Are You Called to Abandon Everything?

I'm still finding the balance in these conversational sermons of how much I should prepare, how much I should leave up to conversation.  About what questions I should expect answers for and which questions need to be left hanging.  Today was a day in which there was more silence as people were thinking than answers, which I think is a good thing at times.  Today's gospel was Mark 1:14-20, in which Jesus' calls his first disciples and they immediately leave their nets, boats and father behind in order to follow Jesus.  


I was struck by the idea that we often don't leave behind everything and more than likely that is not what Jesus is calling us to do to be his disciples either.  And so my questions if Jesus is calling us to abandon everything to follow him requires more thought than a simple yes or no.  


Enjoy the written form, and as always the spoken version was fairly different

What would make you want to drop everything in your life, your career, your family, your home, in order to pursue something unknown? 

That is basically what Jesus was asking of his disciples, Simon, Andrew, James and John.  “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”  And with those words they drop everything and left their boats, their family (including their father still sitting in the boat), their entire lives behind. 

Don’t you wish in some way that Jesus can come to you and in an instant you would be willing to leave everything to follow him?  But isn’t that scary as well?  We don’t like to leave our lives behind and go entirely into the unknown.  Most of the time when people move today it is because of school or a job, or a loved one – there is something known on the other side of that move.  Yes occasionally it is just a dream – the dream of making it big in Hollywood or the dream of becoming a music star.  But even then the dream becomes the known. 

But for these 4 and the 8 other disciples that will follow them, there is completely unknown on the other side of Jesus’ invitation – Where are we going?  When we will get there? Who will we meet?  Why are we doing this? What are we going to do? 
The only answer they have is that Jesus will make them fish for people, whatever that means. 

Why do you think the disciples, left everything to, followed Jesus? 

Is Jesus calling you to abandon everything to follow him?

How is Jesus calling us to follow him? 

We don’t need to abandon our lives to follow Jesus – in fact Jesus doesn’t ask them to abandon their boats, the disciples do that on their own.  Jesus was calling them to be who they were, to see what they have and to do what they were called to do to the glory of God.  And that is what Jesus is inviting us to do.  Who are you?  What do you have?  What are you called to do?  Who are we as Bethlehem?  What do we have?  What are we called to do?  And how do we do it to the glory of God?