Follow Me

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Or we might say, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, and be ready to pick up and go wherever I go. If necessary, be ready to move!” Uh oh. Maybe it’s not as easy as it looked last week to confess Jesus as the Messiah and follow God’s call.

The prophet Jeremiah, whose lament we just heard, could certainly relate to those words. He’d been a relatively young man, probably having a young man’s good time, when he first heard God’s call to him. “I’ve known you from even before you were born,” God told him, “and I’ve appointed you as a ‘prophet to the nations.’” “But, Lord,” replied Jeremiah, “I’m too young, I don’t know anything about speaking well.” “Never mind,” God said, “I’ll tell you what to say. You just come along, and I’ll be with you the whole time.”

Did Jeremiah know what he was getting himself into and where he would be expected to go, when he agreed to speak for God? I don’t think so. Of course, in the beginning, God’s words, as he tells us, “became to me a joy, and the delight of my heart.” But then God called Jeremiah to try to persuade the king not to enter into a fruitless alliance with other nations, in an attempt to stave off the Babylonians. The religious and political leadership, the other prophets, and even the king himself, loudly derided and scorned Jeremiah for not supporting the king. He was put under house arrest, and even briefly thrown into a well. Unfortunately, his prophecies were right on the mark. The Babylonians conquered Israel, destroyed the temple and much of Jerusalem, and forced the ruling classes and artisans into exile. Jeremiah himself ended up in Egypt with a portion of the exiles. No wonder he was disillusioned with God! No wonder he complains to God that his pain is “unceasing,” and his wound “incurable.” No wonder he accuses God of being “like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail.” Like Jesus’ disciples, like so many of us, Jeremiah had discovered that, while the joy of following God’s call is initially sweet, God often takes us out of our places of comfort and leads us into hardships beyond our imagining.

Yet God did not leave Jeremiah mired in his bitterness and disillusionment. Did you catch God speaking in the second half of our reading this morning? God calls Jeremiah to repentance and promises Jeremiah that, “If you utter what is precious … you shall serve as my mouth. It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.” In other words, “Don’t lose heart, Jeremiah. Keep testifying, focus on my mission. And people will believe you. You won’t have an easy time, but I am with you forever.” As part of the exile community, Jeremiah was forced to leave his home. He died in Egypt without ever returning to Jerusalem, but, reassured by God’s promises, he continued to speak God’s word for the rest of his life.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Jesus is on the move again. With this morning’s reading, we are at a transition point in Matthew’s Gospel story. Jesus is ready to leave northern Israel behind. He has set his face towards Jerusalem and the events that are to transpire there. “It’s settled,” he tells his disciples, “this is God’s plan.” Like Jeremiah, Peter protests. He draws Jesus aside and tries to persuade Jesus to turn back. Still perhaps looking for a military messiah, a mighty king who would throw the Romans out of Israel, Peter can scarcely understand what Jesus is talking about. Jesus dying? Jesus, executed like a criminal? Unthinkable! And can’t we sympathize with Peter? He may not have understood what he was saying when he confessed Jesus as the Messiah, but he is rightly terrified at the prospect of his beloved rabbi dying. As are we, when we’re honest with ourselves. The Cross is always scandalous, so much so that many churches, St. Peter’s included, have no crucifix anywhere – not even in an icon!

Jesus, of course, rebukes Peter in the harshest possible terms. Jesus is on the move. He must go to Jerusalem, and he expects his disciples to leave the comforts of Galilee and follow him there. And, just to make sure that all the disciples understand that he meant what he said about dying a criminal’s death, he tells them that they can expect not only to leave their own places of comfort, but also to experience hardship as his followers, as a part of the community devoted to him. In no uncertain terms he reminds them, “If you want to be on my team, stay close behind me, be prepared to move, but don’t expect an easy time.” But just as God reassured Jeremiah that he would eventually be vindicated, Jesus also reassures his disciples of their greater life in him: “For … those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Following Jesus won’t be easy, following Jesus won’t necessarily bring them what they want or expect, following Jesus may take them out of their comfort zones, but if they follow along behind him and with their fellow disciples, they have Jesus’ promise that wherever he leads them he will be with us.

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” The sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit can also relate to Jesus’ command. They know well where following behind Jesus can lead one. The community was founded in the early 1950s in New York City. All of its sisters, including today’s sisters, gave up other lives to join the community. Originally focused on elementary education, the community occupied a comfortable converted brownstone on 113th Street, not too far from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. However, in 1961, some of the sisters answered Jesus’ call to establish a second school and community in Brewster, NY, about fifty miles from Manhattan. As part of their work in Brewster, in 2004 the sisters were called to establish Bluestone Farm as an example of sustainable living and farming. There the sisters now plant, harvest, and store their own food and weave their own textiles. The farm has attracted resident companions, interns, and volunteers who have expanded its work. Meanwhile, in Manhattan, the sisters felt called to gradually turn the ministry of elementary education over to others, and develop new ministries in education about living sustainably, spiritual direction, retreat leadership, and guest hospitality. In 2009, they heard another call: to leave their comfortable old convent and build a new green convent. Through a land swap with Columbia University, the community received a parcel of land on the edge of Harlem. Despite the reservations of some of their well-wishers about locating in a mixed-ethnic neighborhood, the sisters embarked on building a thoroughly “green” convent near 150th street. Complete with roof-top garden, the new St. Hilda’s house now stands as an urban experiment in living in closer community with the earth. Needless to say, none of these moves and developments have been easy. The move from the old Manhattan convent to the new one in late 2010 was particularly difficult for some of the older sisters. Yet even they know that Jesus is with them and their community, wherever he may lead them. Sr. Élise, who at 90 is the oldest member of the community, described the prospect of leaving the old convent. She said, “I really don’t have my roots set down here in this house – I’ll be happy to live anywhere. I already have a reservation in another place.” Or as Meredith Kadet, a recent Bluestone Farm intern, reminded us in a meditation on her own prospect of moving, Christians are a pilgrim people, always on the move with Jesus, always following where God leads them. “We’re on the move, then, together,” she tell us. “We’re on the move because we’re part of a community, part of a universe, part of a body of God that’s on the move toward a promise.”

We’re on the move with Jesus. We’re a pilgrim people, following behind a leader whom we know will eventually lead us to Jerusalem and to the Cross. We may have hardships, we may have to leave our comfort zone, we may have to go to new and unexpected, perhaps even dangerous places. Yet we have Jesus’ promise to be with us, wherever he takes us. And Jesus’ promise is as true for us as God’s promise was to Jeremiah, as Jesus’ promise was to his disciples, and as Jesus’ promise is for the sisters of the Community of the Holy Spirit. Here at St. Peter’s, to say nothing of the rest of our lives, we too may have to leave behind beloved old structures, beloved ministries, beloved ways of doing things. We may have to begin developing ministries in places where we hadn’t expected to be. But we can do all that and more, because we have heard Jesus’ call: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Meredith Kadet closed her reflection with the verse of an old song. Perhaps the song is appropriate for us too.
I open my mouth to the Lord
And I won’t turn back
I will go, I shall go
To see what the end gonna be.

God willing, we will all faithfully follow behind him.