To Follow Christ And Imitate Christ
2nd Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 2:10-16; Matthew 4:18-23
In today's passage of the Gospel, we heard the story about the vocation of the first four apostles, whom Jesus Christ chose from among ordinary people, from among fishermen. They were fishing, and Christ said:
"Follow Me, I will make you fishers of men" (Matthew 4:19).
And indeed: Andrew and Peter (Simon) followed Jesus, they are the sons of Jonah; the two other brothers, the sons of Zebedee, Jacob and Ivan, were also called in the same way. Jesus truly made all of them fishers of people for His Church. They became fishermen for the Lord.
According to tradition, Andrew was the first of the apostles whom Jesus Christ called to the holy mission of salvation, and therefore the Church calls him the First-Called. This is Andrew, who reached the land of our ancestors with a mission of salvation. Travelling along the Dnipro River, he reached the place where Kyiv now stands, and blessed those mountains and foretold that a city would rise there, from which the glory of God would shine and the mission of salvation would spread in all directions. And it came true.
This is the Apostle Andrew, who, apart from other Churches, also founded the Cathedral Church of Constantinople, was crucified on a diagonal cross, in the form of the letter X.
Peter, Andrew's brother, was the first to preach on the day of Pentecost {Acts 2:14-41} about the resurrected Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven. According to his sermon, as witnessed in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, “Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them." (2,41).
Apostle James, son of Zebedee the fisherman, was a steadfast and uncompromising preacher of Christ's faith. He was one of the first apostles who died a martyr's death - the Jewish ruler (king) Agrippa in the year 44, just before Easter, ordered him beheaded with a sword.
Apostle John, the youngest of the apostles, whom Jesus loved the most, to whom he entrusted the care of his Mother (thereby adopting him to his Mother). Apostle John indeed took care of the Blessed Virgin Mary (as stated in the Gospel: "And from that hour that disciple took her to him" - John 19:27). He is an apostle of God's love, who, although he was tortured, was the only one of the apostles to die a natural death. It was he, in addition to his Gospel and two Epistles (there may have been more, but only two have reached us), who wrote The Revelation to Saint John - the prophetic book of the New Testament.
Those mentioned four disciples-apostles of Christ, as well as all the 12, and all the 70 - they all followed Jesus. And after His Ascension, they imitated Him in their activities and mostly ended their lives with a martyr's death. But they are all alive in the Lord; they are all glorified together with the Lord.
Christ's words: "Follow Me..." are still calling us today. Christ does not promise earthly riches or longevity to those who will follow Him, but He promises the Kingdom of God - "The Kingdom within us" here on earth (Luke 17:21), and after death -- eternal life with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven. And He testifies: "By this all will know that you are My disciples, as you will have love among yourselves." (John 13, 35)
We often proudly call ourselves Christians to show our virtue or dignity, but that honorable name obliges us to follow Christ in our lives. We must be aware that the first followers of Christ were mockingly called Christians by their enemies, because they tried to imitate their Divine Teacher among themselves and in relation to other people. (Acts 11,26)
The followers of Christ were not angry at such a name-calling, but accepted it as praise; thereby accepting that name-calling as their name. It obliges us to reveal Christ in our faith, in love for our neighbours, first of all.
It is a mistake to think that we automatically become Christians by the right of baptism in the faith of Christ, as if by some magic. We must, like those first followers of Christ in Antioch, try to live according to the Commandments of Christ - commandments of loyalty and love. Other people, by our way of life, must know that we are Christians, and also true confessors of God - Orthodox Christians.
The Apostle Paul instructs us in the name of God: “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another” (Romans 12:10).
All our daily life should show our evangelical enlightenment in Christ, so that in that life our respect for our neighbours is also shown. The same apostle advises us to "hold on to the love of strangers", but in order to show that love naturally, we must first learn to show it among ourselves. As mentioned above, people will know that we are disciples of Christ, that we are truly His followers.
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.