Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today comes from the Gospel reading just read, especially these
words, “You follow me!”. Thus far our
text.
Dear friends in
Christ. In the moments just before our
Gospel lesson for today, St. Peter was three times reproved and three times
told to feed the sheep of the Lord.
Immediately then, Jesus tells St. Peter how his life will come to its
end as he will one day be crucified upside-down in the city of Rome to the
glory of God. And after saying this he
said to him, “Follow me.” In other
words, St. Peter is to follow Christ even if it means his death. Peter is to follow Christ to the glory of
God. Peter is to follow Christ and
Christ alone in this world, leaving all other false gods behind.
And so as soon as
he hears these words from Christ, he immediately turns back from following
Christ, and looks to St. John. As our
Gospel lesson says, “Peter turned and
saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them… When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord,
what about this man?’” Already then,
Peter has already ceased following the Lord and set his eyes on other
things. And immediately, Jesus reproves
him again, and focuses his eyes back where they belong, “What is it to you
about this man? You follow me!”
And thus, the
final message of the Gospel of St. John is that. “Follow Jesus.” Look to Jesus. Focus on Jesus. Believe in Jesus. Him alone.
John is so concerned with people following Jesus that he doesn’t even
call himself by name in the Gospel. He
calls himself, “The disciple whom Jesus loved.”
He could easily have said, “Peter turned and saw John,” but doesn’t,
instead saying “Peter turned and saw the whom Jesus loved and who sat next to
Jesus at the Lord’s Supper.” He does
that so that you won’t extoll John in place of Jesus, but trust in Christ alone
for salvation. So that you won’t be
distracted by a mere servant of God, instead of God incarnate.
And yet, we don’t
do we? In fact, many people can be
found, who like Peter do everything except what is commanded them, who look in
all sorts of other directions then to Christ, who follow anyone else excepts
the Lord. We have so many who come every
week here, and hear God’s Word, and then go home and ignore what it said. I mean really? St. Paul says in Romans 13, “Let us walk
properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual
immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.”
We hear that word
in church, and then we go home and everything that Paul just listed as sinful
we do, don’t we! We have sexual
immorality with couples living together and sleeping together outside of
marriage. We have quarreling and
jealousy – even within our own families and homes. Drunkenness abounds, even among teenagers for
whom it is illegal to drink! So much for
following Jesus.
Our Lord says,
“Remember the Sabbath Day,” which means in its most basic form, “Listen to
God’s Word,” and yet we don’t. We have
it listed in our bulletin all the time, 20% of our members attend church. And probably only 1% of you attend Bible
studies when they’re offered. We don’t
spend time in God’s Word like we ought to.
Jesus says follow my word, but we don’t even know what it says. And these things don’t even scratch the
surface of disregard of Jesus let alone following him.
And who are we
following in all of these cases instead of Jesus? Ourselves, and our own understandings and
opinions on things. And dear friends the
problem with that is that we don’t really have a clue about how things work in
terms of the big picture of God’s World.
We are blindly leading ourselves down the path of destruction and the
road to Hell. Or to put it more simply,
we are following ourselves instead of Jesus.
But the end of the
Gospel of John is clear – we ought to follow Jesus. And the reality is the opposite of that,
isn’t it? So what hope then might we
have?
Dear friends, here
is the truth – Following Christ isn’t our work, it’s the work of the Holy
Spirit. Its what we say in the third
article of the creed, “The Holy Spirit… Calls, gathers, enlightens and
sanctifies the entire Christian Church on Earth and keeps it in Jesus Christ in
the one true faith.” He calls you
too. He has gathered you by his
Word. He has sanctified you in the
waters of Holy Baptism, where your sinful and wandering ways are
destroyed.
It’s the way it
worked for Peter, he followed Christ because Christ called him, and when he
looked away, Christ called to him again “Follow me.” In fact, in John’s Gospel, all the disciples
follow Jesus only at the call of the Lord.
As he himself explains in John 10, “the sheep hear his voice and they
follow him.”
And when he calls us,
we also follow him. It’s not that we have a
choice in the matter, we follow when he calls the same reason light appears
when he says, “Let there be light.” When
he speaks, what he says happens. When he
says, Follow me, we follow. Why? Because he’s God. We follow, only because he calls. We believe, only because he gives us
faith. And we follow him through his
cross, baptized into his death, and baptized into his resurrection. We are cleaned by his blood, as we follow
through his suffering and his death into his eternal life. Just as Peter followed, to his own crucifixion,
we follow into our own death and life at the name and bidding of Jesus.
Dear friends in
Christ, this St. John the Apostle day, that’s what we remember. That Christ calls us, we follow at his
bidding, and he leads us into eternal life.
We may wander, but he keeps on calling and calling so that in the end we
may receive grace in his name. That’s
what John wants you to know, that’s what his Gospel says. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
