The CROSSroads: Personal Lessons from Mark's Gospel by Rev. Mitch Schultz

Updated
2001-05-26; 14:34:26utc

Lesson Six: LOST AND FOUND (Mark 1:14-20)

"Come follow me" (1:17)

Mark's account of the life and ministry of Jesus is a fast paced account. Moving from one event to another, Mark wants to show us the highlights of Jesus' three brief but revolutionary years on earth. Less concerned about details and chronological order, Mark wastes no time in showing us what happens when God himself comes into this broken and desperate world. Let's walk, or should I say run, with Mark as he takes us on this life-changing tour

There are many of us as Christians who do not fully understand what it means to follow Jesus. We might easily call ourselves followers of Jesus in such a glib way that it is no different than when we are speaking about the football team we support. Mark wants to challenge this shallow perception of discipleship by introducing to us two men whose worlds would turn upside down when asked to follow the Lord. They would have to lose something, but what they would gain in that loss would far surpass what was given up.

Later in the gospels Jesus forewarns his disciples of the heavy cost to following him. "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul." (Matthew 16:25,26) Jesus' call to discipleship would be first heard in the open air around the sea of Galilee but his journey to Jerusalem from there would become more and more narrow. Those who followed began to feel overwhelmed by the cost and the more narrow the road the less followed.

Lets stand for just a moment above the shoreline of Galilee and observe more closely what Jesus was asking of Peter and Andrew. From this unique vantage point we discover that the call to follow Jesus always first involves a demand to give up something. In their case the expected response was to give up their livelihood as fishermen. There was something in what Jesus was asking that insisted that they no longer serve themselves, and that their focus in life change radically. For them to catch men, Jesus began by asking them to stop catching fish. These disciples would no longer return day after day to the small familiar confines of the Sea of Galilee (which served as a safe and secure occupation), but they would be thrust toward the unfamiliar shores of Humanities Sea. To follow Jesus demanded they give up the predictable, the secure, the safe, the common. But what they gave up would not compare with what they would gain. That is the way it always is with following Jesus. We give up everything, but it really isn't a loss because of what we are gaining in return for what we sacrifice. Jim Elliot, the missionary to Ecuador who was martyred by the Auca Indians whom he tried to reach, summed up this reality perfectly in his classic quote; "He is no fool who gives up what he can not keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."

Recently I heard the outrageous story of a soccer game during a Southeast Asian tournament where the Indonesian national team would benefit at the quarter finals if they lost against their opponent. Apparently it would result in a better position in the semi-finals. Imagine for just a moment a team doing everything in their power to lose. Following the command of their coach this is exactly what the Indonesian side did. During several moments of the game a player from the Indonesian defense even put two goals into his own net. To assure that they ultimately would win, the team had to first lose.

Our coach, the Lord Jesus, asks the same of us. In the end, we are winners, but first there is something we have to be willing to lose. It sounds outrageous, but it is asked of us with an insistence that leaves us with no option. "In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33)

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You will be dead so long as you refuse to die. --George Macdonald