Here’s the thing. Jesus was weird. Really. Think about it. All of a sudden this guy comes along, spitting in blind man’s eyes (Mark 8:23), talking to tax collectors in Sycamore trees (Luke 19:4-5), and overturning tables in the Temple (Matthew 21:12). Then Jesus takes it a step further and gets really cray-cray. He starts telling everyone to love their enemies, and pissing the Pharisees (aka the religious elite) off by hanging out with prostitutes and tax collectors, and calling them out for all their religiosity nonsense.
And He asks His followers to be just as weird. Think of Simon Peter. He was just a fisherman, but then this Jesus guy comes along. And He says, “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” And here’s the really crazy part…Simon Peter does it! Mark 1:18 says “At once they (Peter, James and John) left their nets and followed Him.” Levi was just sitting at his tax collector’s booth, and Jesus comes by and says “Follow me,” and “Levi got up, left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:28).”
Now, I’m sure Peter and his partners didn’t start their day thinking, ‘I’m gonna give up my career and life style to follow some rabbi no one’s ever heard of.’ And I’m sure Levi wasn’t thinking, ‘today’s a great day to get rid of all my wealth’ (because tax collectors were rolling in dough). Their friends and family probably had some words to say as well. But weirdo Jesus came a-calling, and they responded.
And weirdo Jesus is still calling His followers. That calling is what made one of my friends move to London to be homeless. It’s what made a college kid at my church buy a school bus and start driving kids he didn’t know to youth group. It’s what made dozens of people walk down the aisle and give their lives to Christ at the Christmas services. And it’s what’s calling me to pack everything I own into a backpack and live in poverty for 11 months.
To the rest of the world, all that seems a little weird (or maybe a lot weird). But when Jesus gets involved, things can get a little weird, at least by the world’s standards. So maybe Jesus is calling you to do something weird. It might not be to move across the world, maybe it’s just to move across the room and talk to a stranger. It might not be to buy a bus, but maybe it’s to buy a homeless man dinner. Maybe Jesus is calling you to walk down the aisle and give your life to Him.
