Rob has beautiful commentary on this passage where they drop and go with Jesus. Check out the clip at Nooma.com or even his chapter called Dust in Velvet Elvis. A very good, helpful perspective.

The Romans were people of action and they were people with a strong sense of civic obligation. Therefore, Mark is the most action-packed of the four Gospels. Jesus does a lot of miracles, people are going here and there quickly, people are decisive. Jesus’ role as servant is clearly evident. For someone to “immediately” follow when faced with the truth would appeal to the Roman character.

That’s not to say Mark is marketing the Gospel or shading it. It’s just an emphasis he has. Like Pat, I think it would take some time to fully divest oneself of one’s responsibilities. Perhaps it means, they immediately began to take steps to divest themselves. Or it might mean they didn’t fully divest themselves but found a way to follow the Lord more closely, like a lay person finding ways to free up time to take Bible college classes or serve more in the local church or on mission trips.

Something I was curious about is in “Feeling Dumb” Rob Bell talked about how each child is brought up to memorize the first five books and then if they were good enough they could go and memorize the entire hebrew bible and if they were the best of the best they could be some rabbi’s disciple. If they weren’t good enough at some point then they would go and learn their father’s trade. These men may have been those who had the passion, but never had the brains to become one of the “supermen of God” (our world equates intelligence the same way… sad).