Some of you football fans will remember when Bo Schembechler was the coach of the Michigan Wolverines. It’s said that Schembechler used to work his players especially hard during spring practice to see what kind of young men he had, winners or quitters. He made a sign with a slogan on it and hung it above the locker room door. The sign read like this: “Those Who Stay Will Be Champions.”
Of course, not everyone stayed. One morning Schembechler came to the office and looked at the sign. Underneath the words “Those Who Stay Will Be Champions” someone had written, “And those who quit will be doctors, lawyers, and captains of industry.”
Not everyone has what it takes to answer the call to be champions, regardless of the field or profession.
A little item circulated for a while on the Internet. It was about life in the Navy. It was directed at people who think Navy life is glamorous, like the movie
Top Gun or the television show Jag. Here are a few of the suggestions the writer makes for people who want to experience Navy life, right in the comfort of their own homes.
- Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for six months.
- Once a week disassemble your lawn mower and inspect it.
- On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On Saturdays and Sundays declare to your family that they have used too much water during the week, so all showering is [prohibited].
- Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.
- Have your neighbor come over each day at 5:00 a.m. and blow a whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout “Reveille, Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up.”
- Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an hour; when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don’t pay attention to the menu any more, they just ask for hot dogs. (1)
Well, you get the idea. Not everyone is cut out to play football. Not everyone will be happy as a sailor. And not everyone was called to be among Jesus’ original twelve disciples.
After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. “The time has come,” he said. “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!”
As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him.
When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.
It is very difficult to discern anything special about these men that Jesus called except their willingness to serve. Chris Fabry said it well: “If it were me, I would not have been down by the water looking for followers. The social elite don’t make their living fishing. You find common people at the shore. If it were me looking for disciples, I would have first chosen a terrific singer who could bring in the crowds. Then I would have looked for someone with a reputation in the political establishment. Choosing followers is a strategic matter. You can’t waste these choices. As a matter of fact, I probably would have hired an agent and made an infomercial to get things started.
“Jesus did the exact opposite. He chose two fishermen. He even did it in an ordinary way. I would have made a great motivational speech with flip charts. I would have identified their felt needs. Jesus didn’t wow. He simply said, ‘Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’” (2)
That’s a good point. You and I would never have started our enterprise with the kind of men Jesus chose. They weren’t scholars. As far as we know, they weren’t leaders in their community. They were fishermen, earning a living with their hands. But, when Jesus called them, they dropped everything, and followed him. He spoke and they listened. He commanded and they obeyed.
That’s no little thing, is it? Jesus calls many, but only a few heed his summons. In most churches, only about twenty percent of the congregation is really involved in the life of the church. Another twenty percent are relatively faithful in worship, but can’t truly be counted on for anything else. Another twenty percent are sporadic attenders. And then there are about forty percent who are of the hatched, matched and dispatched variety. That is, they are here when they need to be baptized, married and finally buried--hatched, matched and dispatched--but they couldn’t be much more nominal in their devotion. So the fact that these first disciples were willing to not only say “yes” to the Master, but also to leave their nets and follow him is no little matter. As they say, “showing up is half the battle.”
There was an interesting article in National Geographic last fall about the Mbuti men of central Africa, also known as Pygmies. These small people have a unique way of making music and reinforcing social bonds. The men whittle musical pipes out of soft wood. But each pipe is only able to play a single note. One man may whittle a pipe that can play an A flat; another may whittle a pipe that plays a D, another an F sharp.
Because each man can only play one note, all the men must work together to create music. If one man is missing from the group, the music is noticeably different, lacking in harmony and richness that results when all the men are playing together. (3)
What a magnificent metaphor for the church. Imagine that every member of our fellowship had a flute that played one note. The only way we can produce a symphony would be if every member shows up and does his or her part.
There wasn’t anything special that we can see about these early disciples except that when the Master said, “Follow me,” they followed. Having said that, though, we must acknowledge that being around Jesus turned them into very special people. That’s not surprising, is it? Jesus has been turning people’s lives around for twenty centuries now.
Our own President, George W. Bush, is not popular with everyone. No President ever is. He is not a perfect man, yet who can doubt his sincerity when he talks about his faith? There was a time when Mr. Bush did not take life very seriously. Alcohol seems to have played a role in this. The story goes that his wife Laura gave him an ultimatum. But George Bush didn’t turn around by himself. His faith played a significant role. And he got his life together. And he impressed a nation with his abilities and his sincerity, and he was elected President of our land. It’s a story that’s been told time and time again.
Some of you are familiar with the name Charles Colson. Chuck Colson was, at one time, a power player in Washington politics, a member of President Richard Nixon’s inner circle. He was one of Nixon’s most enthusiastic “hatchet men.” Those who knew him best described him as a man of few principles. But his involvement in the infamous Watergate scandal led to his disgrace. It was while serving time in prison for his role in the scandal that Charles Colson came to an authentic relationship with Christ. After his release, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, a ministry to inmates in prisons around the world.
Many years ago, Colson started a Prison Fellowship group with just eight young inmates at a maximum security prison in Delaware. One young inmate was deeply affected by what he learned in the Prison Fellowship Bible study. When a judge reviewed his case and unexpectedly set him free, this young man asked to be allowed to remain in prison until he had finished the study.
About a year after Colson’s first visit to the Delaware prison, he returned for an Easter morning service. Dozens of prisoners stood outside the chapel and held up signs announcing, “Come to the Chapel,” and “Jesus Sets the Prisoners Free!” Hundreds of inmates packed the chapel that morning to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. (4) Christ reaches out to all kinds of people. They don’t have to be special people. But he turns them into special people. All they have to do is say, “yes.”
Here’s what we need to see: it can happen to us. Christ can turn us into someone special if we will let him.
That’s the rub, isn’t it? “If we will let him . . .” We’re not like Peter and Andrew, James and John. We’re better educated. More sophisticated. We live in nice homes. Have good paying jobs. Drive nice cars. And we are pretty content with our circumstances just like they are. We’re not sure we really want to be God’s man, God’s woman, if it means committing more of our time, more of our resources. We are like millions of other people who have lived on this earth over the past 2,000 years, we want to stay on the good side of God, but we want to do it from a distance. We will stay in our boats and give lip service and leave it to someone else to leave their nets and follow Jesus.
There was an amusing item in the press not too long back. It concerned the funeral of James Smith, a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team. When mourners arrived at the funeral home, they found the recently deceased Mr. Smith, 55, propped up in his favorite armchair in black-and- gold pajamas, a beer and a pack of cigarettes at his side, while a high-definition TV played a continuous loop of Steelers highlights. Smith’s friends and relatives agreed it was a perfect tribute. “I couldn’t stop crying after looking at the Steelers blanket in his lap,” said Smith’s sister, MaryAnn. “It was just like he was at home.” (5)
We live in a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to be a fanatic about a football team, but not about your faith. If you were dressed at your funeral according to where you put your priorities, how would you be dressed? As sports fan? A parent? A Republican or a Democrat? Would there be many artifacts that would speak of your faith in Jesus Christ?
Go with me for a few moments to Southeast Asia, to the border areas of Laos and Vietnam. Before the Western powers imposed national boundaries, the kings of Laos and Vietnam reached an agreement on taxation in the border areas. They chose an interesting formula. They divided the citizens into two groups, depending on how they lived. Those who ate short-grain rice, built their houses on stilts, and decorated them with Indian-style serpents were considered Laotians. On the other hand, those who ate long-grain rice, built their houses on the ground, and decorated them with Chinese-style dragons were considered Vietnamese.
The exact location of a person’s home was not what determined his or her nationality. Instead, each person belonged to the kingdom whose cultural values he or she exhibited. (6) If you lived one way, you were Laotian. If you lived another, you were Vietnamese.
Whose cultural values does your life exhibit? The kingdom of this world or the kingdom of God? Christ is beckoning you to a different kind of life. He is calling you to be a special kind of person. He is calling you to live the kingdom life--a life lived following his footsteps. Will you heed his call when he says, “Follow me”?
1. Cascade_Express(tm) E-Zine, mailto:Cascade_Express-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
2. At the Corner of Mundane and Grace, Waterbrook Press, 1999, pp. 180-181.
3. “Who Rules the Forest?” by Paul Salopek, September 2005, p. 80.
4. Charles Colson. Loving God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), pp. 21-24.
5. The Week, July 22, 2005.
6. Contributed. Source unknown.