Follow me

Jesus never asked anyone to join a religion. He never handed out a membership form or a doctrinal checklist. His invitation was two words.

Follow me and I will make you fish for people.

Mark 1:17

He said it to Simon and Andrew, working fishermen, in the middle of their workday. No background check. No explanation of what it would cost. They dropped their nets and went.

Notice what he did not require first. He did not ask them to believe a list of statements or clean up their lives in advance. He asked them to walk with him and see. Their understanding of who he was grew as they went, not before they started.

In that world, a rabbi's disciples did not just study his words. They followed him physically. They watched how he handled conflict, how he treated the poor, how he prayed, how he responded when people attacked him. The goal was not to know what the rabbi knew. It was to become what the rabbi was.

That is what Jesus still offers: not a belief system to mentally file away, but a life to apprentice.

And here is what set him apart from every other rabbi and every other teacher in history. Other teachers said, I will show you the way. Jesus said, I am the way. He claimed that watching him was watching what God is like. That is either the most important thing ever said or it is nothing. Wise, humble teachers do not talk like that. He did, constantly, and then backed it with a life that has never been matched.

You do not have to resolve that question today. The first disciples did not either. They just started walking, and the walking is how they found out. Forty days is a very honest way to start.

Tomorrow we walk up the mountainside for the most famous sermon ever preached.