Follow me

by Grayson Kirkpatrick, student writer

“Follow me,” naturally invites the question, “Where?” Following implies a destination and a path that leads from a beginning point to that destination. Further, following is different from being sent. The one who is sent goes alone; the follower goes with the one who knows the way. So it is with Jesus’s call to follow. His is a call to join him on a journey with a destination – to follow.

Jesus first said, “Follow me,” to a fisherman named Peter (Matthew 4:19). From then on, Peter followed Jesus wherever he went. But Jesus moved ever toward his own death and expected Peter to follow him there. Jesus gradually revealed to Peter and the rest of his followers that he expected to suffer and die. In response to this revelation, Peter said, “Far be it from you, Lord!” Peter pleaded that Jesus would not go to his death. Peter did not see how death could be the end of this road. Jesus gave a striking response, saying, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matthew 16:23).  Rather than following, Peter had stepped in front of Jesus and tried to lead him away from his path. So, Jesus said, “Get behind me.” In further clarification for his disciples, Jesus stated, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Jesus made it clear that whoever answered his call to follow must move toward the cross with Him.

Jesus walked the road set before himself and his followers, going all the way to the cross and into the grave. He allowed himself to be killed. Three days later, a woman named Mary alerted Peter that Jesus’s body was no longer in the tomb. Peter raced to the tomb to see. Then, he went inside, but he did not find Jesus’s body there.

The destination of Jesus’s journey was not in that tomb. He did not succumb to the finality of death. As Peter later stated, “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it” (Acts 2:24). Jesus journeyed through death and freely stepped out into life. He was raised from the dead! As the “pangs of death” were loosed, death was no longer a destination but instead part of the journey to life.

When Jesus returned to his disciples after his resurrection, he said to Peter, “When you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” This was to show what kind of death Peter would die — death by crucifixion. Jesus then said to Peter again, “Follow me” (John 21: 18-19). Jesus called Peter to follow him even to the same death he endured. Peter took this to heart, saying in his first letter, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (I Peter 2:21). Peter knew Jesus’ journey was his journey as well.

Yet, it was not from the grave that Jesus called Peter to follow. It was from the resurrection. Jesus stood beyond the grave and affirmed his call for Peter to follow. In rising from the dead, he freed Peter to give up his own life. Because Jesus was not held by death, Peter knew that in following him on the journey to the resurrection, death would not hold him either. Peter called this “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (I Peter 1:3).  Peter was sure that if he followed Jesus Christ to death, he would also surely follow him into life. That Peter, when he raced to the tomb on that resurrection morning, did not find Jesus’s body inside was proof that the destination was not death, but life. Standing in everlasting resurrection, Jesus continues to call out, not only to Peter but to anyone who would come after him, “Follow me!”