The family business: What holds your heart?
Notes
Transcript
Read practicing the way pages 2-3
We’re so familiar with this reading that it’s easy to miss just how strange it is. What would make Simon step away from his life - his work, his family, his friends, and follow Jesus into unknown territory just like that?
Let’s go back a couple of steps. Jesus was a rabbi, which literally means ‘master’. Rabbis were the spiritual masters of Israel - expert teachers of the Torah, but also someone that people aspired to be with, but few had the chance. To be a disciple of a rabbi was a rare and special thing - many people followed a rabbi, but few were disciples of a rabbi.
The Jewish education system, a bit like ours, came in layers. Kids started aged around five years old and went to the local bet sefer “the house of the book”, which was usually attached to a synagogue, and there they’d learn the Torah - by the age of 12 most kids would have the Torah (the first five books of the OT) memorised, and would then go back to their normal lives. But the cream of the crop went on to the second level - bet midrash “the house of learning” - and these kids, by the age of 17, were becoming skilled at interpreting scripture, and would have memorised the entirety of what we call the Old Testament. Then the majority of these kids would go about their normal lives - but the best and brightest would apply to study, or apprentice, under a rabbi - if you passed this test you’d be told, like Jesus said to Simon, to “come, follow me.”
So this is what Simon was signing up for - fast track to the opportunity of a lifetime.
But apprentices under rabbis had three key goals:
to be with their rabbi. All the time. Leaving everything behind to be with them.
to become like their rabbi - to copy what they did.
to do as their rabbi did - to become a rabbi themselves. If the apprentices made it through, and if the rabbi thought they were up for it, he would tell them to go and make disciples.
This is what discipleship is. It’s being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did. It’s a whole of life process. It’s like being a plumber’s apprentice - being with the plumber you’re learning from, watching him, practicing, becoming like the plumber, and finally going off to be a plumber in your own right.
Now, here’s the catch. Coming to church won’t make you a disciple. Being part of a small group won’t make you a disciple. These are both great things, and will help you on your journey though. Rebecca and I can’t make you a disciple. Only Jesus, through the holy spirit, can do this. And Jesus invites us to come and follow him - but it’s up to you to accept that call - to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and do to as Jesus did.
As Shirley said in her sermon last week, God has chosen us to be in his family, but the choice is ours to accept it. God will not force us to follow him.
And yes, we are free people - through Christ we have forgiveness and restoration because of what Christ did for each of us on the cross.
But still, God continues to call us, as he did to Simon all those years ago, to come, follow him. Are you, or do you want to be, an apprentice of Jesus?
There’s a beautiful quote by Dallas Willard, full of both invitation and challenge:
The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs, is whether those who … are identified as “Christians” will become disciples - students, apprentices, practitioners - of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the Kingdom of the Heavens into every corner of human existence.
-The Great Omission
The greatest issue facing the world is not climate change, international IT breakdowns, war, human rights, American politics - even though these are all undeniably important. But just imagine what these issues would look like if the billions of people who identify as Christians - world leaders, politicians, emergency workers, street cleaners - all became apprentices of Jesus? If they approached every challenge in front of them as Jesus would?
The invitation is for everyone. Unlike the disciples of rabbis in the Jewish tradition, who were the hand picked best of the best - the invitation to follow Jesus is for EVERYONE.
As Jesus says in Mark’s gospel:
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Or in The Message translation:
Mark 8:34 (MSG)
Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am.
Let Jesus be in the lead.
Big talk, huh? So how do we start?
Do you remember the three goals of a disciple?
Be with Jesus
Be like Jesus
Do what Jesus did
So, like any good three step plan, you start with step one. Be with Jesus.
Or as Jesus himself put it in our gospel reading today:
John 15:4 (NRSV)
Abide in me as I abide in you.
Or as the New Living Translation puts it:
John 15:4 (NLT)
Remain in me, and I will remain in you.
The word for abide, or remain is menō - which could also just as happily mean stay, or dwell, or make your home in. But Jesus uses the word menō ten times in this short teaching. Do you remember from the Jonah series how I said repeated words were there to draw your attention? In the OT it’s more often than not to draw out a hyperlink - but in the NT it’s usually to hammer a point home. And this is what Jesus is doing - making sure we don’t miss the call to abide, or remain, or make our home in him.
Simple, right? Or are you still feeling confused? Fair enough. How do you abide, or remain, or live in Jesus?
The truth is, we all abide, or remain in something. It’s what we default to when we’re stressed, or grieving, joyful, or even bored. Do we mindlessly scroll Facebook or Instagram? Do you binge TV shows? Do you find relief by spending money? By being busy? Eating? Indulging in our addiction of choice? There are so many options. But are these things really where we want to be aligning ourselves to?
The American novelist Annie Dillard said
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
We are so practiced at being people of the world. How about we practice being people who dwell in Jesus? What holds your heart?
This is where a Rule of Life comes in. It’s like a trellis that supports the vine to help it bear fruit. Get rid of any thoughts of rules and regulations. This is self imposed, and you are in control. They’re practices, or disciplines, to help us draw closer to Jesus.
A metaphor that I like compares the rule of life to an anchor on a boat - the Rule is the anchor, and your life is the boat. Most of the time, when life is good, you don’t even feel it; but when you start to drift you feel the anchor pull you back to centre.
So, what are the rules? Well, there are a bunch of ‘classic’ ones that have been practiced over the centuries. Sabbath, prayer, fasting, service, generosity are a few. But the key isn’t picking the ones that sound easy. The thing we need to do is work out what we need. And we may need to be creative, and work new ones out for ourselves!
It’s not about working out what is sinful in your life and avoiding it (but also, yes, we do need to guard ourselves in this way). The trick is to look deep into ourselves and work out what it is in our lives that moves us away from Jesus, instead of towards him. Sometimes it’s about adding something into our rhythm, but more often than not it’s tweaking or removing our existing patterns.
So if you mindlessly turn to social media, you might develop a rule or practice of not taking your phone into your bedroom, or not starting the day by checking your Facebook feed before you spend time in prayer.
Or if you’re a compulsive spender, it might be a practice of generosity towards others.
The key thing though is repetition - practice makes perfect and all that. It’s rewiring our brains - building new myelin - to help us set new defaults. And if you fail one day? Repent, forgive yourself, dust yourself off and try again the next day. Because this is the only way we can take aspirational ideas like ‘be with Jesus’, or ‘become more loving’ and make them a reality. You have to be disciplined.
Over the coming weeks we’re going to dig into four practices that we hope will spark your imagination and desire to continue to be with Jesus, to abide in him. Next week Rebecca will dig into ruthlessly eliminating hurry from our lives, then after a break we’ll move onto prayer and proclamation, radical hospitality, and sabbath and fasting. Along the way we’ll have a bunch of resources for you to explore if one of these topics particularly resonates with you.
Let’s be people who don’t take our freedom and our faith for granted - let’s be people who say yes to Jesus’ call to “come, follow me”.
Let me pray.