[WW] Begin Again

In this Wesley Worship message (recorded 04/16/25) Steve wraps up the spring semester and invites us to begin again as we seek to follow Jesus. 

Send questions and feedback about the podcast to podcast@clemsonwesley.org

Check out Clemson Wesley online!
Website
Facebook
Instagram
GroupMe
TigerQuest 

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Wesley Wear.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Matthew 16, 21. From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo a great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed. And on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, God forbid it. Lord, this must never happen to you. But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me, for you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things. Then Jesus told his disciples, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Thanks be to God. So one question that kept popping up over and over and over again. Sounds simple. It's one that I have been asked, one that I've asked, one that I've tried to answer almost daily. There was one question and one answer that kept coming up as I thought about for tonight. Question Do you want to follow Jesus? Do you want to follow Jesus? Right? Because not everybody does, not everybody does. If you look at the gospels and you read the gospels, tens of thousands of people were drawn to Jesus. They wanted to get a glimpse of the miracles that were going on. Maybe they wanted to get maybe a little magic something that was happening. They wanted to see what all the fuss was about. But tens of thousands of people were drawn to Jesus in the Gospels. Well, from what we see, maybe only a few hundred of those actually wanted to follow Jesus, wanted to become his apprentice, wanted to, as we talked about earlier in the semester, want to be covered in the master's dust, right? Do you want to follow Jesus? As one theologian putty, he says, practicing the weight of Jesus has been and will always be a minority activity. It's one thing to want to know about Jesus, but to actually follow, to actually be a disciple, is something that only the minority of folks actually want to do. And we've talked about this often this year. You're probably like, oh gosh, here he goes again. Right? How Jesus did not call people to join this new religion called Christianity. Right? Instead, he called them to live a life following him, a life in the kingdom of God. And we talked about the kingdom of God at least four times, I think, this year. And so are we willing to do that, to follow into those footsteps, right? Um, and again, because some people even said no to Jesus in the following that, right? We see in the Gospel of Jesus, people are drawn, and they would say, First, let me go and bury my father. Seems like a good request, right? Your dad's dead, you probably should go bury him, right? But that's also like a first century way of saying, you know what? Like maybe this guy's dad really wasn't dead, right? It's more of like a first century way of saying, you know what, let's let's just pause for that on Jesus for a moment, and I'm gonna wait till my parents die, and then I'm gonna inherit some money, and then I'll be wealthy enough that I can kind of retire and just follow you, and it's all gonna be good. So let's just wait till then, Jesus, right? Or they said, let me go back to my family and tell my family goodbye, right? Again, seems like a good request, but it's another way again of sort of saying and saying, you know, I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna think on it, and I'll let you know, right? I'll shoot you a text when I'm ready to commit, Jesus, right? They all had their chances, and we've all sort of done that, right? And not just in following Jesus, but other stuff, right? We are procrastinators. I am, I'm a procrastinator at heart, right? We delay, we make excuses, we come up with things to do instead, whether it's getting in shape, whether it's preparing for the paper, whether it's studying for our exams that we know we have to study for, but we wait till the last second and just pray God for a miracle, right? We all procrastinate at times, I got stories on that. We all say, I will do it later, or I'll do it when it is convenient, but later rarely comes, right? And what does Jesus tell the people who says, Let me uh go back and bury my father? What does he say to the let me go back and tell my family goodbye first? He says, Let the bed dairy bury their own dead. Let the dead bury their own dead, right? And at first it's like that's kind of like Jesus, come on, he's supposed to be a nice cuddly teddy bear. What's going on, right? Um seems kind of unkind, right? But Jesus is like being very straightforward, as Jesus always is. He doesn't beg, he doesn't try to coerce, uh, he doesn't try to manipulate, right? He just says, Do you want to follow me? And for those that say no, or maybe not this time, he's like, All right. And he kind of moves on, right? Um doesn't try to coerce and that sort of stuff. Can you imagine, though, putting yourself in those gospel, those the shoes of the shoes of the people in the gospels of saying no to Jesus, right? I can, because I've done it, and oftentimes it's complicated, right? Uh tomorrow night, if you're looking for something to do around 6:30, there's gonna be a legendary performance of a live, living, Last Supper modern version at Clemson UMC, um, co-staring yours truly. It's gonna be crazy. Um but as I was sitting there in practice early in the week, right, sitting there in rehearsal, and you have to freeze during the Last Supper. I'm so thankful. I'm probably the second youngest people person on the stage, but I'm one of the few people that actually has a chair. I felt kind of bad, but also I was like, you know what? Happens. Um I just get to sit there like this. Um and my role is Peter. My role is Peter, and I'm still working on my lines. I was supposed to have memorized by working on it. Um and I actually have to memorize my bottom, I'm gonna memorize them because I got to, right? And I was sitting there just looking at the script the whole time because you can't move, and so you just kind of look in there, and I'm like, mm-mm, like, dang, Peter, dude, come on. Like, really? Right? If you don't know the story of Peter, I've talked about Peter a few times. Peter was a reluctant disciple, right? If you remember early on, Jesus, he had been um, Peter had been fishing often, all night, hadn't caught anything. Jesus' like, hey, can I use your boat? And Peter's like, I guess so. And so, you know, Jesus gets on his boat and talks for a while and preaches, and then he's like, Hey, Peter, you bum, you hadn't caught anything. Go out deeper, right? And Peter's like, Really? Really, Jesus? We're going out deeper in the water, like I'm tired. Can't you see I'm spent, right? I just want to be done with this. And he's like, No, go. And so he goes out in the water and he catches all these fish and he feels bad, right? But then he's like, Jesus, you know, I'm with you, I'm there. And then Peter starts walking on the water, if you remember that story, and then he loses his faith and he goes to sink. He's like, I got you, boom, pulls you up. Uh remember, Jesus tells Peter, You are the rock on which I will build my church, right? And then about two verses later, Jesus is saying, Get behind me, Satan, right? Peter, like, he just couldn't get it right, right? He's like, I got you, Jesus. Nope, definitely not, right? He's the definition of two steps forward, one step backwards, right? Um, constantly trying to follow Jesus and then not, right? And we see even, and we well, if you go to Holy Week services, you will hear part of um this story, right? Where Jesus is at the Last Supper. I was like, where'd I hear this? At practice, right? The Living Last Supper. Jesus tells the disciples, one of you will betray me, right? One of you will betray me. And every disciple, part of that living last supper, is sort of an inner monologue that is spoken out loud, where the disciples wondering, Am I the one? Am I the one that will betray you? And even Peter says, Jesus, like, that's not gonna happen. And if you have to die, like I'm gonna die trying to defend you, right? Peter talks about that in the Gospels as well. And yet Jesus says, Look, man, you're not gonna betray me, but uh, you're gonna deny me three times. Peter's like, You kidding me, three times? Come on, Jesus. You're my boy, I won't do that. And what's he do? He denies him, right? He denies him three times in the courtyard. He denies him, right? This had to be difficult for Peter. It's had to be real difficult for Peter, right? The guy that said, Even if I must die defending you, I won't deny you, Jesus. So dude messed up. He denied Jesus in the most critical time three times. He failed me. Jesus right there in front of him. Jesus said, Come on out the boat, and he couldn't even do that, right? Right? Just mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake after mistake. But yet this was the rock. This was the one who Jesus would build his church on, he says. So why do we talk about this? Why would we talk about this? You know, the denial story is the only story of Peter that that occurs in all four gospels. They recorded in all four gospels, Jesus' denial, Peter's denial of Jesus. And I think part of that is because Jesus probably Peter probably told this story himself often to the people in the churches he was he was ministering with, right? And he was like, Look, I'm up here preaching, but I got it wrong a lot. I'm a follower of Jesus, but look, I messed up a lot. I denied him. In his most crucial times, I denied him. When I needed to step up, I denied him. And I think Peter and the gospel writers want us to all see us in that story that you know we've all denied Jesus at times. We've all answered that question, are you do you want to follow Jesus? And sometimes, most of the time, we're like, yeah, but sometimes if we're honest, at least if I'm honest, I'm like, uh, maybe. Now in this circumstance, in this instance, when do I get a Sabbath from following you, Jesus? Because this is kind of hard. But in all some at some point in time, we've all maybe denied Jesus. If not, congratulations. I I struggle with it at times by our thoughts, our words, our actions. Sometimes what we've done, or sometimes what we failed to do, right? But Peter's story reminds us, it's a resurrection story, though. You see later on Jesus having a meal with him, right? He makes things right with Peter and says, Go and feed my sheep, right? Peter's story reminds us that we are not characterized by our failures. We're not defined by our worst instances. The worst thing that we do will not define us, right? And Jesus comes back, uses Peter in all these great ways. And so if Peter, if Jesus can use Peter, who has denied him more times than we want to remember, really messed up, what could Jesus also do with us? Right? And so the question still remains do you want to follow Jesus? And I think that's a question that we answer as people of faith every single day. It's not a one-and-done deal. Yes, I did it back when I was in youth group. Yes, I did that one night at Wesley. But every moment, every second, every breath is a question that we must answer in the way that we act, in the way that we are. Do we want to follow Jesus? I've tried, but I've stumbled. I'm not sure. I have doubts, right? What if you won't take me back? Right? The question still remains do you want to follow Jesus? So that was the question that kept popping up in my mind as we thought about Holy Weekend there. And then the answer came, at least the answer that that kind of popped in from there that I couldn't kept wrestling with all week. If you want to follow Jesus, then begin again. Then begin again, right? Um there was once a monk that was asked, What do y'all do in a monastery, right? Like, what do you do all day in a monastery? What do you do? And he says, we fall and we get up. And we fall and we get up, and we fall and we get up again and again and again. And that kind of captures, at least my faith journey, um, that like that's a picture of probably all of our spiritual journeys, right? This this picture of us falling and getting back up again and again and again and again over the course of our lifetime. And that's the thing about life, right? We will have failures, right? You will, at one point in time, whether it's in school or in life, there's gonna be a test that you're gonna fail. There's gonna be a time where you wish you said something as a person of faith and stood on principle that you were made silent, right? There's a time when you wish that you had done something, but you didn't, right? But that's okay. There's times where we wish that you'd follow Jesus, but we but we didn't. And that's not, it doesn't make you a bad apprentice, it doesn't make you a bad disciple. It simply makes you human. Part of what it means to be human is that we are going to mess up, right? I like how one author talks about, he says the metaphor of walking with God is used often. And oftentimes we say, right, we want to walk with God, just want to walk with God, want to walk with Jesus, hand in hand, arm in arm, just singing down the road, right? But with that metaphor also comes its companion, and that's stumbling, right? Because we walk with Jesus, no doubt there are times when you remember going hiking before and you just like you just start tripping over roots, maybe the only person, right? But you're tripping over roots and rocks and different things, stuff just gets in your way. There's gonna be times where you're gonna get trip up. There's gonna be times when you don't think about it and ignorantly you kind of go and lose your way. Sometimes you blatantly choose to go. Sometimes you wander off the path or we err in some way, right? It's not a matter of if, but when. But the question is what happens when we stumble? What happens when you stumble? We simply begin again.

unknown 13:32

Right?

SPEAKER_01 13:33

The cool thing about that is you can begin over at any instant and any moment, right? Um, and the Benedictine monks call this, call to practice called the conversion of life. We in the Western tradition, we use the word sanctification, right? And it's about growing in our holiness, growing in our perfection. Not that we will ever attain it, but simply our goal is just to continue to grow, continue to grow that our life might reflect Jesus Christ more and more. It's something that we take slow, but it's something to remember that Jesus never met anyone anywhere other than exactly where they are. And so at any moment, no matter where you are, no matter what you may be doing, you can always begin again. Do you want to follow Jesus? Do you want to practice the way? Then simply begin again. As the old proverb goes, the journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step. And so whether you have PhD on the horizon, whether you have a master's coming up, whether you have another semester, a new job, faith decisions, whatever it may be, I would encourage you to take the next small step in Jesus. Last week, Bella talked about being bold and proclaiming boldly, and part of being bold is being willing to simply take the next small step, right? And to see where Jesus may lead you. The path might get difficult, it might get long, it might be hard, it might be scary, you may stumble or fall, it may be years, you may look back and say, Man, what happened to my faith? No matter how you've lost your way or stepped, stumbled, or erred along the way, at any moment, know that you can begin again. And that's part of the gospel there. Begin again.

SPEAKER_00 15:13

The Wesley Word is a production of the Clemson Wesley Foundation. For more information about Clemson Wesley, check out our website or follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Until next time, get out there and love your neighbor.