I wonder who you follow. Maybe you follow a sports team. Perhaps you follow friends or celebrities on social media. In the world of work there are usually rules or guidelines that we follow. Some of us might work for bosses that we find inspiring, and we’d be happy to say we follow them. For others we follow their instructions but don’t really respect them, or would choose to say that we follow them.
For those things that we do choose to follow, there are different levels of following aren’t there. If we say we follow a football team that can range all the way from keeping an eye out for their results, and knowing about where they are in the league, through to choosing to watch their matches on the TV, all the way through to being a season ticket holder and going to every match, home and away.
The same thing holds for those we follow on social media. We might glance occasionally at the feed and be quite interested when things pop up. Or we might be on it the whole time, eager for updates, commenting and liking every post from someone we follow.
Who here had someone in their household start or return to school or college this week? Quite a few of us. And even those of us who didn’t probably know someone who did. Our young people invest a huge amount of time and energy in learning in the first 20 odd years of their lives. As a society we invest lots of resources in teaching and creating opportunities for our young people to learn. As we grow older some of us remain curious, and eager to learn. We develop our skills through training in our jobs. We get involved in the U3A in retirement. There is something about being a lifelong learner that keeps us curious, humble, and open to new things.
In our second Bible reading this morning we heard from quite close to the beginning of Matthew’s eye witness account of the life of Jesus. If you were following along in the pew Bibles you might have noticed that it had a sub title – Jesus calls his first disciples. Now, this word “disciples” is one that we don’t use much in normal English, so what does it mean?
Well, if we look at what Jesus says, it gives us a bit of a clue. The first thing Jesus says is, “Come follow me”. Then he continues, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” And what did Simon and Andrew do? They left their nets and followed him. Similarly, when Jesus talks to James and John, they leave what they’re doing and follow him.
So, it seems to me fairly obvious that a disciple is someone who follows someone else. But I think there’s a bit more to it than that. Jesus says he’s going to send them to fish for people. Now, exactly what this means isn’t made clear here – you might want to have a think later in the day or in the week about what that might mean. Whatever that is, it seems likely to me that it will involve Jesus teaching them something new. So, being a disciple of Jesus means to follow Jesus, and to learn from him.
Whenever we talk about discipleship, or being disciples, we are talking about following Jesus and learning from him. This isn’t an optional extra for super-Christians, it is intended to be the normal way of living for all Christians.
Being a disciple of Jesus means to be committed to learning from Jesus. Discipleship is a Christian word for lifelong learning from Jesus, following Jesus in his way of life. At All Saints we believe that the best way to do this is to get closer to Jesus. The more closely we follow Jesus, the more closely we watch him, the more closely we sit with him, the better we can learn from him. This is expressed in our strap line “Called to be Closer to Christ, sent to be Closer to others.”
I wonder if her commitment to living in this way is one of the things that drew people to the Queen. She was very open about her Christian faith, and her desire to follow Jesus closely. Part of the way that worked out in her life was in the way that she reached out to others – meeting and listening to thousands throughout her life.
Here at All Saints we have four Action Groups that look after various aspects of church life. One of those is the Mission and Discipleship Action Group. Over the last 6 months or so we’ve been thinking about how we can encourage each other in our discipleship as a church. How we can work together so that we can follow Jesus more closely, and learn from him more effectively.
As you came in this morning, you will have been given a leaflet that lays out some of the things that we’ve been thinking about, and we’re going to be exploring those together over the next couple of months in our Sunday morning services. That doesn’t mean that by the end of October we’ll have discipleship sorted. This is a lifelong thing – but I am hoping that as we have opportunity to talk about these things and see how they fit together, that it will help us all in our following and learning. This morning I’m going to give a bit of an overview of where we’ll be going over the coming weeks – a roadmap if you like, and then over the next few Sundays we will go into more detail in each of these areas.
If discipleship is all about following Jesus and learning from him, then the first questions we might want to ask ourselves are, “How close am I to Jesus? How closely am I following Him? How open am I to learning from him?”
For some of us, when we hear these kind of questions, it sends us on a guilt trip. We don’t feel very close to Jesus, but we do feel ashamed and guilty for our failures. One of the things that the Holy Spirit does is to convict us of sin, to make us aware of things that aren’t right in our lives so they can be sorted. But that is the point – so they can be sorted. Jesus died on the cross and was raised to life again to deal with our shame and guilt. We don’t need to be held back by them, we can bring them to Jesus and be forgiven – freed from those feelings to enjoy God’s presence.
Now, I am about to talk about four categories of people. You might recognise yourself bang in one of them, or you might feel that you identify with bits of one and bits of another. It’s also important to say that this isn’t a grading system, it’s not like Piano grades or Judo belts. It’s about helping us talk about our own journey with Jesus, and how we can get closer to him, and learn more from him.
So, in brief, the four categories are
“Exploring Christ” – I believe in God, but am not sure about Jesus. The folk that we heard about in our first reading, that Paul met just outside Philippi would have been in this category, until they decided that they believed and were baptised.
“Growing in Christ” – I believe in Jesus and accept the core claims of Christianity. – This is where they ended up by the end of the conversation.
“Close to Christ” My relationship with Jesus is part of my everyday life.
“Christ Centred” My relationship with Jesus is the most important relationship in my life.
There is more detail about these in the leaflets, and we’ll be exploring each in more depth over the coming weeks. During the week you might want to be thinking and praying about which of these you think describes you most closely.
Having thought about how close we are to Jesus now – we might then want to think about how we can get closer. The fisherman left their nets and physically followed Jesus. The believers in Philippi were baptised, and invited Paul to come and stay with them so that they could hear more of his teaching about Jesus. What can we do?
There are some very practical things that we are going to be exploring together that Christian experience over the centuries have proved helpful to people wanting to grow closer to Jesus. They are:
Helpful Habits. Reading and reflecting on the Bible, which is why we’ve given a Bible to Keeva. Praying – spending time talking with God and listening to God.
Helpful Hands Learning to serve others is one of the most powerful ways for us to grow closer to Jesus, who left heaven to come and serve. Sometimes this will be in church, but as often, if not more will be outside church – serving in our families, our workplaces, in volunteer organisations.
Helpful conversations. We are not meant to travel this way alone. We travel with Jesus together. We heard Jesus call four fishermen, and he went on to call others. Paul talked with a group of people by the river. God puts us in community so that we can have people we can talk with on the journey, and so that we can invite others to travel with us.
So, I’m really looking forward to sharing over the next couple of months in this focus on discipleship. I’m looking forward to seeing what God is going to do with us as we reflect on how close we are to Jesus, and learn together how we can get closer, so that we can follow him more faithfully and learn from him more deeply.
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