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.