The Call to Transformation
A skeptic once said, “Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God and all he ended up with was the church.”
What he meant was that the vision Jesus has is often not seen in the lives of the people who claim to follow Jesus.
This week’s text will come from John 1:35-51. It is a text where John the Baptist urges people to pay attention to Jesus and declares him to be the “Lamb of God.” Jesus will invite people to begin to follow him. Some will. Some will even go bring their friends and families and invite them to join in following Jesus, too. There is energy and passion and excitement as encountering Jesus leads people to new hopes and dreams for their lives and for the world.
The key is that people who followed Jesus did not just join a club. They were at the front end of a movement that would change the world. They sensed that following Jesus would be one of the most significant things they would do in their lives. Jesus was not just someone to watch and enjoy from the sidelines. He was someone who was changing people deep in their core.
One of the new followers, a guy named Nathanael, was a bit of a skeptic. But hearing an invitation to “come and see” he meets Jesus and is amazed at how Jesus seems to know him already. Jesus responds by basically saying, “you ain’t seen nothing, yet.” Then Jesus declares that far greater things lie ahead
One key for all of us who follow Jesus is to not just assume that belonging to the church was Jesus’ main goal for our lives. A meaningful church life helps each of us attend to a meaningful spiritual life. Encountering Christ is about life transformation and a way of life that changes everything.
As the new year begins, one of the goals for the coming year is to continue to build on the base we began in the past year – attending to our spiritual lives and helping all of us continue on the life changing journey that following Jesus always brings.
