A few weeks ago I began our exploration of discipleship, and what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. We talked about the ideas of following and of learning – that being a disciple of Jesus means to follow Jesus and to learn from Jesus. I gave a bit of an overview of how we think about discipleship here at All Saints, which is written down in this short leaflet. I know that many of you have these already, if you don’t please pick one up on your way out.
I suggested that the first question we might want to ask ourselves when we’re thinking about how we are following Jesus and learning from him, is, “How close am I to Jesus right now?” There are as many answers to that question as there are individuals in the world. Each of us has a unique life journey. Having said that, it can sometimes be helpful for us to have categories to think about things like this.
For instance, if I someone asks me how good my French is, I might say, “not great, but I can get by”. Which isn’t very informative. But if someone asked me if my French is good enough to
a) order breakfast
b) have a short conversation about my family
c) have a sensible discussion in the office
d) discuss the works of Flaubert
I could say mostly a with a bit of b. They’re not complete descriptions, but it gives a framework for a conversation, and especially if I want to improve my French it helps me to understand where I’m starting from.
So, we’ve been talking a bit about four descriptions that might be helpful for us to have conversations about how close we are to Jesus. These are Exploring Christ, Growing in Christ, Close to Christ and Christ Centred. Nick talked about the first two of these in more detail two weeks ago, you can check out what he said on the sermon podcast, or on Facebook or Youtube videos of the service.
This week we are thinking about the last two: Close to Christ and Christ Centred.
Someone who is Close to Christ might say these kinds of things:
My relationship with Jesus is part of my everyday life. I am confident in God’s presence and power. I connect with God daily through personal spiritual practices, and am active in serving others in and beyond the church.
For someone who is Christ Centred, this is what they might say:
My relationship with Jesus is the most important relationship in my life. I am willing to risk everything for God and so that others can meet Jesus. I often feel underchallenged by the church. I love sharing my love of Jesus with other people, both practically and through telling people about him.
In our Bible readings this morning we met three characters, who seem to me to represent these two descriptions.
In our second reading we met Martha and Mary. These two sisters lived in the village of Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, with their brother, Lazarus. This is the first time that we meet them, but there does seem to be relationship existing already – Martha wants to open her home to Jesus and calls him Lord, Mary knows him well enough to sit at his feet and listen to him. For both sisters there is a close relationship with Jesus. They’ve probably heard him speak before, have spent time with him, have grown to know him and follow him.
Sometimes when we read this story, or when people preach on it, Martha cops a lot of flak, which I think is a little unfair. She is close to Jesus. She welcomes him in, she serves him and his friends. She is doing a lot right.
She does get grumpy about Mary not pulling her weight, and complains to Jesus, but he doesn’t tell her off for what she’s doing. He just encourages her to come even closer, to let go of the fears and anxieties that she’s holding on to, and to come even closer, and to centre her whole life on Jesus, just as Mary has.
For those of us, like me, who are activists, and want to be up and doing the whole time this can be difficult to hear. It seems to me, though, that it is not the activity itself that Jesus challenges – it is the root cause of the activity. If we’re doing loads because we’re fired up with the love of Jesus and want to tell that love and show that love to as many people as possible, that’s a very different thing to doing loads because we’re afraid that otherwise it won’t get done, or because we don’t think other people will do it properly. Jesus always looks at the heart.
In our other reading, we heard about Stephen. Early in the life of the early church there was another dispute about who ought to sort out the catering. There were complaints that some of the widows of Greek descent were being missed out in the daily food distribution. The apostles said that they couldn’t be diverted from the task of preaching to sort out catering issues, and asked the church to choose seven people who could deal with it. Stephen was one of the those chosen. But it turns out he was quite a good preacher too.
Not only that, he was full of the Holy Spirit, and totally centred on Jesus, and he saw lives changed as he prayed with people and shared the good news of Jesus. This prompted opposition and persecution, and Stephen was arrested. He knew that he was in mortal danger, he knew what had happened to Jesus. But if you read on through chapter 7 you will find such a powerful sermon, a laying out of how Jesus fulfilled the scriptures, the true Messiah. This really wound up the religious rulers, and they were furious, but Stephen is oblivious – he looks up and sees a vision of heaven, with Jesus standing at God’s right hand. This is too much for the court, and they drag him out and stone him to death. As he died he echoed Jesus words from the cross, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them”. Stephen was completely Christ centred, he lived, breathed, and died with Christ at the centre of all he was, all he did, and all he said.
In this country, we are rarely pushed to those extremes, but we have Christian sisters and brothers in other parts of the world for whom this is a daily question of life and death.
One of the things I’ve found in my life is that at different times I feel like I get closer to Jesus, and I feel pretty Christ Centred, but then things happen, or life changes, and God feels a long way away and I’m doing the things that look like I’m Close to Christ, but I don’t feel like I am. So, I say again, this is not like Judo belts, or piano grades. This is about us understanding our relationship with Jesus, and given us a language to talk about it with each other and with God. What would it look like if our prayers were shaped by this language.
God, I want to explore what it means to get closer to Jesus, will you show yourself to me?
God, I want to grow in Christ, will you deepen my relationship with Jesus, and help me to see the Holy Spirit at work in my life.
God, I want to be close to Christ, please help me to be aware of your presence, and to serve others.
God, I want my life to be centred on Christ, help me to let go of the fears and anxieties, and give everything over to Jesus.
So now we’ve had a look at these four descriptions of different stages of getting closer to Jesus, over the next few weeks we’re going to be thinking about how we can move from one to another. How can we get closer? How can we stay close?
As part of this whole, church wide, focus on discipleship, it would be really helpful to get an overall snapshot of where we are now as a church. This will help the leadership team to develop our teaching and preaching material over the coming months, both for our big meetings and for our small group meetings. So we’re going to have a couple of minutes now for us all to fill in the surveys that we picked up on the way in. These are anonymous, and we hope will help each of us to engage in our own following and learning from Jesus. We will share the overall results towards the end of the sermon series, and then repeat this annually so that we can see the progress we are making in fulfilling our mission to answer the call to be closer to Christ.
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