Is.53:4-12
Ps.91:9-16
Heb. 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

Pentecost 20 Proper 24B RCL
HE2A 10:00

THE FAITH IS IN THE FOLLOWING

Credit: Pulpit Resource 10/22/00 (heavily indebted)
Previous: Medford 10/22/00

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"What shall I do to inherit eternal life? I'd like today to continue what I began last Sunday, on the theme of growing more deeply in our relationship with God.

I tried to say lest week that simply following rules or commandments really will not help us much, if we wake the rules an end in themselves. Rules are man-made, for the most part, but even rules like the Ten Commandments will defeat their purpose unless we see them as devices to open our hearts towards God. We can take St. Paul as a guide on this. He tells us very movingly in the Letter to the Romans (Chs.7-9) how he tried so hard to keep the law of God perfectly, and did pretty well on the first nine commandments, but fell down on the tenth: "You shall not covet" - you shall not even desire to do the wrong thing. That discovery, that he was helpless to keep the commandments by his own strength, that discovery forced him to throw himself on God's mercy. And that is when God flooded his life. It was a gift, all the greater because it was unearned and un-deserved. St.Paul says it very movingly: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5: 8).

So, once our hearts are opened, how do we follow Jesus better and more fully?

I. Well, you may remember that a few weeks ago I noted that the Gospels picture discipleship as following Jesus on a journey without ever knowing exactly who He is or where He is going. I related that point to where St. Mark's is in its life as a parish, now again in an interim time, with a search for a Rector still some time in the future.

But this theme of a journey is related to us each individually, as we try to be disciples.

Jesus never said to His followers, "Believe the following five things about me - for instance the articles of the Creed" No. What Jesus said was "Follow Me", Christianity is not in the first place a set of beliefs or principles or propositions. It is a matter of discipleship, of following. Faith in Jesus is not beliefs about Jesus. It is a willingness to follow Jesus. The faith is in the following.

We also make a mistake if we try to turn this into some sort of mystery. Jesus did not demand that we swallow a dozen philosophical absurdities in order to be with Him, or have Him be with us. He asked us to follow Him. Faith in Jesus is not first of all a matter of having felt something mysterious or having had a mystical experience. It is a simple willingness to stumble along behind Jesus. The faith is in the following.

There is therefore no need for anyone to be confused or befuddled when someone asks you, "Are you a Christian?" The answer is easy. You don't have to have your head straight about the meaning of the Atonement. You don't have to point to some inner psychological validation. The answer is simply to say, "Yes, I'm trying my best to follow Jesus. I'm His apprentice, His disciple." The faith is in the following, and it grows in the process and practice of following.

II. Have you ever noticed how often, in all of the Gospels, we hear Jesus criticizing and chastizing His disciples? He is often exasperated that they don't get the point, that they fail to follow, that they misunderstand.

The criticism by Jesus does not mean that they are not real disciples. It means that they are still on the journey. They are on the way. If they had not committed themselves to follow Jesus, there would be no need for correction. Faith does not mean that they have arrived; it means that they are on the way. The same is true for you and for me.

A person who wants to be a carpenter must apprentice to a carpenter, noticing the moves, absorbing the practices, being attentive to the principles of the trade, willing to be criticized by the master until the apprentice becomes what the master is and does what the master does. That is surely what Jesus means when He says simply, "Follow me."

My point is that how we get on the journey with Jesus is not the crucial matter. Maybe you had a soul-stirring experience. Maybe you have felt that you were living with Jesus from childhood - How you got to be an apprentice of Jesus is not the crucial matter. The crucial matter is that we are on the way. To be on the way means to be, as a disciple, imitating the moves of the Master, 1n all that we do. Wherever you ale, whatever you do, or I do, we are disciples of Jesus.

III. That is one reason I have trouble with that phrase "full-time Christian service", as a way of distinguishing between clergy and lay people. Following Jesus is not a matter of learning to do a few religious things on top of whatever else we do, but rather a matter of doing all that we do, not for ourselves, but for Jesus. That is, we are all full-time Christians.

That is surely why the parables of Jesus are stories about real life, and His teaching is about matters like anger and forgiveness, and ordinary injustice, and disappointment - all the stuff of real life. He surely meant us to follow Him now, in this life, not only in some future time.

A certain barber makes his living cutting people's hair for a price. Then in the evening he goes out to a hospital for the mentally-challenged and cuts hair for free. A friend of the barber is an accountant who after a long day of serving people's financial interests for a price, goes out at night to cruise local bars, pick up women for one-night stands, and enjoy himself as much as possible.

Both men, the barber and the accountant, are apprentices, people attached to some larger vision of what life is about and why we were put here. One is attached to Jesus. The other is attached to American consumerism and selfish hedonism. So the most interesting question to ask them is not the abstract "What. do you believe in?", but the more concrete, "Whom are you following?" Faith is in the attachment, in the following.

The world is right to judge Jesus on the basis of the sort of lives He produces. The only "proof" we have, the acid test for the reality of the Gospel, is whether or not it can produce lives that are a credit to the Master to Whom we are apprenticed. And we believe that the Gospel does produce such lives, or we would not be in church today. The faith is in the following, and the faith grows in the practice and the process of following Jesus.