PARISH WEEKEND AWAY 26th - 28th June - ASHBURNHAM SERMONS

At our Parish Weekend Away at Ashburnham Place, our guest speaker was Andrew Rumsey.

Here is the first of his sessions for adults. His focus was on the passage: 1: John (29)35-42

COME AND SEE

Pray

Just before Christmas, my wife Rebecca and the children and I were invited by Andy & Rachel Griffiths (whom you may have come across) to spend Boxing Day ice skating at Somerset House, just by the River Thames. As you may know, there has been ice skating there for some years now and it’s become something of a London tradition. So we eagerly accepted – and… it’s just possible I may even have said something to Andy about being, whilst not an expert on the ice, something not far off. The truth was, of course, that I had only tottered onto the ice once before, about 20 years ago, so these were rash words, which I came to regret.

And so it came to pass that, in the bitter cold of Boxing Day we went skating and, one by one onto the crowded rink, I waved off my wife and children - who seemed to take to it as if they’d been born on ice. I, however, hadn’t, and suddenly felt massively uncertain. It was so slippery!

Of course it was – ice is slippery, but I hadn’t been prepared for quite how slippery it was. And I don’t mind admitting that I was terrified. For the next half hour, clutching onto the hand rail I gingerly slithered around the perimeter, whilst all around me happy skaters whizzed and pirouetted quite naturally. And whenever one of my own children glided elegantly past, I clung onto them and ‘now are you sure you’re alright, it’s very slippery, hold on to me…etc’ rather like Nemo’s dad in Finding Nemo, if you’ve ever seen that film – projecting his own fears onto his children.

When our time was up, the feeling of coming off the ice and back onto the friction and grip of the pavement, was just wonderful – putting on your normal shoes - suddenly all one’s confidence and control came flooding back. Familiar territory.

Now as we start our weekend away together in the green and pleasant surroundings of Ashburnham Place, our Christian faith may seem like a comfortable pair of shoes that we put on again. It’s familiar territory – we’ve been this way before – songs we know, Bibles, (open hands) great...

I have a feeling, though, that the writers of the four gospels – and indeed Jesus himself - want us to see faith as far more risky and exciting than that: an adventure, if you like – a journey into the unknown, a trip out onto the ice…

And I wanted us to start this series of talks tonight with this passage from John 1, because it concerns the call of Christ to the first disciples to step out into the adventure of faith; and to follow him. And it is this word call or calling that we shall return to in each of our talks over the next two days, as we consider our vocation – which is the same root word as calling – our vocation as humans made in God’s image, as the Church of Christ, and as individual men and women with different gifts and circumstances.

Now I’m aware that we’re arriving tonight after busy and maybe stressful days; we’ll be far fresher in the morning, so I’m going to spare you anything too lengthy this evening. But I just want to give some thoughts from this first chapter of John that will help give us some directions for the journey.

The occasion in our reading is just after Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. Now although John doesn’t describe this event in detail (unlike M, M & L), in the previous few verses, we hear John spotting Jesus as the one on whom he had seen the Holy Spirit descend (which, you’ll remember, happened at Jesus’ baptism). It’s like he’s exclaiming: ‘Him! He’s the one I was telling you about – that’s him, there’.

And the next day he spots him again:

Read v35-37

The two who heard John say these things were, we read, his (that is, John’s) disciples – they had probably been baptized by him and followed his teaching. In other words they knew him and trusted him what he said. And, like John, they were looking for the Messiah. So when John says ‘that’s him’, they take him at his word and go after Jesus.

That phrase “following Jesus” just about sums up what it means to be a Christian. They are the words of the risen Jesus to Peter at the end of this gospel – ‘follow me’, and they are his words to at the beginning.

To be a Christian is to follow Jesus – it’s as simple and as costly as that.
And these two disciples decide to do it, there and then. They follow Jesus and, as they do so, they have this highly significant and actually rather amusing conversation…

Read v38a.
Jesus turns round, sees them following, and speaks his first words in this gospel ‘what do you want (NIV)/what are you looking for (NRSV)?’ he asks them.

This is a lovely line - how do you imagine Jesus saying this? Like those two first disciples, we tend to follow Jesus at a discreet distance: close enough to see what’s going on, but not close enough to be too challenged.

They’re skirting around him - trying to suss him out. But the trouble is, he has this habit of turning around to see us and asking “what do you want?” - “what are you looking for?”

We might imagine him turning round and asking the same question of us this evening: what do you want?
(squint sideways) Are you following me…?
What are you looking for, coming on this weekend… ‘

Take a few minutes’ silence for personal reflection

Read v38b.
Now then. Think of all they could have asked him: think if Jesus asked you that question all the things you could ask? ‘I’m after the meaning of life’ they could have said, or ‘why is there so much suffering in the world?’. But no. They ask instead for his address. Read v38 (er...where are you staying…it doesn’t actually say ‘er’, that’s just how I imagine them saying it…)
But, as strange as it may seem, their question is the right one. These two aren’t seeking abstract answers to big questions, they are seeking Jesus – to be with him, to know him, to follow him. So they need to know where he is.

Where are you staying? The word for staying [‘abiding’] is the same one as Jesus uses later on to describe how he lives with the father and within us by the Holy Spirit. J15:5; 14:16 - it’s the same word. Abiding, staying. Jesus abides with God the Father and if we want to know God, we must follow the one who is the way to the Father.

Read v39 - ‘“Come”, he replied, “and you will see”’.
Have you ever had that sinking feeling when you’re lost in London and you wind your window down to ask for directions and give you such a long-winded explanation, you know you’ll never be able to remember it. Give example… Well, Jesus doesn’t give us a long list of directions - he escorts us - says “you’re looking for God? Come and see.

Come and see. These three words are crucial to understanding what it means to be a Christian. And although it’s taken me several hundred words to get around to it – these three little words are all you need to remember from this evening: come and see.

Christian faith is something we ‘see’ – something we understand, only when we come, when we come – when we start to follow Jesus. It is not a case of having all the answers to all the big questions sorted out beforehand – that would be ‘see and come’, wouldn’t it. Get it sussed and then follow me.

But no, it’s come – start the journey and, on the way, you will see. Faith often begins as a kind of holy hunch – an inkling; a sneaking suspicion that this way of Christ is the way of life. It becomes the hunch that we would stake our life on.

Read vv40-42a.
And so, Andrew - one of the two who have followed Jesus - becomes the first evangelist, simply by sharing with his brother Peter who he has met.
Read v42b
And so it is that Simon is also introduced to Jesus and gains a new name - Peter - the rock on which the church would be built. And it is from these simple encounters – where ordinary people like you and I decided to follow Jesus - that the church grew - and brought us here this evening.

Come and see. Now, it’s the coming that takes the faith – the stepping out of the boat, the decision to follow that strange star to Bethlehem, the choice to abandon your fishing nets – to come and see the kingdom of God. This is the adventure of faith – and it is not unlike stepping out onto the skating rink.

To their friends and family it may have seemed as if the disciples were launching out onto dangerously thin ice in following Jesus. But of course ice isn’t always thin. In the frost fairs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the River Thames was frozen so solid that horses and carts were driven across it.

On my ice rink at Somerset House, it helped to realise there was firm ground beneath the slippery surface. And as I tottered around hopelessly, I finally swallowed my pride to ask one of the stewards the obvious question – how on earth do I do this?

She told me that I needed to gradually rest my weight on one skate and then the other – to get used to the fact that the ice would bear my weight. And so I did, and it did. By the end of the hour I was certainly no threat to Torville and Dean, but had begun to see that, with a lot of practice, this new way of travelling might be not only possible, but also rather exciting, and exhilarating.

Now what I have been wondering ever since Christmas is this: whether as Christians we actually rest our full weight on the skates of faith. Whether I as a Christian ever really rest my full weight on the skates.

Too often we manage by clinging to the handrail or trying to walk on the ice as if it is just like the pavement. But it isn’t. It’s not like any other way and the only way to do it is to put your full weight - first on one foot and then the other – and finding that it does hold you up.

I’m constantly having to re-learn how to ice skate in faith. If you fear you’re losing the knack, it’s best to try again in small ways in order to gain confidence.

[I’ll give you a tiny example from my life: our old car’s suspension went in December and we had to have it fixed. Paid out lots of money and, lo and behold, on the way back home the problem was still there and the Volvo creaking and groaning over every bump.

Not a huge deal, but just the sort of everyday costly frustration which we all face and which just winds us up beyond belief. I wasn’t going to spend Christmas worrying about it, so decided to use it as a test case for my faith. Rather than getting wound up I am handing the matter to God and just trusting him with it. Each time I feel that tight pang of irritation or worry about it, I hand to him again.]

Now in that tiny area of my life I am living entirely by faith – resting my weight upon God. I know it’s a silly example, and of course I try to do this in the bigger areas of my life too, but honestly, it feels quite like skating, I feel a little shaky and out of control.

Imagine how it would feel to extend this to your whole life, to take off your comfortable old shoes, to lose the familiar grip and friction beneath you and launch yourself out onto the ice. Often we’re challenged to have faith when our familiar handrails (money, relationships, work and so on) disappear and we have no other choice than to trust. More and more of us are experiencing this at the present time. But in some ways it is even harder to have faith when the handrail is still there to clutch on to. When we can get round the rink by other means. And if that is you, can I challenge you this weekend to step out in faith, because Christ can bear your weight and hold you up.

Now, as Jesus said to his disciples ‘I have many more things to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.’ So sleep well, and we’ll continue the journey tomorrow. Let us pray.

Lord Jesus we thank you for your call on our lives.
We thank you for bringing us safely here to Ashburnham this weekend.
We ask that each of us might learn that faith in you can bear our whole weight. We ask that, in response to your call, that we would come and see. Amen.