From Apprenticeship to Partnership

He started out on the run. That’s what Matthew seems to say. Jesus began his ministry on the run. His mentor, John the Baptist, had been arrested, and Jesus concluded that it wasn’t safe to be preaching something like John’s message around Jerusalem. So Jesus headed back home. A good place to go when the going gets rough and you need to chill for a while. He headed north to Galilee, Matthew tells us, and he spent some time in his home town of Nazareth before heading out on his own again to Capernaum.

He started out on the run; except that that’s a very uncharacteristic thing for Jesus to do. The Jesus that we see in most of Matthew’s gospel – indeed, in most of all four gospels – the Jesus that we usually see is heading into trouble; not running away from it. The Jesus that we know and love taunts King Herod when he learns that the mad tyrant is after him (Luke 13:31-33), and confronts the scribes and Pharisees when he has a bone to pick with them (Matthew 23:1-36), and rides into Jerusalem when he knows that that’s precisely where he’ll find the people who want to kill him (Matthew 21:1-11). But these courageous acts occur later in Jesus ministry. At the beginning of his ministry, he’s running away. Which is to say that even Jesus had a thing or two to learn about faith and about trust and about courage. Even Jesus had to be nurtured along as he made the journey from his apprenticeship with John the Baptist to his partnership with God.

We all have to make that journey from apprenticeship to partnership. From Jesus 2000 years ago to his newest follower sitting in this sanctuary today, we all have to make that journey. And even the veterans among us have a thing or two to learn. Because who among us can truly say that we’ve entered into full partnership with God? Who among us can truthfully claim that we’ve learned everything that there is to learn about walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ and that now we too are prepared to take a seat at the right hand of God? Well, of course none of us can claim that. We’re all on the journey. We’re all learning as we go. We’re all disciples of Jesus. And a disciple is a student. So really, the difference between the veteran Christians in our midst and the rookies is a difference of degree rather than kind. We’re at different points on the same learning curve. And we have to help each other along the way as all of us together move from apprenticeship to partnership.

You have to start somewhere. The goddess Aphrodite may’ve been born full grown, but the rest of us start a long way from whatever goal it is that we hope to achieve, and we have to take baby steps along the way. I think sometimes we expect too much of ourselves, and sometimes we expect too much of the people around us. Like Mary Poppins, we want to be practically perfect in every way: not someday, not tomorrow, but now! So we need to remember that when Jesus picked his disciples, he chose not men who were well on their way to becoming learned scholars or courageous prophets; no, he chose a bunch of bumbling fishermen. As fishermen they were skilled enough, but they didn’t know beans about the kingdom of heaven. Jesus had to be very patient with them. Jesus had to slowly nurture them along. He spent a lot of time teaching them. Didn’t give them major responsibilities right off the bat, but didn’t ignore them either. He spent a lot of time teaching them right from the get-go. They were with him as he began teaching in the synagogues of Galilee. They watched him as he began his healing ministry. One can imagine them sitting in the front row of the crowd as Jesus taught from the mountaintop: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted; blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth;” one can imagine those bumbling fishermen sitting there, hanging on Jesus’ every word (see Matthew, chapters 5-7). First he taught them; then he sent them out on missions so that they could practice the ministry of teaching and healing and bringing good news to the poor (see Matthew 10:1ff).

We in the Church would do well to follow Jesus’ example: not expecting great things from our newcomers right off the bat, but not ignoring them either. Instead, the idea is to take someone under your wing, teach them a few skills, share some of your wisdom with them, and don’t be afraid to learn something from them as well. That’s what mentoring is all about. That’s what leadership development is all about. But most congregations that I’m aware of don’t often help the newcomers with those baby steps. We don’t do a real good job mentoring our adherents and new members. Newer churches, growing churches; they do a good job with mentoring; but older, established United Churches tend not to. Instead, we either give the newcomer a job and expect that they will somehow already know how to do it; or we assume that they’re not capable of doing much of anything (or at least they’re not willing to do so), so we ignore them. Thus we either burn-out our apprentices, or we lose them due to boredom. Either way, we tend to lose them from the congregation. This isn’t always the case, but it’s sometimes the case. And then we wonder why we have the same people doing the same stuff while the volunteer pool seems to get smaller and smaller and smaller. This isn’t just a problem with the Church; I suspect this is a problem with most voluntary associations. We have to mentor the folks. Have to help them identifying their spiritual gifts. Have to help them develop their skill sets.

It’s like the kid who was on the high school basketball team, but he was kind of short and didn’t seem to have much potential, so he mostly sat on the bench for his first three years. But the summer before his senior year in high school, he grew a foot taller. And suddenly he was able to shoot baskets. And now they wanted him in the middle of the action all the time. Except, nobody taught him the rules. When he was sitting on the bench they figured that he didn’t need to know the rules; now all of a sudden they acted as if he’d learned them by osmosis. In one game he got the ball, and he’s looking for someone to pass it to, and the referee blows the whistle on him. Calls him on the three second rule. You can’t stand there holding the ball for more than three seconds. And the kid says, “Three second rule?! What do you mean, three second rule? I’ve been standing here for three years! Don’t tell me that I can’t hold the ball for more than three seconds!” And the kid quit the team. All of that potential talent suddenly blossomed, and he quit the team because everyone expected him to know the rules that no one bothered to teach him.

We have to mentor our new friends along the way. And we have to allow them to mentor us as well. I mean, when the TTC recruits new bus drivers, they don’t just expect them to be able to drive the bus on their own from day one. No, they train them. You’ve probably seen the training busses from time to time. You know, it’s clearly marked “Training Bus” on the destination sign so that you can stay the heck out of their way! I mean, they even teach those new drivers how to park the bus illegally and get a coffee! I was sitting in the Tim Horton’s east of here on Sheppard one day, and this training bus stopped right in the no parking zone, and the instructor led his three trainees off the bus and into Tim’s. An apprentice doesn’t become a partner unless you train him. A disciple doesn’t become a master unless you train her. Just like someone trained you when you were new to the Church. In CGIT or Young People’s or when you first joined UCW as a young mom and maybe one of the older women kind of took you on as a surrogate daughter. We all had to start somewhere. We were all apprentices at one time or another. We all had to take baby steps before we could run the race of faith (Hebrews 12:1) or even just walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

We all have to start somewhere. And we all have somewhere to go. We are moving from apprenticeship to partnership; we are all becoming co-creators with God. When you join the church you’re not simply joining another voluntary association; although you are at least doing that. But it’s more than just choosing to become a volunteer in an organization; you have been chosen to be a part of this organization. Just like Jesus’ first disciples, you have been called by the Christ into the Church. And as Jesus expected great things of his first disciples, so he expects great things of you; and of me; and of all of us together. We are not a social club; we are what the Greeks called an ekklesia; a group of people who have been called out of the crowd and sent on a mission. And that mission is nothing less than creating, with God, something of the kingdom of heaven right here in our midst. As Jesus began his ministry he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). When Jesus called his first disciples – Peter and Andrew, James and John – he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” When Jesus called each one of us into the Church – into the Ekklesia – he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” And when Jesus calls, you have to just drop everything and follow him. It’s like when you look up in the sky and see a rainbow; you just drop everything and admire it for a while. That’s the way it was for those bumbling fisherman; and for Mary and Martha, Salome and Joanna, Lazarus and Zecheus and all of the others who became disciples of Jesus; they were so overwhelmed by this man that they just dropped everything and followed him. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near;” which means, “Forget about life as you know it, and head out with Jesus in a totally new direction, because God wants to teach you how to create something new and magnificent.”

Someone has suggested that the way to live this adventure with God – the way to become a co-creator with God – is to name the most magnificent goal that you can imagine – however outrageous it may be – and then start moving towards it, one baby step at a time. When the next step seems too big, the trick is to take a smaller one – even an infinitesimally small one. Maybe that’s all you can do for a while; take little tiny steps. And then one morning you wake up and feel revitalized and find yourself leaping out of bed and landing ten steps forward. That’s the way it is when you follow Jesus. That’s the way that it is when you seek the kingdom of heaven. It has been said that, “You’ll never know God until you’ve tried the impossible.”

Trying the impossible is the route to God because it is the nature of God to imagine the impossible and then call us toward that lofty goal. And because the goals that God sets before us seem impossible, we need to call upon all of the resources at our disposal as we pursue them. We need to draw fully upon the spiritual gifts of each and every member of this community of faith; the newcomers no less than the veterans. And when those spiritual gifts aren’t apparent – either in us or in others – we need to coax them out and nurture them along. Back in the 8th century B.C., when the prophet Isaiah imagined a new age of hope dawning upon the occupied territory of Israel, the occupation has just begun. The Assyrians had only recently conquered Israel and divided it into three colonies. Isaiah envisioned a future of light and liberation when darkness and slavery were only beginning (see Isaiah 9:1-4)! It was like preaching hope to the Dutch at the very beginning of the Nazi occupation, when all the Dutch could see was doom and gloom. But that’s the way it is with God. God imagines these wild possibilities; God places before us these outrageous, magnificent goals, and then God says to the Church…go for it! You want to refurbish or rebuild the Christian Centre so that it’s an environmentally friendly and functional building? Go for it! You want to go beyond Out of the Cold and get involved in building some kind of supportive, affordable housing? Go for it! You want to push for lively, creative worship? Go for it. Don’t be shy about asking others for their help. But be prepared to take a lot of baby steps along the way. And don’t be overwhelmed by the fear that you don’t have what it takes to accomplish your goal. Because, you see, it’s not about your ability; it’s about your availability. God doesn’t call the equipped; God equips the called.

To follow Jesus is to imagine the seemingly impossible, like creating the kingdom of heaven with just some bumbling fishermen as your helpers. To follow Jesus is to draw the entire community together – the veterans and the rookies – and train each other along the way. We are all in the process of moving from apprentices to partners. And none of us can do it alone. We need each other; and we need to trust in the infinite power of God. As Reinhold Niebuhr observed:
“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore we are saved by love.” Amen.


Text: Matthew 4:19

Preached by Bruce D. Ervin

27 January 2008