Who are we following? Sermon Epiphany 3 2014

I love those movies where you see someone getting into a taxi and shouting to the driver- follow that cab!

And then there is the frustration as the cab gets stuck at lights or in a mound of other yellow cabs and the one who is following has to get out and run down a row of other cabs looking for the right one.

Following someone isn’t always an easy thing to do.

Those of us who drive know how hard it is to follow another vehicle especially at night.

No matter how hard you try other vehicles always get in the way of the one you are following.

And then you are also bound to get stuck at lights or at a cross road and you only hope that the one who you are following has had the sense to stop for and wait for you.

When you follow someone you have to work hard at it, you have to really concentrate and you have to have your eyes peeled to make sure that you are following the right car.

Following someone relies on keeping your eyes fixed on them.

And in our gospel reading today we have seen how Jesus called his first disciples to follow him.

“Follow me he said and I will make you into different fishermen, not fishers of fish, but fishers of men. Your life will be turned around and given a new focus if you but follow me.”

I often love to think of the unwritten parts of the bible, the bits that we are told just happen.

This is one of them, we are told simply that Peter and Andrew simply left their nets and followed Jesus.

But I wonder how they felt, what they thought was going to happen, what was it in Jesus that made them take this drastic action.

Why did Jesus chose these two fishermen to be his disciples?

Of course we can only speculate but we know that Jesus’ presence must have offered to them something amazing for them to take this action.

And we know that in these fishermen Jesus saw qualities which were going to be useful in the times that were ahead.

These fishermen would have been strong men, they would have been courageous, fishing in the Sea of Galilee was no easy feat

A fisherman needs to be patient, to be able to persevere, all these were qualities that they were to use as they followed Jesus in his life and as they worked after his resurrection and ascension to establish the first churches.

Now we don’t know what was in their minds when they did it, but we do know that they looked away from themselves and had their eyes fixed on Jesus and followed him.

So in many ways that’s my simple message for today- in our Christian lives we need to have our eyes fixed on Jesus.

But I don’t want to leave it there- but I want to reflect this back to the passage we had read from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.

And in this short passage we see here where a Church was going wrong.

Where within the Church there is bickering and arguing,  where within the church individuals have formed themselves into cliques arguing over the authority of their leaders.

We see here that there are at least four different groups within the Corinthian church.

Some say they follow Paul, some Apollos, some Peter, and some Christ.

These divisions were about several things but probably they were to do with who in some way had most influenced each group.

So for those who said they were in Paul’s party they had probably come into contact with Paul when he had visited Corinth.

They might very well have found faith through the teaching of Paul.

And then there were those who were following Apollos.
Now we know from Acts that he was from Alexandria which was famed for producing great orators so it could be that people were following him because he was a clever and powerful teacher.

And then there were those who followed Peter, possibly because Peter had visited Corinth and because Peter unlike Paul had been present with Jesus in his earthly ministry.

There is a suggestion that those who followed Peter were trying to introduce more Jewish practises back into the Christian Church.

And then there were those who followed Christ.

Quite a strange grouping as surely they all followed Christ.

But it is likely that this group felt they didn’t need a leader at all – after all they had Christ and they were quite anti-authoritarian.

So it seems from this passage that the church in Corinth had got hooked on the earthly leaders of the time and were far from united in following Christ.

In many ways it is quite reassuring to read this passage as it can remind us of elements of our own church not only locally but nationally.

The press would have us believe that our church is torn apart by big issues such as homosexuality and whether or not now women are priests they ought to be bishops.

So nationally and internationally we see division in our church.

And then at a local level we can see the danger of cliques developing.

Now of course we develop preferences for styles of worship and for those who lead us- whether or not you are a happy clappy or a traditionalist.

And I hope and pray we do not become divided over who is the best leader.

But we can be influenced by personality, like the Apollos party.

We can also like the Peter party become hooked on some of the must do things of our faith.

We must have services in this way or that.

And then there is also a danger of thinking we have a monopoly on the truth like the Paul party because we have read the right books, or had the right training.

And then like the Christ party we can also slip into the danger in our churches of not accepting the authority and leadership that has been placed over us.

So there is a danger that even at a local level we too can become like the church at Corinth.

And if we become like that what do those outside the church see and say.

Normally it’s I don’t want to join the church because it’s full of hypocrites.

So what advice from Paul do we get to guard against this.

And it is here that it links back to our gospel reading and the response of the two disciples –

The advice seems to be simple- keep your eyes fixed on Jesus.

What is important in the church is not who is your leader, or what training you have had, or how clever and impressive your church seems to be, but whether or not your church is fundamentally fixed on our Saviour Jesus Christ.

It is he that holds the whole thing together.

And it is when we let our eyes slip from Jesus and our focus becomes on other things that we begin to be disunited and division arises.

So how do we fix our eyes on Jesus.

Firstly, we need to accept the wholeness of Jesus.

As Paul writes: “is Christ divided?”

We cannot parcel Christ out into little bits- By this I mean we have to accept all of him.

We have to accept all his teaching, all he came to do for us.

We cannot say I like his teaching on love, but his challenge to us regarding money and possessions is a bit steep so I won’t bother with that.

We have to let all his teaching pervade our lives.

We can’t have half of him, saying “Please come in but leave your legs outside for the moment because I don’t like that bit of you.”

We need to accept the wholeness of Christ and his teaching.

Secondly, we need to have our eyes fixed on the cross of Christ.

It is the cross of Christ that makes us all equals.

It is only through the cross of Christ that any of us can come to God.

This is what is so amazing about the communion service that in that we all come to God as equals.

We all kneel together at the rail to receive from him, to celebrate all he did at Calvary as equals.

This is the power of the cross of Christ that Paul talks about, the power of the cross to save us all no matter who we are or what we have done.

And thirdly, we need to accept that Christ is our Lord.

It would be crazy to suggest that all the children I have baptised in the past 18 months have suddenly become my own children.

But this is sort of what the Corinthians were doing, and Paul points them back to the fact that in baptism we have not become the possession of the person who has baptised us but we have become Christ’s.

In baptism we have become a child of God.

We have accepted that we are now under the authority and Lord ship of Christ.

He is the one who must be in control of our lives in that we should follow him in all that we do.

So when Jesus says to us Follow me what do we do.

Do we look to what makes us feel good in terms of our worship or friends within the church.
Do we hark back to those who have taught us or introduced us to the Christian faith.

Or do we follow him with our eyes fixed firmly ahead- fixed on the whole of Jesus, fixed on his cross and fixed on the fact that he wants to be Lord of all our lives.

Following isn’t easy- we may get it wrong sometimes, but if we hold on to these three things we may prevent being torn apart and be able to be a more successful witness to him in our world. 

What are we called to be? Sermon Epiphany 2 2014

Over the next few weeks we will be looking together at the beginning of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians.  Now when we think of 1 Corinthians I wonder what you first think about? For most people I bet chapter 13 the great hymn of love comes to mind.

But actually when we look at what Paul is saying to the Corinthian church it was far from a church that was very loving – it had made big mistakes, their were petty arguments going on over leadership.

Someone once said to me if you find the perfect church leave it because you will only mess it up. In other words no church is perfect we all get things wrong = and so I think we can learn a great deal from what Paul is saying here to the Corinthian church – because like that church in our church surprise surprise we don’t always get it right too.

So I want us to look at the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 1 in terms of how we see God’s calling to us as his people.

Let’s think about what we mean about calling for a moment or two to start with.

In Christian terms we talk a lot about calling,  our gospel reading this morning we see Jesus calling the first disciples to follow him.

When someone is involved in vocational work whether it be in the religious sense or in education, in health or social work we talk about it as that person having a calling to do that. So the language we use of calling is all about our vocation.

But are we actually right to do this?

Being ordained, or being a missionary or a monk or something like that, is quite secondary to the real, the central call we all have from God. Those two followers of John the Baptist who Jesus asked to “come and see” were called exactly as we are called. They were called to be disciples – just as we are called to be disciples. They were called to be disciples in their place and in their time, for the sake of their generation.

One of the things this means is that we don’t have to imitate Andrew’s, or John’s, or Peter’s actions in order to see, with some clarity, how their call is like the call of Christ to each of us, and to all of us.

The first thing to notice is that Jesus does not first, or primarily, call them to do a particular task or to fill a particular role. Indeed, he didn’t ask them to do anything. Our call as Christians is not initially for us – as it was not, initially, for his first disciples – a call to tasks.

It is, instead, an invitation to relationship. Jesus does not say, “Do this”; he says, “Come and see.” Only later does he give specific content and direction to where that might lead. There’s a big difference between a call to a task and an invitation to relationship.

To respond to a call for relationship, for intimacy, is a very different thing from signing up to do a piece of work – in the same way that falling in love is very different from getting hired. To set out to do a job requires some clarity about what is involved, it’s negotiable, it has its limits, you know what it looks like when the job is over, and so on. To be called into relationship – to be called in love – this is an invitation to enter a mystery; it’s to move out, blindly, into uncharted waters.

When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he is calling us first to himself – to a personal intimacy and a shared life. That’s what matters, that’s what is primary. Everything else is left behind; everything else becomes secondary.

Now, if we look at Jesus’ call from the perspective of what’s left behind, it’s a call to repent. But if we see that same call from the perspective of what comes next, then it’s a call to seek him first, to know him better and to move toward making that relationship the central focus of our lives.

So when we see calling in that way – we can see that each of us have been called by God to be in relationship with him.

Each of us have been called by God to grow in that relationship with him.

That is our primary calling in life – over our call to be in my case a vicar, or in someone elses case a teacher, or an it person or a housewife.

Our primary call – our primary focus in life is our calling to be disciples of Jesus Christ.

So seeing our calling in this way – how does Paul at the beginning of Corinthians help us to unpack this a bit.

What does that call mean to us?  and here Paul begins to give us some ideas.

Firstly it is a call to be holy.  We live lives as Christians in holiness.

When I type my name in on a computer keyboard often I end up making mistakes because the t is next to the y, and if you do this what do you end up with Lucy Holy.

Very apt some may say to do with my job – but I have to say most of the time I feel far from Holy – in how I live my life and the constant mistakes I make.

But Paul here says that we are called to holiness. Now this isn’t having a go at them telling them they are not living holy enough lives here.

But Paul is saying that actually because of what God has done for us through Jesus we live in holiness.

By God’s grace no matter what we do or say, or think, no matter how we act – if we come to him in forgiveness he will wipe the slate clean and enable us to come in holiness.

So because of God’s grace shown to us on the cross of Christ when all our sin was forgiven, taken away, washed clean we can come to  God now in holiness.

We have been called by God and made holy by him. What we must never forget is that this is not about what we do, how hard we try but it is all about the fact that God initiated this and gave us this gift through his own grace.

And then in response to this grace we are told elsewhere that we should try to live lives that are worthy of this calling – but this is in response.

So firstly we are called to be Holy.

And then Paul says we are called to be his church.

Paul addresses the church in Corinth as the Church of God in Corinth and reminds then that they are linked together with other churches too. Read verse 2.

In other words Paul might be saying here that they shouldn’t think they have the monopoly of God’s attention. He is urging them to see that they are part of a bigger picture.

We know that this Church is a church with problems. We can see that from just reading on into the verse 10 of chapter 1 when we see the divisions of the Church. Paul is writing to them to address these problems.

We all know that when we have issues in the life of our church or with other Christians  they can become all consuming. Somehow they can seem worse than issues you have in secular life, probably because we expect better of each other.

But what Paul is saying here is that your issues and concerns might seem as if they are that matters. But in reality, not only is God much bigger than your problems but the church of Jesus Christ also extends far beyond the border of Corinth's city limits.

Keeping the bigger picture in mind does not mean Corinth's issues are minor. Paul's passion to address the conflicts in church is evident throughout the letter.  However, severe conflict has the tendency to reduce our field of vision to a narrow tunnel. Paul seems to be declaring to the Christians at Corinth: You really are not that important! And...you are part of much bigger body.

We are called to be not only Holy says Paul but we are called to be part of the worldwide church of God.

And then I think thirdly Paul is saying that we are called to use the gifts for his purpose that he has given us.

For most of us involved in church life we hear ourselves say things like  - well if we could only have someone who would lead the childrens work then things would be Ok, or if we only had someone who could do this or that then we could really turn the church around.

But Paul here seems to be turning this idea on the head. Because here he is saying that God has given us all the gifts we need within our church… Paul tells us that we have all the spiritual gifts we need.

We have them here, and now, yes we could have more people but all the gifts we need are within the church already.

Eugene Peterson in the Message a paraphrase of the bible translates these verses like this:

Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.

We are called into a relationship with God and with that calling God urges each to play their part in building up His Church. He has equipped us with all the things we need, and he reminds us that he is with us all times.

Being in relationship with God – our first calling as Christians- means that God not only gives us the gifts we need but also that we can depend upon that relationship.

So if God has equipped us with the gifts we need to build up the church then it is our responsibility to use those gifts to do just that.

So today as we think about our calling as Christians perhaps we need to ask ourselves whether or not we are honestly using the gifts that God has equipped us with.

Today we have seen the call of the first disciples and we have been reminded that that call was not to tasks but to a relationship with the living God.

In that sense we are all have a calling from God too.

And that calling is to be holy – not because of anything we have done but because of what God has done for us.

That calling is to be part of the world wide church of Christ, and that calling is to use our gifts to build up others and our life as a Church.

How do you see your calling today and what difference is it going to make to you tomorrow?

Amen