Will You Come And Follow Me?

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hymns can be subjective, depending on who is listening to them, someone may think that a particular hymn is beautifully written, and someone else may feel that its dreadful. Choosing Hymns for worship is a minefield, will the congregation know the hymn, will they have a go at it if they don’t, will they find some meaning for them in the words.

It’s the eternal struggle to try to fit the hymns to the theme of the day, and come out the other side without someone complaining because they didn’t like that hymn.

Whenever I sit down to choose them, I work through the different recommendations and try to make choices which will allow everyone to come away from worship edified because of the praise that we have offered.

At the moment in church this is even more difficult because not only can they not be sung, but we may only have one or two during the administration of communion, and on the recorded services, more often than not we just have one at the end, due to the limited library of legally licenced ones that can be used.

But once in a while there is a hymn which splits me down the middle, and today is one of those days, because as I read through the scripture that is assigned to today, the hymn that came immediately to mind was will you come and follow me.

You see I love the words to the hymn, I find them challenging whilst at the same time encouraging, but if I am being honest I really don’t like the musical setting to it, you may agree or disagree, but at the end of the service you can make you own decision.

But why tell you all about the choice of music for today, well its because it helps us to consider some of the themes that this Gospel passage speaks about.

John is detailing the calling of two of the first disciples Phillip and Nathaniel, and before you start shouting at the screen and saying there wasn’t a disciple called Nathaniel, he was referred to in another way in the other three, Bartholomew.

Phillip and Nathaniel were friends, and so the beginning of this scripture is something that any of us would find very natural, one friend seeking out another to share exciting news with them. Of course, it’s all very formal here, but you can almost imagine how the conversation went, ‘Hey Nate we’ve found him’, who? The promised one, he comes from that town Nazareth, Phil what you talking about, Nazareth really? Your having a laugh, buddy if you don’t believe me come and see.

By this point the scene has been set, the challenge now is for Nathaniel to go and see if it’s all true.

As Jesus and Nathaniel meet, beginning of the encounter is replete with symbolic references, which allude to the fact that we see acknowledged when Nathaniel identifies Jesus as Son of God.

First we see that Jesus has already seen Nathaniel, and was able to identify him, demonstrates that Jesus is the good shepherd who knows his flock, The references to Israel, and the honour of that title, coupled with the reference to the fig tree, which is referred to in a variety of places in both the New and Old Testament refer to the stability of the Land, and also that there are traditions of Rabbi’s teaching under fig trees, very apt for the work that Nathaniel is being called to do as one of the first Disciples.

Then finally we see Jesus’ reference to the Jacobs Ladder all the way back in the book of Genesis, where God had promised to bring peace and prosperity to the land. This all took place at Bethel, which was know as the ‘House of God’

Here we see in Jesus’ reference to this that he is in communion with heaven at all times, and that the angels were now creating the link between heaven and earth through the person of Christ, and as John explained at the very beginning of this the first chapter of his gospel ‘The word became flesh and lived among us’

What at first glance seems to be quite a straightforward piece of scripture, is in reality not simply a story about the calling of two disciples, but rather an important initial part of the messiah narrative that John unfolds for us through his Gospel.

Each of Jesus’ encounters with those who he called to become one of the twelve disciples teaches us a little about not only the Character of Christ, but also something about the nature of humanity. Each calling has the power to speak into our own experiences of faith, perhaps even other aspects of our lives.