest and most well known musicians in the world.  He could be like so many others who hole themselves up with their wealth, living a separate existence from the real world around him.  But Bono was raised as a simple, working class, Irish Anglican, going to church as a boy and having the Anglican liturgy silently shape him.  Somehow he heard the call: follow me.  Whether the pop world, or even he, admits it or not, much of his music is filled with the hope of the gospel, and Bono works tirelessly to alleviate poverty and eradicate disease in Africa.  As a follower of Jesus, Bono knows that even he is not an island:  In one song he sings:

And it’s true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die

The real battle’s just begun

To claim the victory Jesus won
On Sunday bloody Sunday

When we follow Jesus, we do claim that victory he has already won, but the joy and peace of that victory can only come when we are working for joy and peace for all.

             “Follow me.”  Second, we need to know that this is an invitation to connect with God.  One of the things that is clear in the gospels is that Jesus could only carry on with his journey because he lived in communion with God.  He prayed often.  He worshipped in the temple.  He participated in the synagogue.  Forget for a moment that he was the Son of God, as a man, his life and faith were sustained by what we would call his spiritual life.

            Now I told you that this “Follow me” business wasn’t about religion and spirituality and all that.  And I am sticking with that.  But that’s because what religion and spirituality have become in the world today, even in the church today, are so far away from what they were for Jesus.  The moment I mention religion or spirituality ½ of you are likely to immediately separate that from the stuff of everyday life.  But that is not what Jesus did.  Prayer and worship and any other part of everyday life is not a difference of subject, but a difference of attention – of what we are consciously paying attention to.  God is always around us, filling this world with his presence and grace.  God is in my snow shoveling, your driving, God is in our neighbors, and yes, God is in the mountains, in a beautiful sunset, and in the embrace of a loved one.  God is in it all.  Prayer and worship is simply a matter of paying attention to our God who is present in it all.  And let’s face it, unless we are even more connected to God than Jesus himself, then we are not all that good at paying attention – so we need time devoted to God, we need space that draws us to God, we need music that brings us into the presence of God, we need practices that remind us of God.  With all he was about in this world, with all his teaching, healing, with his mission of embodying the kingdom of God, Jesus still took the time to attend to God.

            I am convinced that many of our lives are impoverished in this area of paying attention to God.  Spirituality has been ruined by versions of Christianity that separate God from the everyday.  They make us think we are being silly by seeking to know some version of God that is more like the tooth fairy than the God of Moses and Jesus.  Honestly, other than worship, isn’t there very little in the life of our congregation that is primarily about paying attention to God?  If we are to follow Jesus, that needs to change.

            Follow me.  Third, we need to know that following Jesus is largely training in the skill of accepting forgiveness.  The truth is that following Jesus is not something we are terribly good at.  It is not something that comes naturally, and we stumble and fall and stop along the way.  Some of you remember when I first arrived here at Second Con.  One the things I did, for which I have taken some grief through the years, was to make sure that we say a prayer of confession every week.  It is important that we speak of our sinfulness, because God certainly knows about it, so we might as well get it out in the open so God can deal with it.  You see, confession isn’t about feeling bad or beating ourselves about the head and neck.  Confession is about learning how to accept forgiveness.  In general we humans, we spend way too much time justifying ourselves, and our past actions and our current path.  The old joke is that men have a hard time admitting when they are wro…wro…wro…you know what I mean.  But it’s not just manly men.  It’s all of us.  We have a hard time admitting we are wrong before God.  We even say the words, without really confessing anything.  Look again at our prayer of confession today, there in your worship order: “Our dedication, however, is often half-hearted.  We often take side roads that at first look more pleasant.  We sometimes change our minds and turn back.  We find obstacles along the way and give up the journey.  We get distracted by our desire for comfort, security, and control.  We often prefer simply to follow our own path, rather than follow Jesus.”  We actually do that stuff!  We admitted it.  But did we really confess it?

            I don’t mean to pick on him in his last days in office, but isn’t this really one of the reasons President Bush has such low public approval ratings?  After claiming premature victory in Iraq, after failing to respond to Hurricane Katrina, after other things widely perceived to be mistakes and failures (and not just by Democrats), the President never showed that he recognized his failings and would learn from them.  A couple of years ago he was asked if he had made any mistakes and he wouldn’t admit to a one.  That has changed a bit in these last couple of weeks of his presidency, and it is nice to see, but it shows what a hard time we all have admitting we were wrong.

            But confession isn’t just about each of us as individuals.  We also have to be aware that our entire communal life as a church before God can get off track as well.  This requires great gifts of discernment, but we have to be willing to recognize that the way we have been together as God’s people is open for reform.  We Christians have supported the violent ways of the world, we have permitted children around the world to continue to die of hunger, we have been way too enamored by the power of the world, rather than the power of the cross, we have oppressed minorities and women, and supported a way of life, of consumption that is quite literally destroying the planet on which we live.  Confession is about engaging in communal reform as well as individual.

            And confession is so freeing.  It is such a relief.  It allows us to know God’s forgiveness.  And until we confess and know God’s forgiveness we can never get back on the right path of following Jesus.

            Follow me.  First of all, we need to know that this is an invitation to a fabulous way of life, not for ourselves in a walled compound, but through the struggle to serve others.

            Second, we need to know that this is an invitation to connect with God – to engage in ways of truly paying attention to the presence of God in this world, so that we have courage and strength to go on.

            And third, we need to know that following Jesus is largely training in the skill of accepting forgiveness, so that we can allow God to put us again on the path of following Jesus.

            Jesus says: follow me.  It is the call Jesus puts to us every day of our lives.  It is the call that never ends.  Follow me and know joy.  Follow me and pay attention to God.  Follow me and know God’s forgiveness.  Follow me.