When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?”

It’s so up front a question; it so quickly cuts to the heart of the matter that it almost seems to jump off the page. Because the question that Jesus asks of his first disciples before even they are that is as relevant now as it was then. “What are you looking for?” Why are you here? What brings you to this place each Sunday? What drives you to do the things you do on the other six days of the week? What does it mean to you to be a disciple?

In the class I’ve been teaching on Lutheranism, we’re learned two major ideas of Luther. One of those is that we, as humans, can do nothing to achieve our own salvation, that it must and does come from God alone. That Christ in being incarnate and living and dying and rising again, that is what saves us, and not our lifestyle, our good works, or even the rightness or accuracy of our beliefs. That idea has presented us with a challenge, with a question that has been gnawing on all us, teacher and pupil alike. That question is this, if God indeed does it all, why should I do anything? Why should I bother with good works and coming to church and doing all that? In other words, if God does all the work, what then does it mean to be a disciple?

If you’re interested, we’ll address that very question in the class in just a little while. But we’re also going to address it to some degree here and now. Because the second major idea of Luther that we learned is that God shows up in the most unexpected places in life, that he is unpredictable, a God of surprises. And it is no coincidence that as many of us here gathered struggle with this question, this challenge, that our very Scripture texts this Sunday bring to us three stories of discipleship. Three stories that answer our question.

What does it mean to be a disciple?

The first is Isaiah. We’ve been talking a lot about him lately. About how he receives a vision of a world God wishes to create from this one, a perfect world, a world of harmony and peace. In our first lesson, he tells his own story, dedicating a portion of his prophetic work to the work of prophecy itself and his role therein. He says God called him before he was born to this task, to call back the peoples of Israel, the covenant people to God. But he also says that God determined that was not enough for Isaiah to do, so he expanded that call to be a light to all the nations, so that God’s salvation might reach to all the ends of the earth. Tall order, isn’t it? To be chosen by God to live for the world and not yourself.

Our second story is found the opening passage from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. As he does in all the introductions to his letters, he shares a bit of himself. Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, to those who called to be saints, he writes. He does not go into detail, but we know the full story as probably did those Corinthian readers so long ago.

Saul, a persecutor of the church, full of zeal and bloodlust, struck down by a shaft of light on the Damascus Road, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” The man who emerged from that experience changed more than his name. He became among the foremost of the apostles, wrote most of what we have as the New Testament. If it had not been for him and his new zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel among the Gentiles, none of us sitting here would even be here. For he was called to take the good news of Christ to the four corners of the world. Tall order. To be chosen by God to live for the world and not yourself.

And then, of course, John’s version of the calling of the first disciples. A little different version than the one we’re used to with boats, and the “fishers of men” bit that comes to us from the other Gospels. But the characters are still the same: James and John, Andrew and Simon Peter. Called this time from the side of John the Baptist, of whom they had been his disciples. Sent, in many ways, by John to Jesus. “Look, this is the one I was talking about. Go follow him.” He essentially says. And they do and Jesus asks of them the question that began this sermon. “What are you looking for?” Jesus response to their answer is an invitation, “Come and see.” Boy, do they have any idea what they are in for? We know through the lens of history what becomes of them. Simon Peter, the leader of the apostles, the first Bishop of Rome. James, leader of the church of Jerusalem. John, according to the tradition, the writer of this story and the Gospel that contains it. And Andrew, believed to be the first apostle to the Balkan nations and even, in some traditions, to the Scots. All given tall orders. All chosen by God to live not for themselves but for the world.

Three stories of ordinary people, called to do extraordinary things. Each of them changed the world. Each of them lived in service to others.

And so too each of us. We are called as disciples and children of God through our baptisms. And like these other examples, we too are called not to live for ourselves, but for the world around us, for all those who therein. We too have a tall order.

You see, because to be a disciple is to be one who follows, who imitates, who learns from a master, from a teacher. And we who follow Christ see in him one who lives to heal, to teach, to comfort. We see in him one who goes even to the cross to die for the life of the world, for us and for our neighbors. That is our model, that is our legacy, that is our calling. To do as Christ did, to live not for ourselves, but for others. This is what it means to be a disciple. Amen.