A Man And His Friends                                                        7/29/45

 

Scripture:  Mark 1: 16-22; 2: 13-15.

 

When I say that I will speak this morning on “A Man And His Friends,” I hope that I do not arouse an apprehension that I may intend to give a “pep talk” on how a man can make, keep, and use friends.  I do not intend to dwell on that thought.

 

I want to begin with a particular man - one who was the oldest son of a highly honored mother.  This man was used to contact with other people, beginning in his own home - for his mother also bore, and cared for, at least six other children.  He had played with, and made friends of, the other children of his neighborhood while growing up.  And he made hosts of friends, as a young man.  I refer, of course, to Jesus of Nazareth.

 

We fall easily into the way of calling Jesus “Our Lord.”  We refer to his friends and followers as “disciples.”  We have learned those words as children in Sunday School, and while reading the Bible in our homes.  And these words are correct enough; but we use them so often that they become stereotyped, and sometimes narrow in our understanding.

 

For freshness and variation, Dr. Frederick W. Norwood has called Jesus’ friends his “confederates.”  “Ask the average person,” says Dr. Norwood, “how many disciples Jesus had, and probably he would say twelve.”  Which answer is not correct.  Jesus had many disciples - many “confederates.”

 

The gospels tell us how, on one occasion, he sent seventy of them out two by two to proclaim the good news.  He had many more, about whom we shall never know - except that they were numerous enough so that the high authorities who considered Jesus an enemy of theirs, dared not move directly against him for fear of those people.

 

The names, even of the seventy, have not come down to us.  We know the names only of those twelve special associates who came to be known as apostles, and the names of a few others.

 

Jesus did choose twelve men with particular care because he wanted them to be near him - people who would give up the anchorage of home and employment to go with him, learning and living and proclaiming the good news wherever he led them.  He chose them because, as Dr. Norwood says, they were especially his confederates.  They had something of the same kind of ideas he had.  They all wanted to do something about bringing the reign of God more powerfully into the world.

 

Jesus chose twelve of them.  They do not seem to have been submitted to any particular test that we can discern.  That is, they did not have to subscribe to some creed or platform, or become members of a particular party.  They did not have to commit themselves to a firm position before becoming Jesus’ confederates; his friends.  In fact, they differed widely, in numerous ways, in their characters and temperaments.

 

Jesus chose Simon, later Peter, who was an eager, enterprising, impetuous man with a gift for leadership.  He chose Simon’s brother, Andrew.  Andrew seems to have been as shy and retiring as Simon was bold.  And Jesus seems never to have tried to make either of them over.  We do not read that he ever said to Simon Peter, “Simon, you are too aggressive.  You ought to be more like your brother, Andrew.”  Nor did he say to Andrew, “Andrew, you are to diffident, too retiring.  You must become more aggressive, more courageous, like your brother, Simon.”

 

Without hesitation, Jesus chose a deliberate, cautious man named Thomas.  Thomas could believe a thing only with difficulty, for he had to have proofs of a fact.  But Jesus seems never to have said, “Thomas, don’t be so full of doubts as you are.”  Instead of saying, “You should have greater faith, Thomas,” Jesus would patiently offer him some proof needed to convince his cautious mind.

 

Another man whom Jesus called was John, who was known as a “Son of Thunder.”  Perhaps he became a vehement exponent of the principle of love in religious life.

 

Jesus chose another man named Judas Iscariot.  Why, in view of what we know Judas later turned out to be?  I do not know; but he must have had a good reason for doing so.  Probably it was because her saw that Judas had the root of the matter in him.  Judas was willing to be a confederate with Jesus.  He wanted, impatiently, to see a better world for man to live in.  Jesus gave him a chance.  And even after Judas missed the chance, and confused the issue, Jesus bore with him.  He called Judas “Friend” even as he approached to betray him in Gethsemane garden.

 

And it seems that Jesus had judged rightly that Judas had the root of the matter in him.  For when Judas realized how desperate was the thing he had done, he repented of it.  It is a melancholy proof of the better side of his nature that he could not bear to live with what he had done, and preferred to fling away the life that he had soiled rather than live with a traitor’s heart.

 

Jesus’ method of calling these men to particularly close association with him was simple.  He walked by a lake where two men were fishing.  They knew their business; how the fish gathered near a warm spring, how one must approach so cautiously that not even a shadow should alarm the fish, how to throw a hand net over the school of fish and then patiently work it to the boat so that the fish should not escape nor the net be broken by mishandling.  Jesus passed by, watched them, and said, “Follow me.”

 

A little farther on, in a cove or inlet along the shore, two other brothers were mending their nets.  Again Jesus said, “Follow me.”  They had been busy at their work.  Now in a moment of half-leisure, they left their nets and followed him.  These men were probably master craftsmen, having others working for them.  They just left the boats and nets in the hands of the others and followed Jesus, but never returned to fishing any more.

 

We are told that Jesus said to a man named Philip, “Follow me,” and Philip followed him.  In the street of a town he saw a man named Levi, later known as Matthew.  The man was a publican, a tax-gatherer, regarded by his fellow Jews as a sort of Quisling, in the pay of the Roman army of occupation, an altogether hated and suspected type of person.  Jesus said, “Follow me,” and Matthew left his work and followed him.

 

There was a young man whom we know only as what the Bible calls him - a rich young ruler - who came to Jesus perplexed with difficulties.  Without resolving those difficulties, Jesus said, “Follow me.”  He must have said to many, “Follow me.”  It is striking and significant.  It would sound egotistic for some men to say that, over and over again; but not so Jesus.  He was assured and confident.  But he was humble, “meek and lowly in heart.”

 

Perhaps Jesus had this to teach: that the only way to communicate moral and spiritual truth is through personal example.  Men may be given uplifting books to read, but they respond only if they are already moral in their hearts and disposed to respond.  But men are often influenced, in spite of themselves, when they see a great and good man do a good and fine thing.

 

We do not lack for moral maxims.  But we are terribly short of moral persons, with energetic appeal!

 

Hundreds of people cry out, “the system is wrong!  Now here is a program that will make everything all right!  We’re going to get organized around this program and change the system.  We may have to be ruthless about it, but our party believes it has to be done if things are ever to be any better.”

 

Jesus must have thought things out very carefully in the thirty years of silent preparation.  He put forward no program, no system, not even a philosophy.  He knew by the time he was thirty, that he could ask people to follow him.  They would never see an example in him of the dirty thing, the mean thing, the cowardly thing.  Through strenuous tests of temptation and hard trial it had been settled.  He could lead men and say, “Follow me.”

 

When Jesus talked to his friends about God, he went out of his way to put his teaching in the language of every day experience.

 

When he told the story of the prodigal son, it was no direct statement about God.  It was something that actually happened in many a household - and still happens in households today where hearts are broken by a willful and wayward son or daughter.  And people would say, when they heard that story, “I know I was like that.  My son nearly broke my heart - and I forgave him.  Can God be like that?”

 

Jesus was so anxious to get people to understand God, through their own experience, that he sometimes went to extremes.  He told the story of an unjust judge who wouldn’t listen to a widow’s plea until she wearied him with her persistence.  Then the widow finally got justice by pestering the judge until he was glad to get rid of her.  Jesus could hardly mean that we are to keep pestering and badgering God until he gets so tired of our appeal that He grants our request to get rid of us.

 

But he had to strike down deeply into the hearts of people to get us all to see that our prayers often have to be lifted again and again and again to test and strengthen the need and the justice and the integrity and the trust of our own hearts.  Jesus would go out of his way to get it home to people that you will find God in your own experience.

 

Men build their philosophies, their systems, their programs.  And organization seems to be the way to get things done.  But it does not determine whether the thing to be organized for is right or wrong.  That lies within the lives of people like you and me.

 

Half of the world has been organized around a lie - so well organized that we have had to choose between the way of struggle and sorrow, or the way of descent to the hopeless moral level of a jungle.

 

The march of humanity is not that of irresistible progress.  Civilization has had its ups and downs through history; its light and its darkness; its dark ages and its renaissance.  If it is our job to live in a time of darkness, we need not lose sight of God for all that.

 

Let us not catalogue the sins of mankind or number them, like so many beads.  Moral virtue lies not in observance or disregard of the ten commandments.  It lies in the spirit that makes a decalogue necessary or unnecessary for you!

 

This world is a spiritual world.  And a man’s final judgment is before the bar of his own soul, because God is present in that soul!

 

When the night is dark, a man needs all the more a star to steer by.  And the great stars will be there, undimmed by thousands of years of storm and stress.

 

If Jesus were walking in our town today, he would not be embarrassed by the war, or other such things of evil and terror.  He must be terribly saddened by it all.  But it is not of  his doing and he is still on the side of love.

 

If Jesus walked up Second Street just as we go from these doors, you would be blessed if the Master man simply looked you straight in the eye and said, “Follow me,” and you, answering back, were to say “Lord, I will follow thee, whithersoever thou goest.”

 

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, July 29, 1945.