The Fanatics

A nineteenth-century poet seems to have anticipated the spirit of our time when he wrote:

We live in an Age of half faith and half doubt; Standing at the Temple doors head in and heart out.

In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus says “Follow Me” to Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John. Those first disciples quickly learned that Jesus wanted it all: head in and heart in. No middle-of-the-road, half-way response would do.

When Jesus called people to be His disciples, He didn’t ask them to accept certain intellectual concepts. He didn’t ask them to sign an agreement endorsing certain ideas. He simply said “Follow Me.” To borrow from the “UncleSam” Army recruiting posters. “I want you”: I want all of you: mind and heart, body and soul.

Even later, after the resurrection, when Jesus gave Simon Peter a kind of final examination, it was the same. It was an oral examination in which Jesus evaluated Simon Peter’s commitment to…