SUNDAY SERMON: Is Jesus cool?
Rev. Stephen Baldwin
NEW TESTAMENT: Mark 1.14-20
In college, the chair of our psychology department wrote a column for the student paper one week that asked the question, “What does it mean to be cool?”
And I said to my friend Khelen, “Isn’t that the silliest thing you’ve ever heard? Everybody knows what’s cool.”
And Khelen, being a wise preacher’s kid with a quick wit, said, “Enlighten me, then. What does it mean to be cool?”
I said, “Being cool means…you know, you’re cool.”
She laughed, and I felt like a fool. Some things are hard to define. Like what it means to be cool.
Our professor wrote that being cool isn’t about wearing the right fashions or listening to the right music. Instead, she said being cool is about being authentic. Everybody is different, gifted by God like no one else, and the way to be cool is to be authentically yourself instead of trying to put on a show. That is cool.
Who do you think is cool? Maybe a friend or a popular character? Who is cool and confident?
What about Jesus? Especially in today’s story, he’s the coolest. Authentic. Confident. Self-assured. He knows exactly who he is and seems perfectly comfortable in his own shoes. He knows who he wants on his team, and he doesn’t ask them or propose to them or hope they’ll follow…he tells a group of fishermen follow me, and they do. You’ve got to be cool to pull that off, and Jesus pulls it off flawlessly.
Jesus at age 30 is sure of himself, certain of his ministry, and confident in what to do when he wakes up every morning. And that rubs off on others, doesn’t it? Jesus’ self-assurance leads to greater confidence in the disciples. He calls, and they respond. I so admire that positive, self-assurance.
Jesus has that self-assurance because of what we learned last week, right? When he was baptized, God spoke to Jesus saying, “You are my son, whom I love, with you I am well-pleased.” That mighty affirmation, those positive words, gave him the confidence to go out and live positively. What would it look like if we lived positively?
It would look like Harrison looked last Sunday in church. I’m not sure if you saw him or remember, but he looked…cool. Bed head sticking straight up to the sky. Tattered old sweatpants. A tie-dye t-shirt from a truck stop in Florida with a beaver on the front. A hooded flannel shirt, not buttoned up, so as not to cover up the tie dye beaver.
That morning he got up out of bed determined to get himself ready for church. He did. And when he came downstairs, he didn’t ask Kerry how he looked. Because he knew he looked good and he knew he was ready for church. So you better believe that she didn’t say anything except, “Let’s go to church.”
That’s cool. Confident. Collected. Self-assured. He woke up full of awesome, and nothing would make him be anything else.
Perhaps we all woke up feeling that way when we were seven, but things change over time. Life gets more complex. We become more compassionate and considerate of others. We get burned. We get burnt out. We get off track.
Today’s story in Mark amazes me every time I read it. Even though Simon, Andrew, and James have never met Jesus…even though they didn’t have any reason to have known him personally, though they may have heard about him…even though they had good jobs…immediately, they followed him. Mark uses that word “immediately” often, when the other Gospels don’t, and to me that shows the urgency of Jesus’ ministry. “Immediately” they follow Jesus to fish for people as opposed to fish.
When Simon, Andrew, and James woke up that morning, I’m guessing it was like any other morning. They rolled out of bed, in a simple house around the sea. They didn’t sleep on mattresses in the first century. If they could afford beds, they were wooden frames with rope stretched across, maybe with a mat on top of the rope. They put on the same clothes they wore every other day. Nothing special. Just a day like any other.
How do you think they felt the next day, after they met Jesus? I bet when they woke up after following Jesus, they woke up full of awesome. Feeling like a seven year old again. They woke up energized, excited, ready for the day ahead. They woke up feeling…cool.
Yall are very cool. Amen? You are uniquely created in the image of God, called like Jonah to do things that only you can do.
Life throws lots of curveballs our way that can take that confident, self-assurance from us, but we can always choose to wake up full of awesomeness. Live each day with the confidence of Christ, who calls so that we might answer, who died that we might live, and who is cool so we can be confident in our faith. Amen.
