What is the ROI of
following Jesus?
A few months ago, our
older son announced that he’d like to invest in the stock market. Sam has two
liberal arts major parents. My religion degree provided very little insight in
this arena, nor did rooming with a econ major for four years. I’ve been learning
alongside him, including an alphabet soup of acronyms. ROI. At first I thought
they meant the French word for king.
People have been asking
about the return on investment of following Jesus since the very beginning of
his movement. In Mark’s Gospel, James and John want the best seats in the
house, right next to Jesus, in the kingdom of God. All this discipleship must
come with some benefit, right?
You don’t have to look far
to find Christian leaders dangling these discipleship dividends (another word
we’ve learned). Preachers of the prosperity gospel promise financial windfalls.
Others guarantee physical healing, cultural leverage, institutional dominance,
or frictionless comfort. Maximum reward. Minimal investment.
We’re at the beginning of
the year and the Gospel of Mark. Jesus has been baptized in Jordan, driven into
the wilderness, tempted by Satan, and begun preaching a simple message:
God’s kingdom has come near. Repent. Believe.
He’s taken that message on the road, about
fifteen miles from Nazareth, walking the beach at the Sea of Galilee, when he
approaches two sets of brothers. Simon and Andrew standing in the mud by the
edge of the water casting for fish. A few yards down, James and John sitting in
the boat with their father Zebedee, mending the nets. And Jesus offers them a
position in his program for personal advancement. Just kidding. He speaks a
single sentence: Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.
The Greek is more interesting than the
translation offers. Now, finally, I can use that Religion degree. You didn’t
get this in Econ class.
Jesus says, Follow after me and I will make you—genesthai. To
become.
Not a new assignment. A new way of being.
Follow me and you will become something
different. Something new.
Jesus does not promise them a better life,
whatever that means. He promises to make them different people. That’s the ROI.
You heard what happened. They drop their nets, leave their father,
and follow him.
It’s an absurd encounter. We have no reason to
believe they knew who this man was. They are not at some lakeside retreat
center listening for the voice of God. They are not on a soul-searching journey
of discernment. They are at work. It’s a weekday morning at the office for
these guys. And they leave it all and follow Jesus.
I was having a conversation this summer with a
neighbor. A good man, devoted father, thoughtful guy. We were standing at the
end of the driveway talking about the kinds of things you talk about. The
weather. Sports. Summer travel. And then, with no segue I could track, a deep
sigh.
I don’t know man. I feel like my whole job is
helping people who don’t need help. Telling them stuff they already know.
Here’s the thing. He’s good at his job. His
clients get a solid ROI. He’s ethical. Responsible. Providing for his family. And
I knew exactly what he was describing.
It’s the gradual realization that you can
become good at something that doesn't feed your soul. You can do what you're
supposed to do; what you’ve been told to do. But at some point, the questions
you keep outrunning will catch up. Am I spending my best years feeding
machines I don’t believe in? What is my life really for? Is this all there is? And
if you have the courage to ask, the answers may unsettle you before they
comfort you.
What did it mean for these men to walk away?
What did it mean for the people who depended on their work? I keep thinking of
old Zebedee standing in the boat as his sons and co-laborers disappear into the
distance following a man they barely know. Preachers who promise that Christian
faith is an escape from stress, worry, and sacrifice have not consulted Zebedee.
Staring into the distance, holding a mess of busted nets.
Why do they go? Mark does not allow us access
to their inner thoughts, but I think they felt the same ache that I heard from
my neighbor. The basic routines of their lives were not feeding the deep places
in their souls. Maybe going through the motions was wearing on them.
A true story. On Monday morning, before I left the house to write this sermon,
I had to wake our son up for school as I do every Monday morning. And, as I do
most Monday mornings, I picked up my phone on the way down to start breakfast.
By the time the toaster popped up, I had read about the potentially
catastrophic impact of artificial intelligence, a friend’s heartbreaking
decision to leave his church, and the latest news on two wars. Then back to the
Eggo waffles.
I don’t think it’s controversial to suggest
that we weren’t meant to live this way. You don't get to opt out of being
formed. The question is what will form you and who you are becoming. Perhaps
the fishermen were feeling weighed down that day by the sense that they were
missing something. Maybe they were ready for the voice that would change
everything.
There is a member of this congregation who is a
lawyer. Well, there are lots of you. The one I’m thinking of was admitted to
the bar more than two decades ago. For years she worked in corporate antitrust
law. She was good at it. But in 2017, she turned that expertise toward a local
nonprofit serving the legal needs of underprivileged Hoosiers. For nearly a
decade, she’s been guiding our new neighbors through an immigration process
increasingly designed to exhaust or frighten them. She didn't trade in her nets.
She kept every bit of her expertise and training. She changed who those nets
serve. Those who most need her gifts.
What are your nets for?
Maybe the fishermen sensed their skills could be put to more faithful use.
My father has served as a
pastor for over forty years. Growing up, I had a front-row seat to what that
work looks like week in and week out: hospital rooms, living room couches,
nursing homes, cemeteries, and sanctuaries. As
I watched Dad go about his life and work, I was captivated. His ministry
radiated a goodness that I wanted to experience for myself. And so, as John
Ames puts it in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, “My father left me a trade,
which happened also to be my vocation. But the fact is, it was all second nature
to me, I grew up with it.”
I think something in the words of Jesus, or perhaps the way
he looked at them, through them, captivated Peter, Andrew, James, and John.
They dropped their nets. They followed. They became.
Of course, their ROI was, well, complicated. The next three
years of their lives were full of adventure and full of trial. Always on the
road. Under threat from leaders political and religious. Confused by their
teacher’s vexing stories and strange choice of companions. He turned their
worlds upside down. And then, as quickly as he had called them, he left them.
Executed on a Roman cross. They suffered the loss of the one who had
transformed their lives.
They thought it was over. It was not over. According to John,
he visited them again. By the lakeside. Do you remember what happened? The
disciples had gone back to what they knew. Fishing on the Sea of Galilee. They
hear a familiar voice. Cast your net on the other side! And they do.
They would need to mend those nets again. This time from the abundance of the
catch. They share breakfast on the beach and Jesus gives them one final
command.
The words that first
summoned them.
Follow me.
You know, he still walks the shoreline, searching for anyone
aching for more.
He’s looking for you.
In 1906, Albert Schweitzer published his landmark
book, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Six hundred pages of scholarly
historical criticism. In German. Only the Religion majors read it. But when he
reached the final page, Schweitzer set aside his certainty. He found what he
needed most in Mark’s first chapter.
For the fifth anniversary of my father’s ordination, my mother
cross-stitched Schweitzer’s words, framed them, and hung it on the living room
wall in the manse. I walked past the words a thousand times. I read them for
years without realizing they were forming me.
Schweitzer wrote, and mom stitched: “He
comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside, He
came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou
me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He
commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He
will reveal Himself in the labors, the conflicts, the sufferings which they
shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall
learn in their own experience Who He is.”
That’s the ROI.
They dropped their nets, followed him, and step by step, they learned who he
was.
So will you.