Come, Follow Me

by Jerry Fuller, OMI

• "When a car skidded on wet pavement and struck a light pole, several bystanders ran over to help the driver. A woman was the first to reach the victim, but a man rushed in and pushed her aside. "Step aside, lady," he barked. "I've taken a course in first aid." The woman watched him for a few minutes, then tapped his shoulder. "Pardon me," she said. "But when you get to the part about calling a doctor, I'm right here."

"Christ is in our midst and we can 'behold" him in the most hidden acts of compassion, the most uncomplicated acts of justice, the humblest acts of reconciliation. 'Come and see' is both an invitation and a challenge. Jesus dares us to come--to abandon the things that deter us from the things of God; and to see--to focus our attention not on our own needs and the things that the world exalts as important but on the presence of God in the goodness and generosity around us." (1)

In today's gospel Jesus calls two apostles to follow him, Andrew, who was following John the Baptist with another disciple.

...What does the passage from John tell us about that first-round drafting of disciples? An important word in this episode is the verb "follow." The two disciples of John the Baptist--Andrew and perhaps John the son of Zebedee--heard the Baptist say "Behold, the Lamb of God!" (Jn 1:36) and "they followed Jesus" (v. 37). Now this may sound like no more than walking in the same direction. But remember, in the Gospels the word "follow" is the distinctive word for a disciple. One after another, the disciples of the Baptist were following Jesus, were becoming his disciples.

Note, however, how they became disciples. First, it was Jesus who took the initiative, the first step. It was he who turned and spoke to them. This is what Jesus would state explicitly later in John's Gospel: "It is not you who chose me. No, I chose you" (Jn. 15:16).

Second, note the question Jesus addressed to them: "What are you looking for?" (Jn 1: 38). This is not for John the trite, stereotyped question you ask if you hear footsteps behind you: "What d'ya want?" With John's bent for the theological, this is a religious question. Why is it, Jesus asks, that you are turning to me? Why are you turning to "the Lamb of God"?

Third, their answer has to be understood on the same theological level: "Teacher, where do you live? Where do you stay?" (v. 38). That verb--live, stay, remain, abide, dwell, lodge--occurs 40 times in John's Gospel. It is particularly expressive of his theology of indwelling presence. What binds God the Father, His Son Jesus, and the Christian believer together is that we remain in one another: Father in Son, Son in Father, they in us, we in them. And so, very likely, what John has the disciple asking is not only where Jesus has his mattress but where he has his life.

Fourth, Jesus responds: "Come and see" (v. 39). Two pregnant words. Throughout John's Gospel, "coming" to Jesus is used to describe faith (cf. Jn 5:40; 6:35, 378, 45; 7:37). And for John, to see Jesus with real perception is to believe in him. It is an experience that will be consummated when the disciples see his glory.

Fifth, "the disciples went to see where he was staying and they stayed on with him that day" (Jn 1:39). This was the beginning of their discipleship. They went to Jesus to see where he was staying, responded to his invitation to believe, discovered what his life was like, and they "stayed on," began to live in him, and he in them.

Sixth, after he had stayed with Jesus, gotten a deeper insight into who Jesus was, Andrew "found his brother" Peter and "brought him to Jesus" (vv. 41, 41). (2)

• "Soren Kierkegaard takes up the text of today's gospel and gives it a novel and unsettling interpretation. He says that Jesus wants us to be fishers of men not in the sense of sitting on some dock or in some boat and catching fish in a remote way. No! Jesus wants much more than that. He wants disciples to be fishers in the sense of becoming the bait which attracts the fish. What happens to the bait in the fishing process? It is consumed. Kierkegaard reasons that only to the extent that a person is consumed in the work of the ministry, only to this extent is one a disciple of the Lord. (What a message! Are we ready for it?) Will we be like the Greeks who walked away from Paul, or some of the listeners who did the same to Jesus?" (3)

The disciples followed Jesus and stayed with him a while. "No description of Jesus' home follows, no idyllic picture of a cottage with Mary at the door. There is only the invitation to "come and see," and we are left to fill in the answer. The real answer to that question is that he lives in the world. He lives where people live, in the human community. In the World Trade Center, and in the burned-out Bronx. If there is any special place that is Christ's dwelling place, it would be the hospitals, the prisons, the nursing homes, and the dwellings of the poor. If we go there, we won't cry out like Andrew to Simon, 'We have found the Messiah!' But what we will find are the works of justice, peace, and love clamoring to be done. What we will find is a saving purpose for our lives. What we will find is love's call, as Samuel did in the first reading: 'Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Here I am.'" (4)

Jesus calls us. Are we listening?

• "General George Custer was a man with an ego. He knew what he knew and thought he knew it better than anyone else. At the Battle of Little Big Horn, Custer and his men died because Custer had failed to heed advice. According to historian Evan Cornell, two Cheyenne women found Custer's body after the battle and punctured his eardrums with sewing awls. This was, in their way of thinking, to help with Custer's hearing in the next world, because in this world he had not listened to the warnings given to him." (5)

Ouch! That's a rather painful way of being made to listen. Lucky Custer was dead.

How can we listen better to the voice of God, heard by Samuel and by the new disciples of Jesus?

We can cultivate silence. Perhaps it is possible to find a quiet spot in the place were we live (our own "come and see").

• Since Jane got rid of her television some years ago, she finds she has "hours more prayer time." She is no longer trying to pray during commercials. (Added benefits to the enhanced quiet are not being subjected to noisy advertising, to glamour, and to false excitement.) Current events can be pursued in other, calmer media. "Silence makes me want to pray," Jane claims. But of course, she says she does a lot of talking to God, not just listening. At least she has a relationship with God, she says, because she tries to listen as well as talk.

Another thing we can do is set aside a specific daily time for listening. This way we make it a priority, and this way God knows where and when to find us. Our friends could respect this time by not phoning us then. (It doesn't hurt to tell others we are praying. They might want to do likewise, or they might be already doing so and like the company.)

...Another way we can all, always, hear the word of God is through Scripture. Perhaps it is the main way, the most accessible. It requires only the Bible, someone to proclaim it, and a listening ear. Or reading it in solitude with an open heart. Some people like to read the daily readings even if they can't make it to Mass. What does God have to say to me today? Speak, Lord, your servant listens.

And then, probably, we do not listen enough to our bodies, where the voice of God is always speaking. Fatigue, elation, discouragement, playfulness, sadness: our bodies are always giving us messages, revealing God's will for us, if only we listen. (6)

We might reflect on others who have answered God's call.

• Close to our times, Mother Teresa of Calcutta first perceived God's call to serve as a Sister of Loretto. She entered the order in 1928 at the age of 18 and was soon teaching at a high school in Calcutta. However, in 1946, she received what she called "the call within the call." "The message was quite clear," she wrote. "I was to give up all and follow Jesus into the slums--to serve him in the poorest of the poor." Her "call within the call" caused Mother Teresa to found a new order of sisters who continue to answer God's call as they hear it in the cries of the dying, the sick and the deprived.
• Henri Nouwen's responses to God's calls led him first to the ordained ministry in his native Netherlands, then to university classrooms in Europe and the U.S.A. as well as on several lecture circuits. In 1985 and until he died 1996, Nouwen was a member of one of Jean Vanier's L'Arche Communities; there he answered God's call as spoken through the needs of the intellectually and physically handicapped with whom he shared his love and care. At "L'Arche," said Nouwen, "I was invited to do something I wasn't prepared for. I didn't know anything about mentally handicapped people. I' m totally impractical in the first place but God called me there and in this case, God's will was not totally in line with my specific talents" (Seeds of Faith, interview for BBC Radio, 4 July 1993). Nevertheless, Nouwen found at L'Arche the home and family harmony for which he had longed so many years of his life.
• Like Mother Teresa and Henri Nouwen, the Berrigan brothers, Philip and Daniel, also answered God's initial call to the ministry; so attuned were they to God's continuing calls that they were willing to become prophets in the political arena where they decried the injustices of war, nuclear armaments, conscripted military service.
• Similarly, an American monk, Thomas Merton, and a Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, joined forces in answering God's call; together they raised their voices to speak to the world from different cultures and beyond their cloisters and challenge it to forge an authentic and lasting peace.
• Martin Luther King's sensitivity to God's call led him from the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta to the streets of Selma, Montgomery and Washington D.C. in support of civil rights and racial equality.

As we consider how God's call has offered meaning and direction to our lives to date, the experiences of these and other believers can inspire, encourage and edify. When we feel ill-prepared or unequal to the challenge of God's call, we are to remember that no call ever comes without the accompanying guarantee of grace. When calls from God seem to conflict with our personal aspirations, or appear to be a detour from the course we have set for ourselves, we are challenged to renewal trust and surrender. Most of all, we are to remember that our God is a God of many surprises and multiple voices; therefore, we must be open and willing to hear and to heed the call of God from wherever, in whomever and whenever it may come. (7)

References

1) "On call," Connections, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (7 Lantern Lane, Londonderry, N.H. 03053-3905) Jan 2000.
2) Walter J. Burghardt, SJ, Still Proclaiming Your Wonders (Paulist Press: Ramsey New Jersey 1984), pg. 105-6).
3) "Preaching commentary," Good News 27 (01): 30 (Liturgical Publications Inc., 2875 South James Drive, New Berlin WI 53151) Jan 2000.
4) "Preaching commentary," Good News 27 (01): 30 (Liturgical Publications Inc., 2875 South James Drive, New Berlin WI 53151) Jan 2000.
5) Fr. Edward Steiner, "Second Sunday in Ordinary Time," The Priest, 55 (12): 25 (Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750) Jan 2000.
6) Sue Dwyer, "Lend an ear," Markings, Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Readings--65 (The Thomas More Association, 205 West Monroe St.--Sixth Floor, Chicago IL 60606-5097) Jan 2000.
7) Patricia Datchuk Sanchez, "Not just one call but many--not just once but often," Celebration 29 (01): 25 (Celebration, P.O. Box 419493, Kansas City MO 64141) Jan 2000.

(Comments to Jerry at padre@tri-lakes.net. Jerry's book, Stories For All Seasons, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center.)