“WHEN I GROW UP, I WILL GO THERE”

In what is considered one of the best novels ever written, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad tells the story of a man who goes up the Congo River on behalf of a trading company. As the story begins, Conrad relates that this man had a passion for maps as a child. He would look at a particularly inviting place, put his finger on it, and say, “When I grow up, I will go there.”

Perhaps you have said a similar thing when faced with Christ’s call to be his disciple. In a sermon, Dan Meyer puts our reaction this way: “When I grow up I’ll go there. When I have more faith, I’ll go to these places Jesus is talking about. When I’m a little more convinced I might go there. When I don’t have all of these obligations, distractions, and complications I might go then. “

When Jesus calls us to be his disciples, though, he does not give us the option of waiting until we think we are ready to follow him to the difficult places to which he calls us. Consider these penetrating and well known words in Matthew 16:24-25: “Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

Jesus spoke those words after a pair of dramatic moments with Simon Peter. First Peter makes his confession of Jesus as God’s Son after Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Then Jesus tells the apostles that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and be killed and be raised on the third day. Peter challenges Jesus on this being his destiny and tells him, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Peter was saying, I am not ready for that. Not until I grow up. Then I will go there. But Jesus responded, “Get behind me, Satan.”

Like Peter, we may not want to go to the places God has placed on the map in front of us. We think to ourselves, and may even say to God, “When I grow up, I might go there.” We fail to realize that it is only by going with God to those places on the map where we have never been that we actually grow up and live as his disciples.

In the Disney Pixar movie The Incredibles the middle-aged suburban dad has been living a routine life. He pulls into his driveway to find his neighborhood boy watching him. He asks the boy, “What are you waiting for?” The boy looks back at him, and says, “Something amazing.” The man responds wistfully, “Me too, kid, me too.”

Jesus calls us to something amazing when he says, “Come, follow me.” This is the most amazing invitation we will ever receive. We dare not wait until “we grow up,” but should say yes to it.

“Follow Me” or Follow Me?

The essence of discipleship, the theme we are considering as we explore the Gospel of Matthew in my current sermon series, is responding to Christ’s call when he says “Follow me.” Many people, though, would rather follow me. That is, they would rather follow their own view of who God is and how they want to live. Even Christians have to be careful of falling into that trap.

New York Times columnist, Ross Douthat wrote about such a woman. Elizabeth Gilbert, in 2001 at age 32, had a rewarding job, an apartment in Manhattan, a big new house in the Hudson Valley, and a devoted husband. Five years later at 3:00 AM one morning, she locked herself in her bathroom, weeping over a life she didn’t want anymore, and then fell on her knees in prayer.

Culturally she was a “Christian,” but she was not able to believe that Christ is the only way to God. On the night of her prayer, she addressed herself to “God,” but she had no idea who God is. Her prayer was simple, "I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house.”

Gilbert would eventually hear someone speak back. She said, “It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self …. [And yet], this was my voice as I had never heard it before… How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?"

Fortified by this "religious conversation," she left the husband and the house and the plans for having kids behind and set out into the unknown. Then she started a globe-trotting "spiritual quest" that led to the publishing phenomenon known as Eat, Pray, Love—a book that spent an extraordinary 187 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts.

Gilbert’s story is just another account of a person who “found God” within herself, which is not finding God at all. This has become one of the notions of God that is prevalent in our culture, but it is a false understanding of God.

Those of us who have responded to Christ’s call to “Follow Me” have to be careful that we are not just responding to the god within ourselves (follow me) who is not God at all. Christ’s call to discipleship is a call to follow him on his terms, not our own. Matthew clearly shows us that in his gospel. Continue reading Matthew as we explore it together, and learn how Jesus calls us to follow him.

The Great Adventure

In his book, The Island of Lost Maps, author Miles Harvey shares a sentiment you might share:

In my 30s I spent a great deal of time at the Kopi [a travelers’ café in Chicago] whose walls were adorned with masks from Bali and shelves filled with guides to far-flung destinations. I was then the literary critic for Outside Magazine, a great job but one that was beginning to wear on my patience. You see, the books I read were about people who climbed Himalayan peaks, rode a bicycle all the way across Africa, sailed wooden boats across the Atlantic, or tracked into restricted areas of China. These tales of adventure filled my days and my imagination, and yet my own life was anything but adventurous. The interior of the Kopi coffee shop was ringed by clocks, each one showing the time in some distant locale, and as I watched the weeks ticking away in places like Timbuctu and Juno and Goa and Denpasar, I began to long for an adventure of my own.

Dan Meyer, minister in Oak Brook, IL, opens a sermon from Matthew 4:18-25 that he titled “The Great Adventure” quoting that passage. He then tells that Harvey felt he was acting like a character in a Joseph Conrad novel who said, “When I grow up I will go there.” Then Meyer states the idea of the sermon as: “When Jesus says, ‘Follow me’ it’s the most amazing invitation you will ever get. Say yes to it.”

The story of the four fishermen that Jesus called to follow him in Matthew 4 is about four men who went on a great adventure when Jesus said to them, “Come follow me. Matthew, the author of the Gospel of Matthew, also received the call to follow Jesus and joined that great adventure. Many others during the course of Jesus’ ministry on earth and since have also joined the adventure. Meyer says:

In other words, lots of people from all walks of life and places lay down their tools, get out of their vehicles, release some of their associations, and follow him…. These people from all these places were willing to get up and go after Jesus because they had seen with their own two eyes what Jesus could do with a life put into his hands. They had seen his transforming power.

How about you? Do you want to go on an adventure great than anything you can imagine? Do you want to say with Joseph Conrad “When I grow up I will go there?” Jesus can take you to the place on the map that will change your life.

You get there by following Jesus. That is what the New Testament calls discipleship. There is no better place to learn about it than in Matthew’s Gospel. So we will do just that in the coming months.