H. Michael Brewer
Crescent Springs Presbyterian
July 11, 2004
JESUS’ GREATEST HITS: The Call to Choose
Matthew 9:9
A few weeks ago, I was driving toward Florence when I realized I had an uninvited passenger in
the car. Perched in the rear window, complaining at full volume, was a cicada. Now I don’t mind
cicadas. I didn’t mind the invasion. Truth be told, I sort of miss them. But this was one noisy cicada in
my car, so I pulled into the parking lot of Wal-Mart, got out, opened the back door and evicted my
little hitchhiker. I just scooped him up in my hand and threw him into the air. He flew maybe six feet,
and then a sparrow plucked him from mid-air and had lunch.
The whole thing left me feeling bad. Here was this cicada who had spent seventeen years in the
mud waiting to emerge into life in the big world, and what happens? He grows his wings, blunders
into a car, gets dumped out in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and becomes an hors d’oeuvre. That’s not
much pay-off for seventeen years of undergraduate study, a pretty disappointing life no matter how
you slice it.
A cynic might say that the human predicament isn’t so different from the plight of the cicada. We
get a few years here. We blunder around. We eat and maybe reproduce. Most of us never fly very
high, and then we die. I can imagine Mark Twain drawling, “The chief difference between the cicada
and the human being is that the cicada begins underground and the human ends there.”
There’s even some sound theology behind that cynicism that sets us on the same level as the
cicada. The Bible is quite clear in asserting that God loves all of God’s creatures, not just humans, but
cicadas, too. It is equally clear that cicadas and humans alike have the power to glorify God. How
does a bug glorify God? By being the bug God intended. Fireflies glorify God by shining, spiders by
spinning, grasshoppers by hopping, and cicadas glorify the creator by burrowing up from the ground
right on schedule, shedding their skins, making a lot of noise, and flying around like drunken,
nearsighted chickens.
At first glance, we humans seem to be in exactly the same situation as the humble cicada. Every
creature—from the lowliest amoeba to the brightest star—glorifies the Creator by being itself. This
doesn’t present a problem to most creatures. Stars are just naturally stellar, dogs don’t have to
struggle to be doggish, and there is no indication that cicadas are prone to soul-searching or identity
crises. There is not a single recorded instance of a cicada setting out to find himself.
And that, my friends, is where are different. In all the vastness of the universe, as far as we know
there are only two creatures who must work at glorifying God, only two creatures who must make an
effort to be what their Creator intended them to be: angels and human beings. And that’s why the
cynics are wrong when they equate us with the cicadas. There is something that sets us apart from the
bugs, and it’s not our intelligence or our accomplishments; it’s that we human beings go through life
making choices.
We get to decide whether or not our lives will glorify God. You won’t see a cicada wearing a
WWJD bracelet, but we human beings get to choose what kind of creatures we will be, what kind of
selves we will become.
Which brings us to Jesus who again and again challenges us to exercise the power of choice. In the
Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, what are the first words we hear from the lips of Jesus? “The
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.” Jesus begins with God’s loving, seeking
grace, and once Jesus has established God’s invitation, what does he say next? He says, “Repent.”
He says, “Believe.” He says, “Follow me.”
Within the first three verses of his preaching, Jesus says, “God is reaching out for you. What are
you going to do about it? God loves you. How will you respond to that? Here I am, bringing in God’s
new order. What will you do with me?”
I lift up those simple words, “Follow me,” as one of the great sayings of Jesus because that
invitation reveals God’s everlasting respect for you and me. Cicadas live by instinct; their lives are all
plotted out. But Christ invites us to become partners with God, partners in working out who we’re
going to be and what our lives will become. Unlike the other creatures with whom we share this
world, we have the power to dishonor our Maker. God trusts us that much.
Jesus came to be a shepherd, not a cattle drover. You drive cattle; you push them where they need
to go. But you lead sheep. You call sheep, you beckon, you invite them to follow. The shepherd sets
out for green pastures and still waters, and he hopes the sheep fall in behind, but the sheep get to
decide.
Some have called this the terrible grace of God. Why terrible? Because genuine
freedom carries a price tag, and the price of freedom is responsibility. That means risk and struggle
and the near-certainty of painful mistakes along the way. Jellyfish don’t make a lot of decisions. They
float with the current and eat whatever comes within reach. Dolphins, on the other hand, swim against
the tide, hunt for their food, battle their enemies, and sometimes die in fishing nets. Dolphins have a
much tougher life than jellyfish, but which would you rather be?
In those simple words, “Follow me,” Jesus not only reminds us of God’s faith in us, but Jesus also
underlines our calling to live up to that responsibility—to decide our values, to plot our course, to
make ourselves up—in such a way that our choices glorify the one who allows us to choose. This is
what the New Testament means when we are warned not to use our freedom as an excuse for evil or
an opportunity for self-indulgence (1 Peter 2:16; Galatians 5:13).
I won’t belabor the obvious. Our choices are pretty clear. For instance, we can follow wealth and
fall into the money trap, thinking that big bucks will make us happy and whole. You should read the
studies sometime on wealth and happiness. Hardly anyone in the world considers themselves to be
rich, because we invariably compare our income with that of people who make more than we do.
Basically, no one ever believes they have enough money—just a little more, and I’ll be there. Just a
little more, and I’ll have enough.
Or we can chase security, denying our mortality and trying to build a life that is safe and stable and
risk-proof, as if the funeral director were never going to get any business from us. Chasing security is
a pretty good way to pass through a whole lifetime without every having lived.
We can chase after the perfect relationship—the partner who will make us happy, the children who
will fill our emptiness, the popularity that will prove our worth—as if our happiness and fulfillment lay
in someone else’s hands and not in our own.
Of course, if we look deeply enough it usually turns out that we’re not chasing anything; we’re
being chased. We’re running from our fear, that ancient primal fear as old as Adam and Eve—the
fear of not being good enough. Not measuring up, not being enough—that’s the terror that fuels most
of our fears, our anger, our guilt, our perfectionism, our addictions.
And if I understand Jesus at all, that is the very fear he addresses when he says, “Follow me.”
He doesn’t say, You have to be better before you can come with me. You have to improve your
credentials, achieve a little more success before I can make room for you.
No, he says, Come as you are, you tax collectors and moneygrubbers, you prostitutes and sell-
outs, you hypocrites and prodigals, you pretenders and cowards. Come with me, all you knocked
down and beaten up people. It doesn’t even matter whether life has beaten you up or if you’ve done
it to yourself. Follow me anyway. God’s kingdom is at hand!
What does that mean, “at hand”? It means within reach, close enough to lay your hand on it.
The kingdom of grace is at hand, says Jesus. Believe it. Turn yourselves around, turn away from
chasing the lures that lead nowhere. And follow me! You’re already enough in my eyes. Come with
me, and we’ll make even more of you. I’ll give you more than the human heart can imagine. I’ll give
you the courage to bear a cross, the strength to rise to hard tasks, the love that rejoices in sacrifice.
Follow me and I don’t promise you security or comfort, but I’ll give you life. Choose me and I’ll give
you a life fitted for eternity, a life to lay unashamed at the feet of God, not an easy life but a life worth
the living.
People have been asking me this week if I’ve seen the new Spider-Man movie. No, I haven’t seen
it yet, but I read the book. Poor Spider-Man tries to give up his superhero sideline, but discovers
once again that “with great power comes great responsibility.” There’s no dodging it, not if we’re
going to be worthwhile human beings. We have the great power of choice, and that means human life
is a journey in progress, and where we end up depends upon whom we choose to follow.
That you’re sitting here today probably means you’ve heard a voice saying to you, “Follow me.”
When someone calls your name and says, “Follow me,” it’s not the sort of thing you can ignore. You
go or you don’t, but you have to decide. And if you haven’t decided, or you need to renew that
decision, choose well. Run the risk. Take the carpenter’s hand and choose life.
Soli Deo Gloria!