“The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said
to him, ‘Follow me.’”
What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean for us,
as children of God, to follow this strange man who comes out of nowhere and
asks for our lives?
I often wonder what Philip, and the other disciples,
expected when they first followed Christ’s call. I often wonder what it would
have been like for them to get up and follow this one who knew them.
In some ways, we have it easy: we know where Christ’s path
leads. We know that the end of Christ’s journey is resurrection and ascension,
and we know that in order to reach Easter’s glorious victory, we must first
travel to the foot of the cross: to death.
It may not feel easy, and it certainly isn’t comfortable, to
worship a God who became so human that he died at the hand of human oppressors,
having been tortured for his message, the same message we seek to share with
the world today.
And yet, this is the God who calls to us, “Follow me.” This
is the God we worship, this is the God we serve, and this is the God whose
world we live in, and whose world we respond to with love.
What does it mean to you to “follow” Christ?
What does it mean in your life to have this incarnate,
crucified, risen one as your leader?
The answers to these questions are as diverse as the
creation that yearns to respond, but our God is the God of diversity, the God
of finding answers in many different voices.
This is the God we love, who calls us out of our safe places
into a life of following that is not always comfortable.
And this is the God who loves us, no matter how we seek to
follow.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
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