If You Want to Follow Jesus Travel Light

If you’ve flown anywhere lately, I’m sure you’ve noticed that people bring a lot of stuff onto airplanes these days. Finding space in the overhead bins and under seats is like a human Rubik’s Cube exercise. I was reading about the weird things people try to get through TSA these days; a ringneck snake, a bag of moose feces, and an elk’s pelvis bone. I can’t say I’ve tried carrying on any of these, but I always pack as much as I can cram into my carry-on bag.

I know a guy who was on USAirways flight 1549, the one that went down in the Hudson River in January of 2009. He said after the crash landing, the plane began to fill with water. As people were quickly exiting the plane, one passenger was holding up others by trying to get her bag out of the overhead compartment. Imagine that. You’ve just beaten the odds of surviving a crash landing, your plane is in the process of sinking, and you’re endangering the lives of others by trying to take your baggage with you. My friend said a fellow passenger grabbed the lady’s bag, uttered an explicative to her, and threw it out the door into the river.

When Jesus was at the height of His public ministry, He encountered a lot of folks that wanted to follow Him. He never denied anybody the opportunity to do so. He often took the initiative to invite them to follow Him, but He made it pretty clear that followers must leave their baggage behind.

In Luke’s gospel, we see an example of each. Chapter 9 records a man saying to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied to the man, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” The Message version of the Bible puts it this way: “Are you ready to rough it? We’re not staying in the best inns, you know.” I can imagine Jesus saying something like this: “Are you sure you’re up for this? We’re flying coach, standing room only, with no overhead bins for your baggage. There may be a few crash landings along the way, some of you may not even survive.”

In the same chapter, we see Jesus talking with two other potential followers, both of whom said “yes” to His invitation to follow Him, yet each asked for time off to take care of family business before joining Jesus. We all want to follow Jesus, just on our terms. We prefer first-class, a place for our baggage, and nothing but friendly skies.

But Jesus tells us it doesn’t work that way.

Jesus’ most reiterated message was this: “If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself (Mt 10:39 MSG).” (Here’s the other “lose yourself” passages: Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24; Luke 17:33; John 12:25) In other words, “If you want to get to where I’m going, you can’t bring any carry-on baggage. You can just go ahead and throw that stuff in the river.” Come to think of it, Jesus came to take care of our baggage. He loved us enough not only to help us unpack it, but completely discard it.

Follow Jesus. Travel light. Leave your baggage behind.

Play to win this week in the game that really counts!