What Is Our Actual Call To Follow God/Jesus?

 

I am still one John 21 this morning.  It is about the other message that Jesus came to bring to his followers when he met them for breakfast.

Yesterday was about Peter and Jesus’ conversation after breakfast.  When he told Peter what his next Call would look like:    

“feed my lambs, Tend my sheep, Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17)

Today I invite you to hear what Jesus asked of all of his disciples:

When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. ¹⁰Jesus said to them, ‘Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.’

Now, just incase you missed it, there were already fish on the fire that Jesus had made for their breakfast.  But, he still asked them to share out of the abundant   catch of fish.

What we have here is Jesus not-so-subtle instruction on how his follower are to behave in a world where some people will alway have less.

As followers of Jesus’ way, to servanthood, was to be their/our way as well. 

“feed my lambs, Tend my sheep, Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15-17)

12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.(Jn 13)

³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’) (Jn. 13)

In his last, opportunities to be with his disciples, Jesus was being extremely clear that they all understood their purpose as his followers in the world.

Love as he loves.

                         

Serve and live as he modeled.  

You know, we who live thousands of year after these passages were written, have been influenced by so many other opinions and traditions we have lost the real teachings of Jesus.

We have gotten our shorts in the preverbal knot about issues that have drawn us away from the main thing.

³⁶‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’³⁷He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” ³⁸This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” ⁴⁰On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’(Mt,22)

Case in point, in seminary we were given a sheet detailing all of the religious  denominations and their differences.  If you could read that list, you would soon see that the tiniest theological point divided God/Jesus’ message.

Being a “Christian”, a disciple of Jesus, is not about “church membership,” or doing the “proper rituals,” or doing it “how it has always been done” -- that God/Jesus get lost in the maze of human thinking.

If you think about it that is exactly why God came in Jesus skin. He came to adjust the Jewish, human rule, teachings and traditions.

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