Barbara Kingsolver’s marvelous novel The Poisonwood Bible tells the story of Nathan Price, who carries his wife, Orleanna, and their four daughters to the jungles of the Congo. Nathan is a fundamentalist evangelist who plans to save Africa. It doesn’t go well.

The family arrives at the airport to discover that Pan American Airlines will only allow forty-four pounds of luggage per person. Nathan knows to save Africa requires more than forty-four pounds of luggage per person. Pan Am weighs luggage but not passengers, so they begin removing clothing from their luggage and layer. The girls board the plane wearing six dresses each plus raincoats. Their pockets are stuffed with everything from tools to Bibles (Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible, pp. 14–15). They couldn’t leave this stuff behind. Who can blame them?

We all want to get away from home, sometimes. But if you think you might never come back, you’ll try to take as much of home with you as you can.

I think that is why I noticed the nets. They dropped their nets. Just left them behind.

Jesus invites them on a road trip to destinations unknown. They will understand their place and purpose in the world differently. He says follow me, and immediately they drop their nets and follow.

There’s a lot that the story doesn’t tell us. Had they met Jesus before? They probably had questions: Where are you going? How long will this take? Do I have the right shoes?

Mark is silent on these details. So it’s interesting that he takes time to tell us about the nets. They dropped their nets. This doesn’t seem like the kind of detail that the story requires. It would read just as impactfully had Mark told us that Jesus said come and follow me and immediately they followed him. Following seems to be the point. But Mark tells us about the nets.

Maybe it reminds us if we are going to follow Jesus, we will have to leave some things behind. We have to let some things go.

Frederick Buechner had a different experience. Buechner was a Presbyterian pastor whose ministry consisted mostly of writing books. He was the author of thirty-nine books, ranging from fiction to collections of sermons to spiritual memoirs. He once wrote, “To become a Christian sounds like an achievement, like becoming a millionaire. I thought of it more … as a lucky break, a step in the right direction” (Frederick Buechner, Now and Then, p. 4).

For Buechner, faith happens almost by surprise. It’s a lucky break. That’s the grace of it. I understand what he means. But Mark speaks of a more intentional journey, and to really get on this road trip with Jesus, we are going to have to leave some things behind. Some assumptions about ourselves and the world — we will need to let go of them. They dropped their nets. It’s more than simply dropping the tools of their labor. It’s more than simply changing vocation. It’s leaving behind their assumed place and purpose in the world. They were fishermen. Fishing was the whole purpose of the day. And what is a fisherman without his nets? Jesus says, “I want to show you a new you, but you better leave the nets here.”

That’s not easy.

It was more than thirty-five years ago now. I was arranging a garage sale for my mother. She was in her mid-fifties and suffered a disabling stroke. It was no longer wise for her to live alone. She had to downsize. Because of her limitations, I had to choose what to sell. I selected items and carried them through the kitchen into the garage. That meant I had to pass my mother as she sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, and every time I carried something through the kitchen she said, “No, not that.” I would take whatever I had back, find something else. “No, put that back.” I’d look for something else.

I had been at this for over an hour, and the only things that had successfully reached the garage were some old National Geographic magazines, and she was still thinking about them. Finally I said, “Look, this isn’t working. Here’s $40. Go sit in the living room and let me fill the garage. When I have finished you can come and buy back $40 worth of your own stuff. The rest we sell.” “Deal,” she said. I never knew how hard my mother could haggle at a garage sale.

I was young and didn’t have the wisdom to realize what was really going on. I thought we were just downsizing. But she realized that she was dropping some nets, and it took courage. I thought I was taking some old books to sell two for a dollar. She knew she would never read again. She knew I could sell all her serving dishes, but she knew she would never again host a dinner party. What she was leaving behind was the way she had understood herself to be in the world. It was painful, and it required courage.

In some ways, that is what Jesus asks of us — to leave behind some assumptions of who we are in this world. It takes courage.

So why would Jesus ask us to give up what we have assumed to be important about life?

We are in the season of Lent. Traditionally Lent is a time when we focus on what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the cost of discipleship. Our faith is to shape our lives. Faith should influence the choices we make in the world. We are God’s children and are called to live like Jesus lived in this world — it is the source of joy even on hard days.

Sometimes it comes as a lucky break, but more often we have to let go of some things. We have to let go of some injuries. Maybe let go of some dreams. Maybe let go of the way the world defines us and take on a new understanding of what really matters with our days.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship, he says when Jesus calls someone to come and follow, he calls them to come and die. I don’t know if my grandmother ever read Bonhoeffer, but she would agree with him. She was a walking, talking Lenten experience. Her faith was strong, but she was most drawn to this idea of sacrifice.

As a middle-schooler I was a huge Atlanta Braves fan, and one day the Braves were to play the Dodgers on TV — on those days a rare thing. I pleaded with my grandmother, “Can I please watch the game?” “No,” she said. “It’s the Lord’s Day. Not a day for watching baseball.” Evidently I was annoyingly persistent. “Please, please, please.” Finally she said, “OK, you can watch it if you promise not to enjoy it.” Well, in those days the Braves were in the cellar, so it was a promise I could keep.

If discipleship is so hard, why does Jesus ask us to sacrifice what we believe to be important in our lives? It’s disappointing.

Sometimes this walk of faith, this taking up our cross, turning the other cheek, forgiving seventy times seven, this loving your enemy, this being generous and gracious and kind faith — it seems as if Jesus said, “Come, follow me, and let us be miserable.” My grandmother would approve.

Why would Jesus do that? In short, I don’t think he does.

Can I tell you about one of my harder days? It involves a choice I made, and you might have made a different choice, perhaps a more faithful choice, but this is my story. My daughter called and asked if she could come see me. I was at the church; she came after school.

She said, “Dad, I don’t understand why you say we can’t afford it when they say we can.” It was the perfect question. She was talking about college. She had visited about eighteen different schools, and she picked the school of her dreams. I had been saving since she took her first breath. It was my job, as her father, to provide for this basic, but big dream. The day before I had gotten the report from the financial aid office. This school was not in the cards, and I had to tell my daughter that I couldn’t do what she wanted and dreamed of.

She said, “Why do you say we can’t afford it when they say we can?” I said, “Sweetheart, there is something about our family that the school doesn’t understand. And that is one of the ways your mother and I practice our faith in Jesus Christ is we have chosen to tithe 10 percent of our money to the church. The school assumes we will not do that. But it’s important to us. And I am sorry but that means we need to find another school.”

It was a hard day. We both shed tears, me more than her.

My resilient daughter got an excellent education and is a pastor herself now, and when she got engaged she told her husband, “Something you need to know about how our family lives our faith: we tithe, I will too,” she said.

So why does Jesus call us to live our faith in ways that are hard? Bonhoeffer says, “He bids us to come and die.” Or as my grandmother might say, “Come, let us be miserable.”

Well, I don’t think that’s what it really is.

Twenty years ago my friend Brant invited me to go with the scout troop on a canoe camping trip in Quetico, Canada. My son was in the troop, and Brant said it would be a good experience for us to share. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to go. I don’t camp. I said, “You sleep in tents, right?” Yes. “And so we will sleep on the ground?” Yes, you will sleep — if you find a good spot for the tent. “And aren’t there mosquitoes?” Oh, a lot, he said. Sometimes the size of house pets. “And what do you do when it rains,” I asked. If you are like most, he said, you will get wet. He said, but I will teach you how to hang our food in a tree so that bears don’t eat it all. Sounds great.

I love my son and I loved Brant, so I left my common sense behind like abandoned fishing nets and went.

I have been back fifteen times now. I discovered a part of myself in those woods that I didn’t know was missing. I discovered a beauty I didn’t find elsewhere. There was something holy about conversation around a fire when there is nothing else to do but talk. There is a gracious kind of humility that happens beneath the stars or in the face of nature’s strength. There is a rightsizing that makes you feel both humble and significant all at the same time. It takes sacrifice, but the sacrifice is not what captures your attention; it’s the joy.

I think that is why Jesus calls us to follow. It’s a call that never stops and a journey that never ends. But to follow we have to let go of some of who we thought we were and what we assumed life is for.

Now I don’t have time today to say more about what it is we must leave behind, but I imagine you already know that.

Today I just want to say Jesus calls us to follow. Even when it’s hard, it’s important to remember he calls us to live this way for the same reason he does everything else: because he loves us. And he has seen who we can become, and he is dying to show us what that looks like.