Tag: discipleship

Discipleship and the New Creation, John 1:29-42 (Ordinary 2 Epiphany 2 Year A)

John 1:29-42

I once said of John’s Gospel that John won’t settle for one meaning of a word when ten will do. It’s a Gospel packed with symbolism, even in the literal stories.

And that’s true in our passage today, from the very first words of it: ‘The next day’ (verse 29). There is a whole series of references in the first two chapters of his Gospel to time: this is the first of three times John says ‘The next day’ (also in verses 35 and 43). So they are days two, three, and four of a week.

Then chapter two opens with ‘On the third day’, a phrase that has meanings all of its own when you know about the Resurrection. But if you add it to the first four days we have a week in the life of Jesus.

Now is John just showing us what a typical week in the ministry of Jesus was like? No. A Gospel that has begun with the words ‘In the beginning’ and then alludes to seven days is telling us that these are not seven days of creation, but seven days of re-creation, as Jesus has come to make all things new. These stories are telling us some of the ways in which Jesus brings salvation by making the old, decaying, sin-afflicted creation new.

In today’s reading, we see the part that discipleship plays in the new creation. We see two gifts God gives us, and two responses he calls us to make in order that we may be true disciples of Jesus.

Of the two gifts the first is the Lamb of God. Twice in our reading John the Baptist tells his disciples, ‘Look, the Lamb of God’ (verses 29, 36). Of course, by ‘Lamb of God’ he means Jesus.

And in the first of those two references, John the Baptist goes further:

‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’

‘Takes up the sin of the world’ is arguably a better translation: Jesus the Lamb takes up the sins of the world like he takes up the Cross. He takes them up onto himself. The very thing which has been wrecking creation, namely sin, is taken out of the way by the One who will die at the time of the Passover lambs. Instead of Israel being passed over for death because her homes were marked with the blood of Passover lambs in Egypt, now anyone marked with the blood of the Lamb of God is passed over, too.

Not only are they forgiven, but their sin is removed because the Lamb of God has taken it up. This is the first gift of a discipleship for a new creation. People are made new as sin is taken up from them by Christ.

‘If anyone is in Christ – new creation!’ wrote the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians. We are made new at the Cross, and creation is taken in the direction of newness rather than decay by the removal of our sins.

What is the application for us? Well, obviously praise and rejoicing. But we will come specifically to application in the two responses in a few moments’ time.

The second of the two gifts is the gift of the Spirit.

32 Then John gave this testimony: ‘I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptise with water told me, “The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.” 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.’

Put simply, the Holy Spirit is permanently with Jesus and Jesus will give the Holy Spirit permanently to his disciples.

If the first gift, Jesus the Lamb of God, removes sin from us and from creation, then the second gift, the Holy Spirit, enables us to live in newness of life following that. The Holy Spirit brings the power to live like the new creation is here.

But of course we know that’s a battle. Paul has a wonderful passage on this in Galatians chapter 5 where he talks about living in the flesh versus living in the Spirit. ‘Flesh’ here is not our bodies but our sinful human nature that does not want to do the will of God. He says, you won’t win the battle just by keeping the Law, the religious rules. It’s no good just applying willpower, because you will fail. Instead, he says, you crucify the flesh as you live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit.

So how do we live by the Spirit who has been given to us? By adopting lifestyles that are hospitable to the Holy Spirit. Historically, Methodists have called these the ‘means of grace’. These days, Christians more often call them ‘spiritual disciplines’ or ‘spiritual practices.’ A church leader from Portland, Oregon named John Mark Comer has a course to help groups of Christians learn and practice the disciplines so as to be open to the Spirit. It’s called Practicing The Way. The course teaches each practice over a four-week period, and that includes putting it into practice. Were I remaining here longer I would be introducing this big time, but instead I commend it to you for personal study and house groups. (It’s free of charge.)

These, then, in brief, are two gifts of God that work to bring in the new creation. We have Jesus the Lamb of God who removes all the old creation sin to give us and the world a new start. And we have the Holy Spirit, who helps to live in a new creation way.

But I also said there were two specific examples of our response in the passage. What are they?

The first of the two responses is being wih Jesus.

When John the Baptist identifies the Lamb of God for a second time, two of his disciples leave him to follow Jesus, and the earliest expression of that following Jesus is wanting to see where he is staying (verses 35-39). In other words, they want to be with Jesus.

If you are going to follow someone you had better get to know them, and that’s what happens here. Sure, there is a lot of work in the world with which the Christian needs to get on with, but none of that kind of following Jesus makes any sense unless we have spent time with him, getting to know him and his ways.

That’s why you can’t choose between prayer and action as a Christian. Prayer feeds action. We need time with Jesus and then time in the world. Some people disparage prayer as ‘wasting time with God’, but it’s the best waste of time you can ever fritter away.

How might we do this? Don’t just speak to him, listen as you also read the Scriptures prayerfully. Learn not only to be alert for what he wants you to do, but also be open to him disclosing his heart and his passion to you.

You can be with Jesus on your own. You can be with him in the company of a small group or of a congregation. It’s best to be with him in all of those permutations.

But whatever you do and however you express it, make sure that spending time with Jesus is a priority, because it sets you up for following him in the world. And it gives you the agenda for your part in God’s new creation.

The second of the two responses is bringing people to Jesus.

40 Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41 The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah’ (that is, the Christ). 42 And he brought him to Jesus.

We don’t read much about Andrew in the Gospels, but on those rare occasions when he does become centre-stage in the narrative he’s often bringing people to Jesus. As well as this incident, he also brings the boy with the five fish and two loaves to Jesus, and he brings some Greeks who want to see Jesus.

Andrew is the quiet evangelist. Not for him the crowds to teach and preach to like Jesus. But he knows he has encountered someone special in Jesus and he wants other people to know. He doesn’t always know a lot, but he knows enough to say, ‘We have found the Messiah’ and encourage others to try him out, too.

What Andrew does (and quite consistently here) is like the modern-day Christian who knows that Jesus would make a difference in the life of a friend and invites them to come to church.

Simple invitations. Not grand sermons. Not great intellect. Just someone who has had a transforming experience of Jesus Christ and realises that many people need him. This is the chance for others to find who can release them from the deathly habits of the old creation and bid them come into the new creation.

Conclusion

From ‘In the beginning’ at the opening of Genesis to ‘In the beginning’ at the opening of John’s Gospel: we jump from creation to new creation.

How this world needs to be made new. Disciples whose old ways of sin have been lifted off them by Jesus the Lamb of God and have been given the powers of the new creation in the Holy Spirit are part of Jesus’ plan to make all things new. We can get our bearings for following Jesus from being with him, and we can invite others into his saving presence so that they too might be renewed and signed up for the work of God’s kingdom.

It therefore just remains to ask: what part is each of us playing?

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Discipleship 101, Luke 17:5-10 (Ordinary 27 Year C)

Luke 17:5-10

There is a controversial personality type test called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Broadly speaking, it locates a person in one of sixteen different personality types.

And I once came across a document that contained a one-line prayer for each of the sixteen types[1]. There is someone I know for whom the prayer would be

Lord, help me to relax about insignificant details beginning tomorrow at 11:41.23 am.

Someone else I know would probably own this prayer:

God help me to take things more seriously, especially parties and dancing.

And there is someone else I am close to for whom I think their prayer would be this one:

God, help me to keep my mind on one th-Look a bird-ing at a time.

I suppose you want to hear mine? I’m not sure I should tell you, but it’s this:

Lord, keep me open to others’ ideas, WRONG though they may be.

When I read today’s passage, though, I had a sense it was like that ‘God, help me to keep my mind on one th-Look a bird-ing at a time’ prayer.

Why? It flits from one thing to another. It starts with the subject of faith but before you know it, the passage is about servanthood. And even within the parable about the servants, you start off as the master and end up as the servant. Look, a bird!

Our problem is that the Lectionary has taken a chunk out of context. These verses belong in a part of Luke’s Gospel where discipleship is being discussed. Luke hasn’t necessarily ordered the material chronologically here, he has simply collected some of Jesus’ basic teaching on what it means to be a disciple.

So you could say that today’s reading is part of a Discipleship 101 course. This is an introduction to discipleship. It’s discipleship basics. And the two basic elements of discipleship taught here are faith and servanthood.

Firstly, then, faith:

5 The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’

6 He replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it will obey you.

Just taking these verses as they stand, the apostles ask for more faith and Jesus says, well you’ve just got to start exercising the small amount of faith you already have.

I think that’s important. Some of us just sit there waiting for God to increase out faith when Jesus tells us to get on with the faith we already have and if we put that into practice then things will happen.

In other words, you don’t build up muscle without exercise. So exercise the faith you have, even if it doesn’t seem like much, and over time it will grow.

As the missionary pioneer to China, Hudson Taylor, put it:

You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God.[2]

For some of us, it is time to get out of the pews and start putting our faith in action. We have that ‘faith in a great God’, for we believe amazing things about our God. It is time to take what we hear on Sunday morning and put it into practice on Monday morning.

All the stuff about a mulberry tree being uprooted and planted in the sea is more of Jesus’ cartoon language to make a point. One writer puts it this way:

The best analogy I have heard is that faith is like a tow rope used by one car to pull another car up a hill. If the second car won’t move, then it is no good attaching a stronger rope; what matters is the vehicle the rope is attached to! In a similar way, it is not the strength of our faith that is the issue; the question is, who is our faith placed in?[3]

So you have to take the handbrake off in the second car! Even if you don’t need a tow rope to move a car, you still have to take the brake off and start moving if you are to steer the car.

For us, this means we need to get on with those basic actions of faith and not just sit around waiting for something magical to change us. Only when we start moving with the actions of faith will our faith move and grow.

In fact, although as I said Luke puts a lot of different pieces of Jesus’ teaching together in this part of his Gospel, there is a real possibility the apostles’ request for increased faith relates to what has come immediately before our passage today. For you could translate their words not so much as ‘Increase our faith’ as ‘Give us this kind of faith’. What kind of faith? It must be what immediately precedes it.

So what does come straight before the apostles’ words? The answer is some teaching of Jesus on what to do when people sin against us (verses 3-4). First, says Jesus, you rebuke them. Jesus wasn’t a doormat! There’s nothing wrong in saying to somebody, you wronged me. Then, if they repent, you forgive them. And even if they continue to sin but continue to repent you still go on forgiving them.

Well, the apostles realise, I think, that to rebuke someone for their sin but then forgive them when they are repentant requires more faith than they presently have. We know a couple of them quite fancied calling fire down from heaven on opponents, and we know Peter wielded a sword in Gethsemane. They know they need more faith in order to forgive. And Jesus says, you have a little bit of faith. Start with that. As you exercise it, that faith will grow.

Take the handbrake off. Begin to move.

Where is God calling us to release the brakes on our faith? Is it in forgiveness? Or is it in some other area?

Secondly, servanthood:

So – what do we make of Jesus’ little parable about the servant who works when his master is away and cannot rest when the master comes home?

Let’s put aside all our Downton Abbey images about the team of servants downstairs, because this single servant in Jesus’ story does everything. One moment he is doing the physical labour of a farmer – either ploughing or shepherding – and then when the master comes home, he is both the butler and the chef. That is one demanding job description!

So at first hearing it sounds like a recipe for relentless, hard work.

And not only that, what do we make of the conclusion where Jesus says that servants should simply say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty”? How does that go down with someone who has low self-esteem? Isn’t that contradictory to all the emphasis on the outrageous love and grace of God that we saw only two chapters earlier in the Parable of the Prodigal Son?

It’s important to recognise that Jesus is addressing a different concern here. Jesus is making sure that we don’t enter into Christian discipleship as if it’s a ticket to prosperity and status, let alone celebrity. No Christian belongs on a pedestal. Only Jesus does.

The point is this: we have a simple calling as disciples. It is to do what pleases our Master, Jesus. In Ephesians 5:10, Paul tells his readers to ‘find out what pleases the Lord’ – with the assumption that if they have found out what pleases him, they will then do it. That is our calling here, in today’s reading, according to Jesus. In a world where we are encouraged to please ourselves, our goal as Christians is to please Jesus.

We have four Gospels that tell us what pleases Jesus. There are plenty of things we can get along with, many of them the commonplace actions of everyday life with the important rider of how we go about them in contrast to other people. It isn’t that difficult to know a lot of the things that please him.

Perhaps our problem is best stated by Mark Twain. He said it was less the parts of the Bible that he didn’t understood that troubled him, and more the parts that he did understand. I suspect it’s like that for many of us with the teaching of Jesus. There are some very plain and challenging elements to his teaching that we wished said something else so that we didn’t have to comply. But they don’t.

Does any of us, then, face a dilemma where if we’re honest the choice is between claiming our own rights or privileges or status on the one hand and pleasing Jesus on the other? For me, I remember a friend of mine who told me he knew he couldn’t offer for the ministry until he was married. So I thought, I won’t answer that call until I’m married. But God wouldn’t let me put conditions on how I responded to what he wanted of me.

Do any of us say things like that to Jesus? I’ll only do x for you if you do y for me. We don’t get to set the terms. Because we follow One who gave up all those rights and privileges he had as the eternal Son of God to serve and to bring salvation. It is wrong for us to cling onto status in preference to serving Jesus.

In conclusion, then, this basic course in discipleship is one where Jesus issues two simple but important challenges to us.

Firstly, we need to stop waiting for God to dispense the spiritual equivalent of fertiliser on our faith if it is to grow. Instead, we need to exercise our faith muscles if we want our faith to grow. We need to get moving in faith if we are to get up to speed.

Secondly, we have a simple mission in life which is to find out what Jesus likes and then to please him. We cannot allow our pride to get in the way. The call to be servants is paramount, and it shapes everything we do.

How are we doing with our discipleship basics?

[1] https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/mbprayers.html

[2] https://quotefancy.com/quote/1491446/James-Hudson-Taylor-You-do-not-need-a-great-faith-but-faith-in-a-great-God

[3] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/does-jesus-treat-us-as-good-for-nothing-slaves-in-luke-17/

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From Crowd Member To Disciple, Luke 14:25-35 (Ordinary 23 Year C)

Luke 14:25-35

Last week on the video and then in person at Knaphill (in front of my new Superintendent Minister) I said that a statement on the Methodist website claiming to sum up the good news was a half-truth at best. The words were,

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

I said that wasn’t the good news according to Jesus, who tended to say things such as ‘Repent and believe the good news’. Yes, it’s true that God takes the first step in loving us before we ever deserve it, but if it is to mean anything we need to respond. And that can be costly.

We see something similar in today’s reading. Here there is a crowd travelling with Jesus but he says that if you want to become a disciple, there is a price to pay.

And that’s a clue. The issue is, am I in the crowd or am I a disciple? To be in the crowd you just have to hear the attractive message that God loved us before we ever loved him and be intrigued. But if you want to be a disciple, then you have some big decisions to make in response to that love.

The story is told of a child who asked, “Mummy, do all fairy stories end with the words ‘And they all lived happily ever after’?”

Mum replied, “No, some end with the words, ‘When I became a Christian all my problems disappeared.’”

What do we need to weigh up if we are to be a disciple, rather than a crowd member? Three things:

Firstly, the Cross.

26 ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Carrying the cross is paralleled with hating your own life. Because ‘carrying our cross’ doesn’t mean enduring whatever pain comes our way through life, it means being on the way to die. In Jesus’ time, someone carrying their cross was on their way to execution. Their life had effectively ended.

I think it was Winston Churchill who said there was a difference between something that was worth living for and something that was worth dying for. And a politician of a very different hue from Churchill, namely Tony Benn, took this further when he said that he preferred those who had a belief worth dying for to those who had a belief they thought was worth killing for.

And I wish I didn’t have to say this, but that is what Jesus says. Being his disciple involves being willing to die for our faith.

Of course, we frequently remark on how grateful we are that we don’t have to face that choice in our society, and we certainly should be grateful. For in one sense we are a minority, an abnormality. Historically and in the present day there are so many societies where faith in Jesus and in his teaching is seen as a threat that millions of our brothers and sisters live with this reality on a daily basis.

Each week I receive an email from Christian Solidarity Worldwide in which they urge Christians to pray and act for those suffering for their faith around the globe. In the last week we have been praying for Christians in Pakistan who are falsely accused of blasphemy against the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a crime that carries the death penalty. People with petty disputes against someone try to invoke this law.

And we have also been praying for those who have been forcibly ‘disappeared’ by government forces or terrorists around the world. These have included Malaysia, Peru, Nigeria, China, and other places. Some of these people have been missing for years.

Is our faith worth dying for?

Secondly, counting the Cost.

Here is a quotation from the tourist guide to St John’s College, Cambridge, referring to its magnificent chapel:

The 19th century chapel was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, apart from the tower which was an afterthought made possible by a former member of St John’s called Henry Hoare, who unfortunately died before he could pay for it all!

Similarly, Jesus talks about working out whether you can afford to pay for a tower before you build it, or a king calculating whether he can afford to wage war against another king. He concludes,

33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

There is going to be a cost if we decide to follow Jesus. Although John Wesley found that some of his converts became better off because they gave up spending money on worthless and unhealthy things, nevertheless the way of Jesus has a cost.

It will call us to be more generous with people in need.

It will sometimes have a negative effect on our popularity, because people will mock Jesus and anyone who follows him.

It may have a cost in the world of work or even a social organisation where following Jesus may involve taking an ethical stand. We might have promotion blocked. We might not be able to hold office.

It may have a cost when family members or friends think we are crazy and dissociate themselves from us.

So, Jesus says, if you’re going to move from the crowd to the disciples you’d better count the cost.

Right now, many of us are counting the cost quite literally as we face a level of inflation that we haven’t seen for decades and wonder what the coming winter has in store for us. We are trimming the fat from our budgets, and cutting our energy use as much as we can. These are sensible things to do.

And if we do that in the economic world, should we not also do it in the life of the Spirit? What will we need to give up in order to follow Jesus?

Thirdly and finally, the Commitment.

What Jesus says at the end about salt losing its saltiness (verses 34-35) is a matter of commitment, not chemistry. As one scholar puts it:

The final saying about saltiness makes less sense to us than to Jesus and his audience, since we cannot quite imagine salt becoming unsalty. But salt from the Dead Sea was in fact a mixture of all sorts of things, salt itself only being one ingredient. If the salt crystals themselves were dissolved away, then the remaining residue would be useless, fit for nothing.[1]

So what is Jesus saying to us when he warns us not to let the salt lose its saltiness? He’s saying, don’t let your faith in Jesus get dissolved in the wider culture. It’s a call to retain a commitment to our distinctiveness as Christians.

As faith in Jesus began to spread across the Roman Empire, there were certainly situations where the temptation before the disciples was to dissolve their commitment in order to have an easier or a quieter life. One example was that under Roman law, Judaism had some special privileges which were not extended to the followers of Jesus. If they wanted an easier life, they could roll back all their emphasis on Jesus and just say they were good Jews. That’s what the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament is all about, and it’s why the writer reminds them of the supremacy of Jesus.

Or another temptation was when good Roman citizens, whatever their religion, were enjoined to burn a pinch of incense to the emperor and say the words, ‘Caesar is Lord.’ Surely just saying that once every now and again would be harmless? But it was a denial of who Jesus was, so to do it would be to dissolve their Christian faith. They had to resist, whatever the cost.

Today we face our own temptations to dissolve our commitment to Jesus so that we fit in with society. It can come in various forms, urging us to change our attitudes to money and possessions, to career and ambitions, to sex and relationships.

And sometimes people in the church tell us that the best way to reach people today for Christ is to adapt our faith to today’s standards. But given what Jesus says here about the risk of salt losing its saltiness, we have to say that such a strategy is spiritual suicide. Jesus calls us to a distinctive commitment.

Conclusion

You know, I wrote this sermon with a heavy heart. Not another one where I’m talking all about the cost and the sacrifice of following Jesus? Surely there is some good news somewhere rather than having to proclaim something that can sound so austere?

But the reality is our own culture is moving further and further away from Christianity as its basis. We do need to be aware of dangers that may soon stalk us.

But beyond all that is that this call to costly commitment is only in the light of the costly commitment Jesus gave to us. It does us no harm to remember the Gospel message that Jesus gave up the glory of heaven for an obscure life and death on the Cross.

May the Holy Spirit grant us courage when the only response of gratitude we can show is one that involves us paying a high price.

[1] https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/the-costly-grace-of-following-jesus-in-luke-14/

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Jesus In Love Divides Us, Luke 12:49-56 (Ordinary 20 Year C 2022)

Luke 12:49-56

On the home page of the British Methodist Church you can currently find these words displayed prominently:

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

And I’d like to ask the author of those words whether they had read today’s Gospel passage. Because the best we can say for such words is, they are a half-truth.

With a certain sense of alarm at certain trends in our church and elsewhere, I have mischievously entitled today’s sermon ‘Jesus In Love Divides Us.’ And yes, that is a play on the report about sexuality that was called ‘God In Love Unites Us’ – a title that portrayed an utterly forlorn hope.

Fire on earth. Not peace but division, says Jesus here.

And perhaps the stark things Jesus says in our passage today are all the more shocking when you go back to the early chapters of Luke’s Gospel. When he is born in Bethlehem, the angels proclaim peace. When Jesus preaches at Nazareth, he says he has good news for the poor.

Yet here is Jesus not so much preaching good news as bad news! What do we make of it?

Firstly, Jesus is preparing his disciples for rejection.

Don’t misunderstand me, Jesus is good news. In his own Person he embodies God’s Kingdom. He brings the forgiveness of sins. He gives value to people who are treated as worthless by society. He brings ultimate purpose to life. He conquers death. Even Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak haven’t promised those things!

But – not everyone accepts that message, and not everyone likes it. We know the reaction of many leaders in society to Jesus when he was on earth. Was he popular with them? Largely, no. He was a threat to them. They plotted against him. They colluded to have him put on a Cross.

And Jesus warned his followers that similar things could and would happen to them. In this passage his ‘baptism’ may well be his baptism of suffering at the Cross. The division of families is because some will follow Jesus and others will not. Sometimes in church circles we make the family into an idol, but Jesus says following him is more important. It is not that we deliberately break up families as some religious cults do, but it is to say that deciding about Jesus is an unavoidably divisive thing, and pain may come our way.

Now when we ask why people are rejecting Jesus, we sometimes get into the question of what is wrong with the church. And to some extent we should think about that. There can be things about us that give people a bad impression of Jesus, and we need to address them. I have said much about this in the past.

But we must also see that people reject Jesus because his ways are a challenge to their self-centred living. I was reading a discussion about a magazine article where twelve church leaders had been asked how we respond to continued church decline. Basically, all of them in their different ways berated the church for what was wrong with it.

But one person said this:

I don’t think there is a problem with the church. The issue is with a self-righteous, materialistic society that has turned its back on God and is largely only interested in spirituality in a flesh-centred, personal-development sort of way. What we need to do is stay faithful to Christ through this difficult and challenging time.

I wouldn’t say there’s no problem with the church, but I would say let’s be realistic about how much rejection of Christianity there is in our culture. People sometimes disguise it with high-handed moral words, but in a lot of cases, the reason people say no to Jesus is because they don’t want to give up control of their lives to him. They are much happier in a me-centred world, but as we know, Jesus won’t allow that.

Although we see heart-warming stories of kindness and love in our society too, we are generally surrounded by people whose major life decisions are about themselves and their personal happiness, rather than the serving and self-giving love of Jesus and his kingdom. So we should not be surprised when our Jesus message and our faith is rejected.

So if you have done all you can to be faithful but are still not seeing things turn for the better, then understand that at times in history the church goes through phases like this. It’s a tough thing to say and it’s far from an excuse to be casual. Because what we need to do is ask ourselves, are we being faithful to Jesus and his teaching? If we are, then we are doing the right thing, and we leave the consequences to God.

Secondly, Jesus is preaching a bigger Gospel.

Let’s go back to that slogan on the Methodist website:

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

I said that at best it was a half-truth. What’s right with it and what’s wrong with it?

What’s right with it is that God’s love is offered to us without us deserving it, and before we ever made any attempt to love God ourselves. ‘While we were still sinners, Christ died for us,’ said Paul in Romans 5. God makes the first move in salvation. It all comes from him. Salvation is not of our making. It’s not something we deserve or earn.

But what’s wrong with the statement? Well, think about how Jesus himself proclaimed what the Gospel writers call the ‘good news’. His good news message was ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’ There is good news that doesn’t emanate from us or rely on us. The good news in first century terms is that God is on the throne, not Caesar. In our terms it is that God is on the throne, not Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden, or anyone else you care to name.

But because the only wise and compassionate God is on the throne of the universe, we need to make a response. Because God reigns over all, we need to respond by aligning our lives with his will. That’s why Jesus said to the first disciples, ‘Follow me.’ Are you going to go my way, asks Jesus? We have a choice to make.

In our tradition, John Wesley started a movement that stressed how the Gospel was available to all people, and he welcomed enquirers. But he distinguished between those who were exploring the faith and those who were committed to Christ.

So when we sing hymns like ‘Let Us Build A House’ where each verse ends with a rousing line, ‘All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place,’ we must remember that is true for people exploring the faith. But when it comes to responding to the welcoming love of God, there is a commitment to be made that involves offering the whole of our lives. Anything less than that misrepresents the message of Jesus.

In all our talk of being inclusive, we must never lose sight of this challenge. It’s the old adage that I’ve often quoted before: God love us just as we are, but he loves us too much to leave us as we are.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus is warning about the implications of the Gospel.

What is all that talk about interpreting the signs of the times? Why does Jesus say to the crowds they are good at weather forecasts but not at understanding the times in which they live?

Well, it’s not the first time he’s accused the crowds of just wanting a sign. Now, he says, there is a sign before you but you don’t understand it. Yet you need to.

The sign they can’t see or interpret is that of the divisions that Jesus brings. He is the real deal. He is all that he claimed to be. He is all that the religious leaders feared he was, and for which they hated him. It’s no good thinking he’s just another teacher. Nor is it enough to think he is a prophet.

In other words, as Hughie Green used to say all those years ago, it’s make your mind up time. How we react to Jesus is critical. We cannot ignore him. We cannot patronise him by saying what a nice chap he was. We cannot say he was a great teacher – and then not follow his teaching. The sign that Jesus in love divides us points us to the fact that we must respond one way or the other to Jesus.

How do we respond positively to him? By turning from our selfish ways – and that’s a lifelong task – and following him. That following him will involve so much more than an hour on Sunday. It will mean learning from him as his apprentices and putting what we learn into practice. It will mean self-denial rather than the self-fulfilment that the world (and some of the church!) preaches.

It takes all that we are and all that we have. Allying ourselves with Jesus is not a hobby or a consumer decision. It is life and death, nothing less.

And among those who do not share our willingness to say yes to Jesus will be those who will reject us, as we noted in the first point. We should not be surprised. Our enthusiasm to be inclusive must always be tempered by this.

So – back to where we began.

God loves you unconditionally, no strings attached. That’s the good news.

Really? These words can never be a full statement of the good news. They might be the beginning, but we must never forget the challenge that Jesus brings and the cost it entails as we are divided into those who will follow him and those who will not.

And while we count the cost of discipleship, perhaps someone will have a word with the Methodist media team.

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When Someone Says No To Jesus, Luke 9:51-62 (Ordinary 13 Year C, 2022)

Luke 9:51-62

What should we do when people say ‘No’ to Jesus? Or maybe they don’t say a clear-cut ‘Yes’?

It’s a question that troubles many Christians. Sometimes that is because the person saying ‘No’ is a loved one.

Our reading from Luke today deals with that issue. Both parts of the reading are relevant to this question, both the Samaritan villages that do not welcome the disciples, and the three people who in Jesus’ eyes display inadequate commitment. Each of the two parts says something distinctive about how we respond.

Part 1: Judgement Is Above Our Pay Grade

As Jesus sets out for Jerusalem, he sends messengers ahead of him, but despite this in one Samaritan village they do not welcome him (verses 51-53). Imagine civil servants and royal equerries being sent to a town ahead of a visit by the Queen, doing all the donkey work, then the Queen arrives and people throw bad eggs and rotten tomatoes at her. It’s a bit like that.

You can understand James and John asking Jesus, ‘Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?’  (Verse 54)

You can understand their reaction all the more when you remember that elsewhere in the Gospels Jesus had a nickname for those two. In Mark 3:17, he called them ‘sons of thunder.’ What does that say about them? Were they like first century Hell’s Angels, riding into the village in their leathers and on their Harley Davidsons? Were they more like punks, spitting at people they didn’t like? It’s not a flattering nickname, and a desire to call down fire from heaven on an unwelcoming village seems perfectly in step with the name.

So if you thought of John as the gentle apostle who wrote about love, think how much he was transformed over the years!

And surely to reject Jesus is to reject salvation? So isn’t judgement the natural corollary? Wasn’t there a logic to what James and John suggested?

Perhaps we can identify with them more than we might easily admit. Think of a time when you were rejected. Did you have unworthy thoughts inside you about the people who did that to you?

Or remember a time when one of your children was treated badly by someone. What did you want to do to the perpetrator? You might not have said it out loud, but somewhere inside you there was probably a rage against that person, and you began to imagine what you would like to do to that person if you have the guts and if you thought you could get away with it.

I will confess to you that I am like that. You may have me down as a placid character, but don’t anyone dare mess with my children, even though one is now an adult and the other will be in a matter of weeks. I sometimes think I could write the script of an 18-rated film if I followed all my darkest imaginings.

But Jesus rebukes them (verse 55) and he and the disciples move on to another village (verse 56). We don’t know what Jesus says in his rebuke, but we can probably infer.

We know that Jesus spoke clearly about God’s judgement at the end of time. If I recall correctly, all but two references to Hell as a consequence of judgement in the Bible are on the lips of Jesus. He didn’t mince his words. Yet he didn’t endorse what James and John said. Instead, he moved his disciples on elsewhere.

I think the inference is very clear. We may indeed be upset, but let us leave judgement to God and move on. This is not a way of making excuses for people, but it is to say that judgement in the hands of God will be righteous and holy. In our hands it is imperfect at best, and at its worst descends into naked revenge.

Think for a moment: we know that God is holy and God is loving. What better character could there be to exercise judgement than the One who perfectly embodies those qualities? Do we measure up? No.

When someone we know rejects Jesus, or rejects us because of Jesus, then we leave the judgement to God. We pray a prayer of relinquishment, handing them over to God, who is best placed to deal with them in righteousness and love. ‘Lord,’ we say, ‘ will you please deal with this person? You will do what is wisest and best.’

And then, like Jesus with his disciples, we move on. We may or may not move on geographically, we may simply move on emotionally. But to move on is healthy. Leave the situation behind with God. He knows best what to do so that person might find him, or if their heart has become hardened towards him.

So concentrate on someone or something else. There are so many people who need to come into contact with the love of God, and he uses us to do that. He may have a new challenge for us.

Part 2: Don’t Lower Your Standards

When we get on to the brief exchanges Jesus has with three people who apparently do want to be his followers but whose offers he does not take up (verses 57-62) it’s important to remember that Jesus often teaches by saying extreme things to make a point. In English we call this ‘hyperbole’, and it was very common in Jewish teachers.

So when he tells the first enquirer that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head (verse 58) he is making a big, cartoon-like statement to make that person realise that following him risks involving considerable inconvenience and discomfort. Don’t come this way if you just want life’s creature comforts, says Jesus.

And when we look at the life of someone like the Apostle Paul, we see someone for whom that was profoundly true. Paul talked about physical danger, imprisonment, threats to his life, being stranded at sea, sleeplessness, hunger, and thirst all in one passage, for example (2 Corinthians 11:23ff). It’s not exactly the way to the good life as is commonly conceived by people today!

If you follow me, says Jesus, you’re not signing up for an easy life.

Then when the second person wants to bury his father, Jesus says that the man cannot put social norms and expectations above following him. The man can’t have been talking about the actual burial of his father, because that happened within twenty-four hours of the death. This was necessary in a hot climate, and to this day Jews and Muslims bury their dead much quicker than we do.

So the only burial the man can be thinking of is what happened later when the bones of the deceased were transferred from their own grave to a communal ossuary in the village. There was no requirement in the laws of Moses for a son to do this, it was a matter of social custom. Jesus says you can’t elevate that over following him. He is Lord.

The third person makes what also sounds like a reasonable request, to say goodbye to his family, but Jesus’ response about not looking back when you have put your hand to the plough (which was a well-known ancient proverb) indicates that Jesus thought this person was easily distracted from the cause of God’s kingdom. And you can’t do that. You can’t be half-hearted. You can’t say, well I’ll come to church when I feel like it. Or, I’ll do what Jesus wants when it doesn’t get in the way of what I want to do.

I want to suggest to you that Jesus’ approach is the opposite of what we typically say today. We are so desperate about our declining and aging numbers that we say Jesus welcomes all, but we drop the obligations that Jesus puts on disciples.

But here’s the paradox: the grace of God is free, but it costs us all we have. A church that preaches free grace but not discipleship is not preaching the Gospel.

Hear it again: the grace of God is free, but it costs us all we have.

John Wesley knew this, and he structured the early Methodists accordingly. We have heard a lot about the small groups he set up, but he set up more than one kind of group, and they had different purposes. So the class meeting was the one open to all, including those enquiring after the faith – or, as Wesley put it, ‘Those who desire to flee from the wrath to come.’

But the band meeting was for those who were seriously committed to Christ. In the band meeting members held one another accountable for their Christian lives each week. They did so in a confidential relationship. Even to this day Methodist ministers will sometimes say to each other, ‘I want to speak in band.’ This means they want to speak confidentially.

When someone is unwilling to accept Jesus’ challenging standards for discipleship, it is the wrong response to lower the bar. Jesus never did that. When the rich young ruler walked away, Jesus didn’t chase him and say, I didn’t really mean you had to give up all your possessions. Just ten per cent will do.’

When people are reluctant to follow Jesus, yes of course we remember that God’s grace is freely offered to all, but we must also remember it will cost us everything.

If someone says no to that, we leave the judgement to God and we move on.

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Orbiting The Son, Mark 12:38-44 (Ordinary 32 Year B)

Sorry, the out of focus problem is back – I thought I had all the settings correct to record myself!

Mark 12:38-44

The new pastor of a large independent church invited all the other local ministers to attend a concert being given at his church by a well-known Christian musician. He invited us not only to the concert, but to come and eat with the musician beforehand.

At the time I was single, and the thought of not having to cook and wash up for myself for an evening was appealing, so I went along beforehand. We had a very agreeable time over food, and then when it was time for the concert itself I noticed some people from one of my churches arriving and taking up some seats on the back row, so I went to join them.

After the gig, the pastor expressed surprise that I had sat at the back. “I had a seat for you on the platform with me,” he said. I replied that was very kind of him, but really there were times when I felt I was up front in the public eye more than enough, and it was a pleasant change for me as a minister to sit at the back.

Later events were to show that that incident was merely the tip of the iceberg when it came to the pastor’s attitudes. A few years later, his ministry at that church fell to pieces over issues surrounding the unholy trinity of money, sex, and power.

It’s so dangerous to invest our status, identity, and security in the wrong things.

And that’s what our reading is about today. I know I’m often critical of the way the Lectionary selects verses, but not this time. I find it helpful the way we get to read these two separate incidents together, because they both have a similar theme. I’m used to hearing the story of the widow’s mite on its own, but to hear it alongside Jesus’ earlier condemnation of religious leaders is illuminating.

Both of these stories show people with power and authority seeking a sense of status from public acclaim.

In the first story, the teachers of the law (who were not necessarily wealthy, well-paid religious leaders) enjoyed drawing attention to themselves by dressing in a special way and looking important in the synagogue and at banquets. They would have been on the platform at the concert I attended.

Me, me, me. Look at me, they say. It’s a warped and dangerous approach to power and authority, so far from the servant model that Jesus taught.

And because their approach to power and authority deviates from the way of Jesus, it becomes a dangerous exercise. When it’s all about me getting the attention, then the power available also gets used for – guess who? – Me.

We get a flavour of this when Jesus says,

40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.

Jesus knew what he was talking about. The Jewish historian

Josephus (Ant. 18.81-84) tells of a Jewish scoundrel exiled to Rome who affected the ways of a scribe (“he played the part of an interpreter of the Mosaic law and its wisdom”) and succeeded in persuading a high-standing woman named Fulvia to make substantial gifts to the temple in Jerusalem. The bequests, however, were embezzled, and Rome – from Emperor Tiberius on to plebs in the street – was outraged.[1]

Since the scribes were largely dependent on gifts from worshippers and benefactors for their livelihood this would be like a minister today finding a way to exploit congregational giving to feather his own nest.

We may not all have a position of power and influence, but we all need to take heed of the dangers of wanting the attention to be on ourselves. What we see here is that when that happens, corruption follows.

We need to remember the way of Jesus, which is to be a servant, not an attention-seeker.

Each Sunday when I’m at Byfleet there is a small way in which I try to remind you and myself about that important truth. You will have noticed that at the end of the service I don’t process out down the centre aisle. I sneak off round the side, saying a quick thank-you to Vaughan or Peter on the laptop and to Adrian on the organ. I don’t want you at the end of the service to be thinking about the person who led you in worship; I want you to be thinking about the object of our worship, Almighty God.

What can you do to remind yourself Jesus is the centre of attention in the Christian life, not you?

In the second story, the crowds are depositing their gifts for the Temple at the treasury. But some are making a flamboyant song and dance of it:

Many rich people threw in large amounts. (Verse 41b)

Why throw the money into the receptacle unless you want to be ostentatious about your giving? Once again, it’s a case of ‘Look at me!’ Those looking on are meant to think, ‘Wow, what wonderfully generous people!”

Again, the concern is to bolster up one’s personal image. These are people who feel good about themselves when other people praise them.

I can’t help thinking that these people would be the sort who today would turn up on a TV telethon like Children In Need or Comic Relief with an oversized cheque clearly bearing their name or their company’s name, because they’re less interested in helping the cause than in getting their name before the public and gaining publicity for themselves.

It’s the widow who shows true faith in this story, of course. Hear again Jesus’ estimation of her when she contributes ‘two of the smallest coins in circulation’[2]:

43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on.’

What’s the difference between the widow and the wealthy? The widow puts her whole life in the hands of God. The wealthy keep control for themselves.

Thus, it’s the widow who shows what discipleship is like, according to Jesus. True faith is not a lifestyle option from the glossy magazines with the Sunday papers. It is not a deluxe extra specification on your car. True faith is to say to Jesus, here I am with all that I am and all that I have. I put it all in your nail-scarred hands to do with as you see fit.

The widow would ask us whether we have put our entire lives at the disposal of our Lord. It’s a life of sacrifice in response to the One who would lay down his own life very soon. Just as astronomers discovered that the Sun does not orbit the earth but rather the earth orbits the Sun, so the widow teaches us that we are not at the centre where the brightest and best orbit us. Rather, we orbit the Son – the Son of God.

And as these two episodes conclude, so also concludes Mark’s account of Jesus’ public ministry. Everything else will be behind closed doors or in secluded places. What are we like where no-one else sees us?

In such locations, we cannot be attention-seekers. In such places, we are challenged to remember that we make Jesus the centre of attention, not ourselves, and that as he laid down his life for us so we lay our lives before him to be used as he pleases.

Let us always remember that we orbit the Son, not vice-versa.

[1] James R Edwards, The Gospel According To Mark, p379.

[2] Ibid., p381.

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Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want: What Do Your Prayers Say About You? (Mark 10:35-45, Ordinary 29 Year B)

Mark 10:35-45

The village where I live has various claims to fame, from an internationally known strain of the azalea flower being named after it, through the novelist Hilary Mantel being a former resident, and then the fact that in their pre-fame days the Spice Girls rehearsed here.

While the Spice Girls were preparing for world domination, they sometimes had lunch at a café in the village run by the churches, called The King’s House. (It’s no longer in operation, sadly.)

And so it came to pass than when a documentary was made some years later covering their ascent to fame, a scene of them at The King’s House was scripted and filmed. One of the volunteers there was assigned the rôle of taking their order.

The volunteer in question was one of our church members, a retired Professor of Botany at Imperial College named Jack Rutter. I never knew him, because he moved away and then died just as we arrived here. He was a brilliant man, but his vast knowledge did not stretch to popular culture.

Thus it was that he could be handed a line in the script which he could deliver with a completely straight face as the Spice Girls dithered over what to order from the menu.

He said to them, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

35 Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’

36 ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked.

Jesus says to James and John, ‘Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.’

Because when Jesus asks us what we really want from him, it reveals our hearts. So in the Old Testament at the dedication of the Temple, the Lord asks King Solomon what he wants, and he famously chooses wisdom rather than wealth. Next in Mark’s Gospel Jesus meets blind Bartimaeus and asks him what he wants him to do for him. Bartimaeus asks for his sight, and he then follows Jesus.

But when Jesus responds to James and John’s request that he do whatever they ask of him, he uncovers an unworthy, if not spiritually lethal request. For what they want is so contrary to the ways of God’s kingdom.

And perhaps that’s something we might reflect on generally: what do the kinds of requests we make in our prayers say about us, our values, and our priorities? Are they in line with God’s kingdom?

Sometimes, God’s answer to our prayers is ‘No,’ and on this occasion James and John get a very lengthy ‘No’ as Jesus sets out just how contrary to popular aspirations in his day (and ours) the kingdom of God is.

In what ways does Jesus say ‘No’ to what James and John really, really want? There are three, and they are all linked.

Firstly, Jesus talks about suffering.

Jesus asks them whether they can drink his cup and be baptised as he will be.

‘We can,’ they answer,

You will, says Jesus, but it’s not up to me who gets the best seats in the house. (Verses 38-40)

The problem James and John have here is that they interpret ‘cup’ and ‘baptism’ differently from Jesus. In the Old Testament, ‘cup’ is used figuratively in different ways. It can be a good thing, such as ‘My cup overflows’ in Psalm 23, and that’s the sort of meaning James and John have in mind. However, it can also be the cup of suffering, and that’s the line Jesus takes.

Jesus has to tell them that the life of the Christian disciple in following him will not be one big jamboree. For all the joy of the kingdom, following Jesus will mean suffering for your faith, just as Jesus himself suffered.

When we become Christians, some of our problems are all over but some other problems are only just beginning. Our sisters and brothers in other nations know this at great cost. For us it may be lesser.

I recently ran an advertising campaign on Facebook for one of my churches, hoping to drum up some letting income. A small minority of people launched personal attacks at me for doing so, one telling me to ‘f- off out of here’. I didn’t respond. I didn’t justify myself. I didn’t put him down. I just ignored it. I expect it from time to time as a Christian. I’ve had worse. Let’s not be surprised by it if we follow Jesus.

Secondly, Jesus talks about serving.

Gentile and pagan rulers lord it over people. They enjoy their status. They crush the people under them, says Jesus. I’m sure we can think of plenty of examples in our own world. He reverses this by saying that the key value to greatness is not gorging yourself on power but serving others. In fact, he doesn’t even say ‘servant’, he says ‘slave’, which was lower than a servant. (Verses 42-44)

It’s a sign of that Christian heritage that we refer to senior members of Government as ‘ministers’, a word which means ‘servants.’ I’ve said before in sermons that ‘Prime Minister’ means ‘first servant’, and one thing to do at a General Election is ask which party leader looks most like someone who would bring a spirit of service to the job.

But we need to remember it in the church, too, which is what Jesus was talking about. Even in the small pond of the church there are those who like to be big fish. There are sad individuals who crave the limelight, or who want to climb the greasy pole. Pick whatever metaphor suits you! But these people think it’s OK to put others down. They like to be seen as the important ones.

I see these traits in both my fellow ministers and in members of congregations. And Jesus reminds us that this is contrary to his kingdom. ‘Not so with you,’ he says (verse 43) – and that is present tense, not future. It isn’t that it’s something to be eradicated in the future, it’s something that shouldn’t even be present now if we had any inkling of what it means to be his disciple.

When you want to fill a vacancy in the church, be that an officer in the local congregation or a new minister, look for someone who doesn’t care about status but who does care about serving.

Thirdly and finally, Jesus talks about sacrifice.

45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

I’m using the word ‘sacrifice’ here not in the ritual religious sense but simply in the sense of giving up something or even everything.

Here is the way Jesus would be the triumphant Messiah who brought people into his kingdom: not by obliterating his opponents but by giving himself up to death, through which those who were kept captive by sin were set free.

We cannot sacrifice for others in the same way as Jesus, but the call to sacrifice, to give up things for the kingdom of God is still loud and clear to us from Jesus.

Life, then, according to Jesus, is not about all the things we amass. It’s not about the abundance of possessions. It’s not about having a bigger and better home. It’s not about having a better paid job than the neighbours. And it certainly isn’t about having access to the elite members of society.

Jesus says we will know true life when we have sacrificed for the kingdom of God. I wonder why we find this so hard? We wouldn’t think twice about sacrificing time, money, or possessions for children, so why not for Jesus and his kingdom? If that’s our issue, then are we like James and John people who are apparently in the religion game just for the benefits and not for the challenges?

Conclusion

Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.

If your life is centred on yourself then suffering, serving, and sacrificing are not going to be top of your list.

But if your life is focussed on following Jesus, then you may well pray for the grace to endure suffering for his name, to serve others rather than polish your own reputation, and to sacrifice things for the cause of the kingdom.

What do you ask for in your prayers?

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