Then they went on to another village. As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 

(Luke 9:57)

I think I may have mentioned at some point about twenty years ago or so I had a stint of taking services at what was then the Congregational Church in Annan. There was one Sunday I was doing a service that might have been based on this very text and dealing with the issue of following Christ and I got to the Children’s Address. I asked if any of them was good at reading and a girl put her hand up. I handed her a set of written instructions telling her to go out of the door into the vestibule, up the stairs to the balcony and to wave. I told all the other kids to follow her and do what she did. So off they went and time passed. And more time. I started to worry - especially when one of the Sunday School teachers waved me over and whispered, “She hasn’t got her glasses.” Images were forming in my mind of this group of wee kids following the girl down Annan High Street when, to my relief, they appeared on the balcony. 

It kind of got the point across, though. If you’re going to follow someone it had better be someone who knows where they’re going. For Christians that someone is Christ and we’re supposed follow him with the wholeheartedness with which the man in our text speaks. Notice that Jesus doesn’t refuse him. He merely tells him that if he is going to follow him, it’s not going to be easy. It’s worth noting too that we never find out whether he did, indeed, decide to follow Jesus or not. Sure, he wasn’t one of the Twelve but it’s clear from the Bible that Jesus had other followers. Maybe Luke is asking us a question here: if we claim to want to follow Jesus, and it’s sometimes going to be hard, will we do it? Are we doing it? Are we disciples?

 Not always. There are always things in life that distract us from following Christ. You’ve got to feel sorry for the guy who’s delaying following Jesus to bury his dead father and Jesus responds with “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.” It seems harsh but I want to explain the imagery here. It’s a bit of a cheek for a city boy like me to talk about ploughing, but with an animal-drawn plough, you had to keep your focus straight ahead if you wanted a straight furrow. Look aside or, worse still, behind and you’re all over the place.

And there’s so much to take our attention from following Christ. There are temptations of wealth and status and power. “Yes I’ll follow you Lord, but right now I’m looking for promotion and I have to put in the hours.” There are temptations of the bright pretty shiny things of the world around us. “Yes, I’ll follow you Lord, but I’m up to nearly a thousand followers on Twitter.” There are darker temptations too: physical drives, prejudices, hatreds. “Yes I’ll follow you Lord, but I don’t think I can do all that “love your neighbour and the stranger in your midst” stuff.

For all sorts of reasons there are times when we do not follow in Christ’s footsteps. Do we imagine God doesn’t know that? Do we imagine that God, in Christ, doesn’t know that? Do we imagine that Jesus didn’t know all those temptations? That was the whole point of God coming into the world in the life of a human being; to reassure us that whenever we stray from the path, whenever our plough goes all over the place, God understands and forgives. So let us be humble disciples, not imagining that we know it all or that we’re in any position to stand in judgement of others.

Instead let us humbly follow Christ as his disciples. What does that mean? There are those would seek to lay down the law about who is or is not saved through the love of God in Jesus Christ. There are those who would seek to tell others how to live their lives. There are those who snatch verses from the Bible, ripping from their context and insisting “this and only this is the will of God”. This week, in America, “Christian” campaigners celebrated when the Supreme Court struck down the right of women to safe abortion.

I’m not going to get into the moral arguments on abortion. I have no skin in that game and you are all grown-up boys and girls and quite capable of making your own moral decisions. The thing I’d suggest, though, is that telling people how to live their lives, lecturing them on who they can love and what their priorities in life should be rarely works. Any parent knows that - do you imagine God doesn’t. And I’d suggest that the Church has been at our worst when we’ve wielded enough power to compel peoples’ moral decisions. When we have been the diametric opposite of humble disciples. When we have treated the Bible as a book of rules that have allowed us to stand in judgement of others in pride and an over-developed sense of moral authority. Then we have not been humble disciples: we have shown pride and arrogance and pride and arrogance do not bring people to Christ.

The heart of Christianity isn’t the Bible. That’s why I’m not convinced that leaving it hotel rooms and handing it out to schoolchildren makes much difference. The heart of Christianity is not our theologies, our doctrines or our creeds or catechisms. At the heart of Christianity is a person, is a human being, is Christ; is God living alongside humanity as a human being.

Why? Maybe it’s simple. I’m rubbish at following recipes. The words go in but invariably I forget to put this in or I forget to put the oven on or I mis-read an instruction. Many years ago, though, my Dad, who was an electrician, taught me to wire a plug. Not by telling me, but by showing me. I remember it to this day.That’s what God does for us in Jesus - he shows us how to live as human beings, as his children, learning every step of the way with Jesus at our side and ahead of us how to get better at it as humble disciples.

And what does that look like? Paul nails it. It is living the values that Jesus taught us and yielding the fruits of the spirit: , joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Maybe not always. Maybe distractedly. Maybe uncertainly. Maybe having to let God get our plough back on track or to encourage us again to take up the challenge of following Christ.

But this is how the Church is truly the body of Christ in the world: not by handing down edicts telling people what is right and wrong but, like Christ, showing them by living by his teachings to love one another, to love our enemies, to love those who are our ‘strangers in our midst’, to love those who need our care. When we do this, you, me, all our brothers and sisters in Christ, - however haltingly and however fallibly - we are humble disciples of Jesus. And maybe, just maybe, we may encourage others to seek him out and say to him, “I will follow you wherever you go”

Lord may we be humble disciples. May we follow in the way of your Son - or at least do our best. In doing so may we inspire others to follow him.