Disciples, not decisions? Anybody have any idea what that little bumper sticker like phrase might mean? You have to come out of the background I did for it to make sense.

  My beginning days with the church were spent in a conservative evangelical context where making the decision to follow Jesus was at the core of what church was about. Granted in those days conservative evangelicalism was kinder and gentler than it often is these days, but it was the ground in which the seeds of my faith were planted. When I was 15 years old I walked down the aisle, as so many others had, at Big Walnut Baptist Church to accept Jesus as my savior.

   What I didn’t understand fully at the time was that the walk down that aisle was the beginning of the journey, not its end. And it’s not that the folk at Big Walnut misled me. It was easy, though, for me to imagine that making that decision for Christ was what it was all about, that once you had done that you had arrived at where you were meant to go.

  That idea was constantly reinforced by the evangelists I would see on TV, and who would come to my church, making such a big deal about making a decision for Christ. How many of you have ever been in a service where you didn’t even have to walk down the aisle? You know, where the preacher asks every one to bow their heads and close their eyes, and then those who want to make a decision for Jesus only have to raise their hands. Nobody else but the preacher even has to know.
 
  So that was my context when I left for seminary. But more and more, I was developing a discontent with the church. It was like that old New Yorker cartoon where a couple is in an art museum and the man says to the woman, “I may not know art, but I know what I don’t like.” I was figuring out what I didn’t like about the church, but I wasn’t sure what the alternatives were. Or to put it in the post-modern context, my paradigm was shifting, but I was in the middle of the shift.   

 When I first discovered this idea of disciples, not decisions I began to see light at the end of the paradigm shift. The end of Matthew 28 is a big deal for many evangelists. The risen Jesus is with the 11 surviving disciples and says this, ‘go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." But what most of those evangelists have missed is that Jesus says nothing here about getting people to make decisions for Jesus, he says to make disciples. And he told them you make disciples by teaching people everything he had taught them.

  That, it turns out, is where my paradigm was going, disciples, not decisions. The thing I could get enthused about was learning what Jesus taught us. That’s when I was able to see that this call to follow Jesus began at the altar rather than ended there. The call in my life was not to make a decision for Jesus but to become a disciple, to learn what Jesus taught. And it’s some pretty crazy stuff. Just ask the disciples.

Speaking of the disciples, let’s take a good look at them because they are the only model we have in the Gospels of what it means to be a disciple. And it’s not what I think most preachers have in mind when they are calling people to walk down the aisle, raise their hand, call the phone number, send in the text message, to make a decision for Jesus.

  We call them saints now, but they weren’t always what that title implies. In fact, when we read about them in the Gospels they were very little of what being a saint implies.

  You don’t have to read too much of the story to realize the disciples just didn’t get Jesus. They couldn’t figure out most of what he was about, and the parts they could  figure out, they didn’t like. His message was too radical, too inclusive, too contrary to their understanding of proper religion. They argued with Jesus. They contradicted him. Their lack of faith has become legend. They deserted him when he needed them most. But from the time they threw down their nets, left their tax collection booths behind, found Jesus along the way and followed him, to that hillside where the Risen Jesus commissioned them, they were disciples.

 They were, it turns out, a pretty good model for us after all. And I don’t think we see that any more clearly than in the story we read about them today.

  They had just come in from a bad night’s fishing. Crowds were following Jesus along the shore of the lake. Jesus sees Simon, who later gets a new name, Peter. Jesus asks Simon if he can get in the boat and go a bit off shore so more people can see and hear him.

  After Jesus was done, he told Simon that he ought to push the boat further out and catch some fish. Simon said, “I wish. We’ve been fishing all night and there’s nothing out there. And we have just cleaned the nets.” But Simon got the nets and took the boat out anyway and had the biggest catch he had ever had.

  That was enough for Simon. He knew there was something of God going on here, and figured it couldn’t include him. Why would it? He suggested that maybe Jesus should be going. But Jesus wouldn’t leave without him.
 
  That’s the story of discipleship. Jesus comes along and says throw the nets out again. I know things haven’t been working out for you. You keep looking for more meaning in this life and the nets come back in empty. You work hard, you try hard, but no fish. But I think, Jesus says, we can find this thing we call life together.

  And they did. But it wasn’t happily ever after for the disciples. It wasn’t as easy as making a decision and going back home. It was becoming a disciple, hitting the road with Jesus and figuring it out as you go. To me, that is a much more satisfying paradigm because it’s much more like life.

  We don’t follow Jesus because we have it all figured out. We aren’t any better at this than the first disciples were. That’s the point. Jesus wasn’t looking for Apostles, he was looking for men and women who were willing to throw their nets back into the water, people who would take the risk to follow him and see what they came up with. Jesus was looking for people who were willing to walk toward possibility.

  That’s the life of the disciple, walking toward possibility, the possibility that is in Jesus, possibilities for our lives and for our world. And we have those first disciples to learn from.

  It is striking, of course, that these disciples, right after they make the biggest catch they can ever imagine, leave their nets behind to follow Jesus. That’s how crazy this discipleship thing gets. You find what you’ve been  looking for and realize you are looking for more.

I do have to say that I am glad for that old paradigm that shifted into this new one. I began my journey by making a decision for Christ, I just didn’t realize at the time how much of a beginning it was, and the many decisions for Jesus I would have to make along the way. Would I follow his way of peace and inclusion? Would I decide to trust God in ever deepening ways? Would I let this radical message of Jesus seep in even when it contradicted my understanding and the understanding of others about what proper religion is?

  This is the constant joy and struggle of following Jesus. It’s the same thing the disciples dealt with. Are we going to decide to be disciples, to live the way Jesus taught us to live? There’s always another decision around the corner.

  The disciples sometimes made the right decision, and sometimes the wrong one. It was kind of a two steps forward, one behind, one step forward, two behind kind of thing. But they kept at it. They knew they wanted to be disciples of Jesus, his followers. They knew that life was in him. So they kept throwing out the nets in his name, and all these years later, we’ve been caught.