This statement is probably the
simplest and most powerful definition of following Jesus to be found in all the
gospels. And it’s a challenging subversive view of discipleship. Being a
Christian today isn’t always easy. It’s no longer a pleasant and expected part
of being British; it’s a tougher business altogether. Its demands are contrary
to what our society demands of us, and our culture is generally pretty hostile
to Christian belief. Francis Spufford, in a wonderful account of modern day
faith, speaks of his six-year-old daughter, saying ‘Some times over the next
year or so, she will discover her parents are weird because they go to church,’
and then goes on to consider that ‘the really painful message their daughter
will receive is that they are embarrassing. Believers, he says, are the people
touting a solution without a problem, and an embarrassing solution too, a
really damp-palmed, wide-smiling, can’t-dance solution. In an anorak.’
I wonder if that might have
described the first Christians too. Sometimes we have this image of disciples
being heroic, larger than life figures, and living in a continual state of
wonder at what Jesus did. But I wonder if being a disciple then was actually
any different to being a disciple now and whether they were so unlike us. Some
of them we know what they did – and it wasn’t generally that impressive –
denying Jesus, betraying him, arguing amongst themselves about who would be
regarded as the greatest – and then some of them, like Bartholomew, whose
saints day it is today, who we don’t even know who they are or what they did.
Fickle, imperfect, unremarkable.
Those disciples were just like us. Peter, James, John, Bartholomew have become
Colette, Lara, Alistair, Richard, Kate.
Bartholomew was the archetypal
disciple. He tends to be paired with Philip in the list of disciples, and
elsewhere in the gospels Philip is paired with Nathanael, so it is normally
assumed that Bartholomew and Nathanael are the same person. The gospel of John
tells us that Jesus meets him under a fig tree and promises a vision of angels
ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. He seems to have been present at
the wedding at Cana in Galiliee. He followed Jesus. He fled with the rest of
them when the going got tough. He seems to have been in the group who had had a
fruitless night fishing when a strange figure appeared on the beach who told
them to cast the net on the other side.
That is all we know of him. But
that is enough. He seems to have been the patron saint of disciples who never
hit the headlines or did anything particularly remarkable, but just tried, as
best they could, to get on with being faithful, sometimes doing well, sometimes
messing up. A life that didn’t involve spiritual heroics, but rather the daily
routine of ordinary discipleship. Rather like yours and mine.
But more than Bartholomew being the
archetypal disciple, this model of discipleship seems a good one to follow, because
this ordinariness is precisely what discipleship is about. It’s what we are
called to. The reading calls us to find our greatness in humility. The greatest
among you must become as the youngest, and the leader as if he were the one who
serves.
I am among you as one who serves,
says Jesus. This is the story at the heart of the gospels. Just as the wise men
went to the wrong place, with the wrong expectations, with the wrong gifts, we
too follow the same star and keep going to the wrong place with the wrong
expectations and boasting in the wrong gifts. We search for God and insist on
finding a king, despite a story that starts in a manger and finishes on a
cross, and has in its middle Jesus kneeling to wash his disciples’ feet.
And what he says is that if we
follow where he leads us, then we will serve. We can be quite sure of that.
This is very hard because all around us society and other people are shouting
for us to be first, to be better, faster, stronger than others. We have to be
very good at something or we don’t count. And those who are very good at two
things at once, we turn into gods. We compete, we win, we belong. We strive to
be higher and highest on the league tables. We have to impress, to make our
mark, and blowing our own trumpet is required of us for us to be chosen in the
first place. WE spend a lot of time wondering, arguing about who is the
greatest.
And yet, we are told, that it is in
our littleness that we will find greatness. This way has been affirmed
throughout Christian tradition: St Teresa of Lisieux talked about her Little
Way; St Francis talked about the way of poverty. Paul teaches this unwelcome
message with his enigmatic ‘It is when I am weak that I am strong.’ And at the
heart of the faith that we follow is the ‘folly’ of the crucifixion of Jesus –
a tragic and absurd dying that becomes resurrection, life and hope itself.
Lara and Colette are being baptised
this morning, and as a church, we rejoice. They will make promises that will
define their identity and mark the start of their Christian discipleship.
Baptism is an invitation to be little; an invitation to let go of some of the
things we delude ourselves into thinking that give us importance – possessions,
achievements, status, power, and to make promises that offer our lives to God. We
are relieved of the awful burden of pretending to be better than we are.
It is sometimes asserted that faith
is only authentic if it is grasped in a mature, adult and individual way. In
some traditions the crucial moment is when you confess Jesus Christ to be your
personal saviour. But walking in faith may take the form of innumerable small
decisions to accept our own littleness and to walk in the light of the gospel.
Like Bartholomew, it may not mean we end up doing anything very
remarkable. But it will mean listening our for the voice that tells us we are
loved, and that we are to love one another.
The greatest among you will become the youngest and the leader as if
he was the one who serves. To be baptised is a radical invitation to enter into
the life of Christ. When service is given, generous, open-handed, expecting
nothing in return, then we sense at once how very good it is. And so we pray
for all of us here, that we can remind one another of the truth,
lead one another away from the lures of the glamour of worldly power and take another
to the child at Bethlehem, who will grow into the man on the cross, and who will show us
where true power is to be found.
Notes
This sermon uses material from:
Dennis, T. (2013), God in our Midst, London: SPCK, pp26-29
Radcliffe, T. (2012), Take the plunge, London: Bloomsbury
Spufford, F. (2013), Unapologetic, London: Faber and faber
