Have you ever had to leave something you love? Sometimes we don’t have a choice in the matter. For some reason we are forced to uproot because of a conflict, a job, family situation or a crisis. Some people are forced from their homes and loved ones by violence or political situations.
Over the past few years I have paid particular attention to those students who are undocumented citizens and are attending college. These students came here with their parents at a very young age and it wasn’t until they were teenagers that they realized they weren’t even citizens. I’ve met some of these students who are aspiring to be doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, and non-profit directors. Many of them only remember Arizona as their home. Some students in similar situations, however, are facing the threat of deportation and some of them have already been deported.
In a recent article published by Arizona State University, a graduate student reported the results of her research on the effects on undocumented Mexican children when they are sent back to Mexico from their home in the US. She found that even if these children are accepted into their extended family, they are often ridiculed, rejected, and bullied at school, even by the administration. They are not seen as Mexican, but as American.
Leaving your home, your family, your friends, your comfort zone is one of the most painful things to do, especially when you don’t have a choice in the matter.
This brings us to Luke 5:1-11:
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’ For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, ‘Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.’ When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
In this scripture passage, the disciples experience something with Jesus that is so powerful, they would voluntarily leave everything and devote their lives to him and call him Lord. They are not being forced, but invited, to be a part of a new movement, a new community that would proclaim the coming of a new kingdom on earth. Can you imagine some guy coming up to you at work and saying, “Hey I’m about to change the world forever, how about you drop everything and help me do that?”
For me this call to discipleship came while sitting on the edge of a mesa in southern Utah, watching the sunset. I was reflecting on the summer I was spending working on the Ute reservation working with suburban church youth groups repairing homes on the reservation. While sitting there, all of the sudden, the stories and teachings of Jesus made sense. Jesus wasn’t calling me to go to church every Sunday. He was calling me to serve and to be part of a movement to change the world.
We follow Jesus so that one day we no longer have to live in a world where people are forced from their homes and their families, whether that be undocumented college students or those escaping famine and violence in the Horn of Africa, or anyone else affected by similar situations. Many of us who are called to follow Jesus have the luxury and privilege to make decisions that will radically change our lives. We can choose to leave the things we love for something bigger, to give our lives for God and for others, however, we are rarely forced to. This is perhaps the biggest cost of discipleship. However, it may also be the biggest privilege of discipleship and it comes with a huge responsibility.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading the blog posts from Shaun King, a successful new church start pastor who had everything going for him, until he realized that what he was doing wasn’t about making disciples, it was about putting butts in pews. So, he quit.
In his post titled “3 Extremely Hard-Earned (Trust me) Lessons on Starting Something New, Change and Discipleship,” King writes:
Few disciples of Jesus Christ actually exist in the world.
I’m not even saying I am one and nobody else is. I have to fight the battle for my own discipleship daily. What I am saying is that church attendance, Sunday morning services, sermon-listening (or even sermon preaching), song-singing, hand-clapping, amen-saying and all of the things that “Christ-ians” have lifted up so high look so little like Christ himself that I am utterly convinced that we are completely off base with what discipleship means.
Considering all of this, I think I have given up on church as I knew it. Big buildings. Huge crowds. Few disciples. I’m not with it. It’s inefficient and just doesn’t feel right with my soul. This is not a rejection of big buildings or huge crowds, but an indictment on how few disciples are being made in the process of it all. A better way has to exist.
To me this is a Jesus calling the disciples moment. How much courage must it take to walk away from something the American Church sees as extremely successful, because that thing you created has nothing to do with Jesus or being a disciple?
I think we have to ask ourselves: Do we have what it takes to leave what is safe and comfortable to join Jesus on a journey of discipleship, a journey where we proclaim good news, liberation, healing, a new social order to a broken and hurting world? Are we willing to take a risk to leave “business as usual,” behind and start something new, something that looks, feels, and sounds more like the type of discipleship that Jesus is calling us to? If Jesus came up to you on a Sunday morning while you were sitting in your seat waiting for worship to start and said, “follow me, let’s leave this place forever,” what would you do?
The question and perhaps even the answer, many of us would give, is terrifying.
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