Matthew 4:12-23
Slaves to Freedom
James Sledge January 23, 2011
I once saw a not too original comic strip in the newspaper. A teenager was angry at his parents for not letting him do something he wanted to do and so he yelled out, “I’ll be glad when I’m 18 and no one can tell me what to do!” The final panel of the comic showed his parents doubled over in laughter.
As much as we celebrate freedom and individualism in this country, almost none of us ever reach the point where we can do whatever we want, where no one can tell us what to do. It may be parents; it may be a teacher or professor; it may be our boss; it may be the speed limit sign backed up by an officer with a radar gun, but at various places in our lives, we either do as others say or suffer the consequences.
But that doesn’t stop us from trying. It starts early. Toddlers love the word “No!” Children and adults enjoy saying, “You can’t make me.” Part of American mythology is that anyone can grow up to be president, or anything else he or she wants to be. We know such things are not quite true, even if they are truer here than in most countries. We know it isn’t true but we really like the idea that no one can tell us what to do, that we can simply decide, and if we try hard enough, we will make it.
Our love of personal freedom and choice means that our culture is particularly sensitive to anything that limits them. In some countries, all children are given aptitude tests at a young age and then slotted into certain academic or vocational tracks before finishing elementary school. But that would never fly here.
Yet despite all this, young people often ask themselves the question, “What should I do with my life?” They may also consider what they want to do, but I think these are very different questions. What I want to do may be purely a matter of personal choice, but what I should do speaks of something outside myself having some say in the matter.
Sometimes people go to career counseling services to help figure out what sort of thing they should do. Some colleges offer these services to their students. People who are thinking about changing careers sometimes use them. And our denomination requires people who want to become pastors to be evaluated by a reputable career center.
Such career counseling usually includes lots of tests that chart personality and interests and aptitudes. That’s based on the premise that certain traits will make some careers much more likely than others. When I was 12, I would have loved to become a rock and roll star, but it didn’t take very many guitar lessons to convince me that would never happen.
So I’m wondering, what information would you consider in order to make a decision about what you should do with your life? Whose voice would you listen to; what authority would you recognize as having a say in your decision?
And we don’t need to limit this to decisions about career. There are many questions about what we should do with our lives. Where should I go to college? Should I go to grad school? Should we get married? Should we have children? How should we raise our children? How should I spend my leisure time? What sort of volunteer and community service should I do? How should we spend our retirement? What should we do with our estate? The list goes on and on.
How do you answer such questions? What resources do your bring to making such decisions? Who gets a say in answering the question, “What should I do?”
I wonder how Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John answered that question. How did they decide what they should do when Jesus showed up and said, “Come on, drop everything that you’re doing; leave everything behind and come with me?” Did they even know what Jesus meant when he said they would be fishing for people? What on earth would make them simply get up and go like that?
When Jesus begins his ministry, the very first words Matthew reports him saying, the words immediately before he calls Simon Peter and Andrew are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” I think that a lot of people hear the word “repent” and hear a call to confess, to admit that you’re bad and need to turn from your evil ways. But I don’t think that is what Jesus is talking about. Jesus is saying that God’s rule, God’s new day is drawing close, and to get ready for it we will need to start living differently. Peter and Andrew and James and John repent, not because they stop doing something that is bad or wrong, but because they go in a new direction when Jesus calls. They hear Jesus telling them what they should do, what they must do if they are to get ready for the kingdom.
Years ago, before I went to seminary, I recall taking part in a discussion with a group of youth at the church where I was a member. At one point they were asked whether or not they would go overseas to some dangerous, poverty stricken country if they were absolutely certain that Jesus was calling them to do so. I’m not sure a lot of us would have been as honest as they were. Every single one of them said, “No.”
I don’t recall much of the conversation that followed, but clearly these high school students understood their lives to grow out of the choices that they would make, and this choice would not fit. It violated whatever standards, guidelines, or expectations influenced them, whatever authoritative voices they listened to.
Now in fairness to them, they had only said “No” to a hypothetical situation. Peter, Andrew, James, and John might have said the same thing to a hypothetical question about leaving the life they knew behind and following Jesus. But then they met him…
Our culture makes it quite easy to believe in Jesus. Even though our society is becoming more and more secular, believing in Jesus is still something of a norm. But I do not think our culture encourages following Jesus. In fact, it tells us over and over that it’s a bad idea. It might well deny us the prestige or wealth or possessions or any number of other things our culture tells us we need for a good life.
Jesus calls people to counter-cultural lives, lives that love enemies, that take up the cross, that give themselves for the sake of others, even others who don’t deserve such a gift. Following Jesus looks like a foolish choice, and it looked just as foolish back when Jesus called those fishermen, until they met him.
I think that a lot of us live with a significant, unresolved conflict in our lives. On the one hand we know deep down inside that we were created for something, for a life of meaning and purpose. There is a should for each of us, a calling. But we have been well conditioned over and over again to think that happiness comes from being free to do whatever we want, from following our own wants and desires. Some of us are virtually slaves to freedom, finding it impossible to trust anything other than our own wants and desires. After all, how could anyone else direct our lives better than we can?
When Peter and Andrew and James and John meet Jesus, they drop everything. They abandon all the plans they previously had and go with him, not knowing where it will lead. I don’t think it was anything that they wanted, at least not until the met Jesus. I’m not sure that following Jesus ever seems like something people would want to do at first, which is probably why so many stop at believing in Jesus. But if we ever actually meet Jesus and hear him calling us…
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