Life-Long Students

"Come and Follow Me..."
Matthew 4:19a

For many in our area, graduation ceremonies are coming up for them this weekend. Yay!!! This means rightly celebrating the completion of a lot of hard work. And it also means no longer being enrolled as a student in that particular school. But I remembered something this morning. Every Christian is a full-time, life-long student in the school of Christ. This is a school and degree program that we never graduate from this side of eternity.

A Christian is someone who has responded to the voice of Jesus saying, “Come and follow me,” and Jesus couldn’t be clearer. Jesus doesn’t want fans who just listen and applaud him; Jesus wants followers who learn from him and obey him. The New Testament word for disciple means “student or learner.” A disciple is a learner and the learning from Jesus never stops. In the first century, a disciple actually lived with his or her Rabbi where they learned what was taught and modeled in a variety of ways. If you're a Christian, Jesus is your instructor. He is your Rabbi. And Jesus is still teaching us and forming us today.

But where do these classes take place? At church on Sunday? Over coffee with a mentor? In a hospital bed? In someone’s home, or at the mall with a friend? The answer is, yes, all of the above. Your life, in every aspect, and through a variety of people and means, is the classroom that Christ is teaching you in. Discipleship is not an intensive weekend program. Discipleship can’t be packaged, marketed and sold. It takes time, patience, and a lot of perseverance and faith in the ordinary means of grace. It's a gradual, comprehensive, life-long process. We might say that Christian discipleship is a life-long comprehensive process of learning from Jesus.

So, as a Christian I can never throw up my hands and truly say, "Finally, I'm done with school!" And thank God, because I still need a lot of work and there's still a lot of new learning ahead for me. I'm grateful to be a life-long student in the school of Christ because I need it. I need the ongoing teaching of Rabbi Jesus, because in a culture that says, “just follow your heart and you’ll be free,” the true liberating voice of my Master says to me daily, “Come and follow me.”  

Dear God, thank you for how you are fashioning me in the formative school of Christ. Thank you for never giving up on me and for admitting me into your life-long program of learning from Jesus. Help me to be a more faithful student so I can more faithfully represent your wisdom and ethics to the world. Amen