Does anyone RSVP anymore? At the beginning of a wedding rehearsal, I
asked the bride how many people were going to attend the reception dinner. And
she said that she wasn’t sure because not many people had sent back their RSVP
even though she knew that many of the non-responders would probably attend
anyway.
Since she was frustrated at the lack of response, I asked her, “What if you don’t have enough places for
them at the dinner?” And sounding even more annoyed, she said, “Well, they’ll be in for a big surprise
won’t they, because they sure won’t be eating here.”
I was reading where it’s not uncommon for over 20% of the people to NOT RSVP one way or another. I became
curious as to why this is, so I sent out a mailing asking people this question,
but not enough people responded to my survey.
All kidding aside, it is interesting to me that there are that many
people who don’t respond one way or another. I wonder if it’s something to do
with our human nature where we want to wait until the very last minute before
making a commitment, but eventually the RSVP gets lost, thrown away, or we
forget about it altogether.
This is why you got to like Jesus’ approach in calling those first
fishermen to follow him. Instead of bothering with invitations, he went by the
seashore, found some people who were trying to make a living, and he invited
them to follow him.
But why were these fishermen so willing to drop their nets to follow
Jesus? It wasn’t like Jesus was offering them a new job with better pay. What
led them to make such a life changing decision right there on the spot?
I have a friend who says that the church is guilty of being too afraid
to invite people into a deeper relationship with God. He says that we assume
that people will say no when in reality, many people are longing to become part
of something bigger than themselves.
Maybe this is why those fishermen were so willing to drop everything and
follow Jesus. They were ready for something new and different even though they
didn’t exactly know what to expect.
We don’t know how much these fishermen knew about Jesus prior this
meeting by the seashore. Matthew doesn’t offer any details. He does however
tell us just before this story that Jesus had already started to announce that
the Kingdom of Heaven was coming near.
Perhaps they had heard rumors of this wandering Jewish teacher who was
announcing this intriguing message of good news. Maybe this was why they were
so willing to accept Jesus’ invitation to follow him. We don’t know. All we
know was that they did. They accepted the invitation to follow Jesus.
Of course, not everybody just drops what they are doing to follow Jesus.
Many of us fit into that late responding category and when Jesus invites us to
follow him, we take our time before finally saying, “Yes, I’ll follow you, Jesus.”
I’m the type of person who likes to look at all the options before
making any big decision. Don’t rush into anything because you might regret it,
is the thinking, here. And so, we put off making a decision about something
until we’ve gathered all the facts and then we finally decide.
God has wired us differently. That is true. Leadership experts say that
people can be divided into five groupings based on how early or on how late we
tend to jump on board in making a commitment to a new opportunity.
They say that only 2.5% of us are innovators where we come up with the
new idea or concept that can lead us into a better future. Just 2.5% of us.
13.5% of us are in the category called, Early Adopters. Anyone in this
category can sense a good thing when they see it right away and they jump on board
early. No waiting around for them. It’s not that they are impulsive. Once they
hear the information about the new opportunity and it makes sense, there’s no
need to wait. They want to get going.
Then there are the middle categories which make up most of us. These
middle categories represent 68% of those of us who are in either the early
majority category or the late majority category.
If we’re in one of these two categories, we need more time, some more
than others, until we warm up to a new idea. Quite often, we don’t jump on
board until we see other people who we respect jump on board, and then we do as
well.
And the last category represents 16% of us and these are the people who
don’t jump on board until way down the line. The name given to this category is
the name, “Laggards.”
Back in the early 90s, I remember a friend of mine telling me about a
pastor he knew who was now using a pager so that people could reach him when he
was out of the office. This was before cell phones were popular.
Here’s what I said to my friend who told me this. “Who feels that they are that important that they would need a pager?” I actually said that.
And today, if I leave home and forget my cell phone, I panic because
people won’t be able to reach me. This is why our scripture reading this
morning has always mystified me. It’s hard for me to believe that these common
fishermen just laid down their nets and started following Jesus.
Are we ready to lay down our nets when Jesus calls us to follow him?
CS Lewis who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia has an interesting story
about how he finally accepted the invitation and became a follower of Jesus. A
professor of medieval literature at Oxford University, Lewis was an atheist.
His mother had died of cancer when he was only nine, shattering his
trust in God’s goodness. By the age of fourteen, he had rejected faith in any
kind of God, and his horrific experience during World War I in which he was
wounded only confirmed these convictions. Even though Lewis eventually began to
reconsider his faith, he still wasn’t ready to become a Christian.
On a fall evening in 1931, Lewis had dinner with J.R.R. Tolkien, author
of the “Lord of the Rings” triology. They walked through the college’s park,
talking until the early hours of the morning.
The conversation turned to mythology. Lewis felt that myths, despite
their imaginative appeal were in the end, merely lies. Tolkien proposed instead
that the beauty of Christianity is that it is a myth that happens to be true.
The universal hunger planted in human beings by God, evidenced by all
the world’s mythologies was made manifest in time and space. In Jesus Christ,
God really did walk this earth, die, and rise again.
A few days after that late night walk, Lewis, still pondering the
conversation, got in the sidecar of a motorcycle for a trip to the zoo. Lewis
later wrote, “When we set out I did not
believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did.”
Even though it took C.S. Lewis a long time before responding to the
invitation, when he did, he jumped in with both feet. So maybe, the important
thing isn’t in how long it takes us to say yes to Jesus, but when we do, let’s be
ready to drop our nets and follow him.
A pastor I know tells the story of a time a few years ago when he had
the privilege of baptizing a ninety-nine year old man during worship one Sunday
morning. This man had attended church occasionally throughout his life and
finally decided to get baptized. He was finally ready to drop his net and
follow Jesus.
It was a very moving service as the people of this congregation watched
this elderly man step toward the baptism font to be baptized. He responded to
the baptism questions, each time, speaking in a shaky and soft voice with the
words, “I will.”
The pastor then baptized him in the name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit. And then the congregation said a prayer of blessing
over him.
Following the worship service, a church member came up to the pastor and
said, “Uh, he was kind of cutting it
close, don’t ya think?”
Maybe he did cut it close, but the important thing was that he said yes
to Jesus.
In our United Methodist theology, we believe that in any given moment,
Jesus is inviting every single one of us to follow him. God’s grace is being
extended to us no matter who we are or how old we might be.
We call this “prevenient grace,” the grace of God that goes ahead of us
to prepare us to say yes to Christ. God’s grace stirs within us and is always
encouraging us to drop our nets and follow him. Even when we’re not aware of
this grace that is at work in our lives, it is still reaching out to us and
beckoning us into a closer relationship with Christ.
I can’t remember how old I was at the time, maybe around ten or eleven,
I invited all of my friends to come to a birthday party at my house. The only
problem was, I didn’t tell my parents about the party. I was throwing a
birthday party in my honor.
When my friends started coming to the door of my house, my mother
finally figured out what was going on. She had to go out and buy a large cake,
party favors and enough food for about a dozen of my friends who came to our
house that day.
On the day before my birthday and without telling my parents, I had
handed out birthday invitations to all of my friends. And many of them came.
For many years now, I have been known in my family as the one who threw a
birthday party for himself.
When Jesus saw those fishermen along the Sea of Galilee, he extended an
invitation to each of them to come to a Kingdom of heaven party. And Matthew
tells us that they dropped their nets and followed him.
I like to think that every time we gather for worship, it’s an
invitation for each of us to attend God’s party. It’s a party where all are
invited. Nobody is left out.
Are you ready to follow Jesus?
I want to invite us in these next few moments to take a look at the invitation that you will find in your bulletin this morning. You’ll find it at the bottom of that middle
page at the end of the order of worship.
And no, it’s not an invitation to come to my birthday party. It’s an
invitation to a different party. It’s an invitation to a kingdom of God party.
It’s an invitation to follow Jesus.
You can see where you can sign your name to attend the party. By signing it, it’s your way of saying, “Yes, Jesus. I want to follow you.” Take this home with you and let it be a reminder of the invitation Jesus extends to you today.
You can see where you can sign your name to attend the party. By signing it, it’s your way of saying, “Yes, Jesus. I want to follow you.” Take this home with you and let it be a reminder of the invitation Jesus extends to you today.
Jesus says to each one of us, “Drop your nets and follow me.” Will you
come to the party?
The Invitation
Small Group Questions
Matthew 4:12-23
January 22, 2017
Read this scripture reading together as a small group:
As he
(Jesus) walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called
Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net in the sea – for they were
fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for
people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. – Matthew
4:18-20
What made it so compelling for these first disciples to drop everything and respond to Jesus' invitation to follow him?
Share a time when you felt compelled to follow Jesus in some way.
Prevenient grace
was John Wesley’s (founder of Methodism) way of emphasizing that God always
make the first move toward us. The word, “prevenient” is a Latin word that
means, “to go before.” God is always reaching out to us with an invitation to
follow Christ. We are invited to respond and say, “yes.”
Can you think of a time when you looked back on your life and noticed how God was reaching out to you even though you didn't know it was God at the time? Share with the group.
During worship this past Sunday, we were given invitations to follow Jesus with an RSVP on it. This is to remind us that God is always calling us and invites us to follow him.
What are the "nets" that Christ is calling you to lay aside in order to respond to his invitation to follow?
No comments:
Post a Comment