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Diocese

I’m not sure how familiar you are with the show (and if you take no other lesson home with you from this sermon then take this one, watching the Apprentice is an excellent way to spend a weekday evening). In it thousands of applicants apply - whittled down to about 20 or so for the TV show - for the privilege of becoming Alan Sugars apprentice. They then suffer a gruelling several weeks competing with each other on various tasks which for the most part centre on trying to make as much money as possible.

Apprenticeship is similar in some ways to the stock Christian phrase discipleship – a word thrown around in church circles which doesn’t really have much resonance in today’s world. An apprentice is there to learn. So to the disciple. An apprentice needs a teacher, so to the disciple. Both of them require a relationship. Indeed the success of the apprenticeship is not just in the quality of the apprentice, but in the relationship they have with their mentor. If you ever watched the programme you see that the relationship between Alan Sugar and his would-be apprentice is important. One of the candidates was sacked primarily for being a bit to zany for Alan.

Christian discipleship is primarily about a relationship; a relationship with Jesus Christ. All those who profess to be Christians are (whether they like it or not), claiming to be disciples of Christ. The difference between us and an ‘Alan Sugar apprenticeship’ is that we’re not selected or rejected on the basis of our qualities. Jesus is not going to sack us for being too zany (we only have to look to our fellow brothers and sisters around us to know the truth of that statement!).

The passages read today remind us of some of the basic truths of Christian discipleship. While the Apostle Paul is his usual forthright self in Romans we might need to dig a little deeper in our gospel passage and I want to look at the story of the feeding of the four thousand as a kind of allegory for Christian discipleship. Because both of these passages can serve to remind us about the role we have to play as disciples and they also give a reminder of who it is we’re following; of God’s nature and how relates to us.  

The miracle of the feeding of the four thousand takes place because the crowds left their homes and towns and followed Jesus into the countryside and stayed with him for three days. The crowd – a large crowd, a great multitude - had clearly seen something in Jesus that attracted them to him – maybe his authoritative teaching, the miracles, the radical claims he was making? The point is they followed him.

It’s always worth asking yourself from time to time; why am I a Christian? What is it that attracted me to Christianity? What is about Jesus that attracted me to follow him? The simple yet profound truth of the Christian faith is that we worship a God who, in Jesus, became human, lived and walked among us and called us to follow him. This is the very essence of Christian discipleship: following Christ.

Following Jesus requires effort and sacrifice. In the gospel passage Mark tells us that the crowd or multitude went without food for three days in order to be with Jesus. Following Jesus requires sacrifice. But it’s is much more than just occasionally going without food. As Saint Paul commands us:

So now yield your members servants to righteousness

What Paul is saying is that we are to use our bodies – our hands, our ears, our mouths - as instruments for God. Our hands to carry out acts of love, to help those in need and those around us; Our mouths to speak words of love and encouragement; our ears to listen to others and share in their story. And the key word here is ‘yield’. It is so tempting to use our bodies as instruments for our own gain. But that is not what discipleship requires of us. We are called to give up the temptation – our natural instinct – and allow God’s will to be done through our bodies.

And yes it’s hard. Christian discipleship is hard. It is challenging. It is costly. But as the great reformer Martin Luther said: “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.”

Yet in the midst of this challenge, we need to remember who it is that we are disciples of:

Jesus called his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have been with me three days, and have nothing to eat.

Jesus had compassion on the crowd and this serves as a stark reminder that our God is a God of compassion. He feels our pain, he understands the challenge and knows our needs. What is not mentioned in this story is that if the crowd had not eaten for three days, then presumably Jesus hadn’t either. The truth is that God feels our pain and knows our suffering. It can sometimes be hard to accept that and while many things in life happen that we do not understand, God is there in our pain and he knows our needs.

And these needs can be very practical. The crowd that had followed him were hungry. So he fed them. He still meets our practical needs today. So do not be shy of asking for the very simple and practical things from God – after all, Jesus taught us to pray “give us our daily bread.”

What is also striking about this story is the way in which Jesus met the practical need of the crowd. He asked his disciples what was available to them and they brought to him seven loaves of bread and a few small fishes. And Jesus took this small, measly and very ordinary offering and used it to accomplish something extraordinary; the feeding of four thousand plus people (since there likely would have been women and children among them who were not counted in the crowd).

What Jesus did with those loaves of bread and few small fishes he still does today. He takes our small, measly offering, our ordinariness - whatever talents, gifts passions and time we have – and uses it to accomplish extra-ordinary things. And he does this in partnership with his disciples. The feeding of the four thousand by the bread and the fish was mediated by his disciples. Likewise today the sharing of his love is to be mediated by us to the world.

I began by highlighting some similarities between an apprentice and a disciple. Both involved learning, both involve a teacher. But the relationship between ourselves and Jesus Christ is immensely more than that of an apprentice-mentor. For we do not just mimic Jesus as a good and moral teacher but worship him as our Lord and Saviour.

Discipleship is hard. It is challenging. But God knows our needs and he uses whatever gifts and talents we have to accomplish extra ordinary things.

While Alan Sugars apprentice may take home a 6-figure salary, the wages for our discipleship is worth much, much more.

As Paul reminds us, our wages are the gift of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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