Readings – Luke 4:31-32.     Luke 19:46-47.

Message.

There has been a lot more traffic on the roads this week. Morning and afternoon buses have been crowded with young people. Parents have been chivvying their children to get up earlier in the morning. New clothes have been brought out of wardrobes. Timetables have been pinned up on kitchen noticeboards or stuck to fridges. Memories of happy holidays have been to the back of our minds. Why are all these things happening? You know the answer to that question as well as I do: it’s the beginning of the new academic year. For many of us, that means an end to the free-flowing days of summer and a return to our normal daily routines. However some parents, who have been trying to entertain their children and juggle their work routines during the summer, will be very grateful that life has got back to normal!

Schools, colleges and universities are very much part of our landscape: they are just “there” and we rarely give them a second thought! But, if someone were to ask us why they exist and what they are for, we’d probably say, “What a silly question: they’re for education, of course”. However, when you think about it, all that answer does is beg another question, one which is harder to answer: what actually is education? For do we see our educational establishment as settings in which students learn a set of facts, a corpus of knowledge? Are they places for passing on skills which future employers may find useful? Should education aim to inculcate certain values which we think are central to a civilised society? Or is it more important that young people are taught to question everything and learn to think independently? It’s worth asking these questions, as the way we answer them will give us different ways of judging whether education can be deemed “successful”. Do we think it’s better to emerge from the system with a sheaf of certificates under our arm but little life experience, or do we believe that paper qualifications are virtually meaningless and that it’s more important to graduate in “the school of hard knocks”? There’s probably a balance to be struck between those extremes.

We here have all left school, although some of us may be continuing our education in one way or another. (If that’s your situation, I wish you well). But I now want to move away from academia, and think about Christian learning which, I believe, should be lifelong. For God has given us inquisitive brains and set us in a world of enormous fascination. There is always something new for us to learn about the created order, or about how human society works, or about God himself, whose immensity and complexity are truly unfathomable. I’m sure that he wants us to keep our minds constantly open and alert.

I have to say, though, that there are Christians who seem to have little or no interest in learning more about their faith. Yes, they have picked up a few basic facts about the Bible and Christianity from their time at Sunday School, but they appear to have then stopped wanting to find out more. They regard their minister’s erudite, eloquent and carefully-prepared sermons (!) as a weekly trial of endurance or an opportunity for a quick nap. Or they will say, if invited to a Bible study course, “I don’t think that’s for the likes of me; I’ve got my simple faith, thank you very much”. This attitude makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall and ask, “Why don’t you wish to learn more about your faith? Does it really mean that little to you?”

There may of course be a number of reasons for this lack of thirst for learning. Sometimes the fault has been with Ministers and Sunday School teachers who have presented the faith as a “corpus of theological knowledge”, a list of things which Christian believe, rather than as a pilgrim journey of discovery. Teachers who take this approach aren’t just implying that our faith is primarily about agreeing with a set of statements, they’re also saying, “these are the basic facts that you need to know; there are other bits of information which can be studied by those who want to take things further – but you needn’t bother”.

But this isn’t the only reason why Christian people don’t want to learn more. Sometimes, in fact I think quite often, the issue is one of personal security: “I’m happy with what I know about the Christian faith; thinking through other bits and pieces may make me feel much more wobbly”. Or perhaps, if we’re honest, the problem is simply that we are lazy, we’re not prepared to invest the time or effort in finding out more about what we believe. The result, though, is not good: many Christians do not apply their faith to the knottier problems of human existence; this has left the Church weak and impoverished.

You may say that I’m being rather harsh or critical; surely it’s up to each one of us to decide how much we wish to learn of Christ? Well, I’m in good company, for Paul, writing to the enthusiastic but fractious Church at Corinth, wrote these blunt words: “I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food”; while the writer to the Hebrews says in similar vein, “By this time you ought to be teachers, but in fact you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food; for … solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained to distinguish good from evil”. Do I detect a note of despair in both these writers’ words? I think I do.

In complete contrast to these rather depressing verses, I’d like to read you some others written by the Psalmist several centuries earlier. And he was almost elegiac in his enthusiasm for study: “Your decrees are wonderful; therefore my soul keeps them. The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple. With open mouth I pant, because I long for your commandments”. Here is someone, you sense, who cannot wait to open his Bible and learn more about God, who is eager to dig into the Scriptures and discover some nugget of hidden treasure. In fact, it is quite impossible to stop him – or her!

I’ve already said that most of us left the groves of academe a long time ago. But, at the start of this school year, the beginning of this autumn season of church life, may I issue a challenge for us to make a fresh effort to become learners of God and students of the Bible. And, if that is something you really don’t fancy doing, may I then exhort you to spend some time in prayer asking God to give you a renewed desire for learning, to find out more about what it means to be a Christian in today’s complex world. I’m not suggesting that we learn facts from the Bible for their own sake: we aren’t going to be holding a “Mastermind” contest to see how much we know (although that could be fun). Our purpose is much more serious than that: we are aiming to imbibe principles which will shape our entire approach to life.

I’d also throw out another challenge, which to ask how much you listen to and reflect upon the sermons you hear each Sunday. I joked about this earlier, but now I’m being serious because for most Christians sermons are the only opportunity they have to learn about their faith. So, as I (or anyone else) am speaking from the pulpit, are you thinking, as did a lady in one of my churches, “I do wish he’d flipping well finish” (except that the word she used was not “flipping”!)? Or do you listen carefully, trying to follow my train of thought, and saying, “That’s interesting, I’d never thought of that before” or even, “Oh, no, I can’t go along with that”. I’m not trying to boast; but I do invest a lot of time and thought in what I bring to you every Sunday; I don’t guarantee it to always be Gospel truth and I welcome debate and discussion, but I do want it to be a means of stimulating thought and growth. If my words simply go into one of our ears only to come straight out of the other, we’re not only wasting our time but our Church will not grow into the profoundly Christian and vibrant community that God wants it to be.

We Christians often say that we are “disciples” of Jesus. But the word “disciple” means far more than just a “follower” or a “churchgoer” or “someone who has an interest in Jesus”. Its root meaning is actually a pupil, a student or an apprentice. It has been defined as “a learner who binds themself to a teacher in order to embrace their worldview and way of life”. A longer definition says that a disciple is “a person who learns from another by instruction, whether formal or informal”; they are an adherent of a teacher, not just a mere pupil. This is clearly a serious business; not only do we realise the obvious links which the English word “disciple” has with the word “discipline”, we also recall Jesus saying, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple”. This is far more than learning a Christian creed.

However – and it’s a big “however” – we need to realise something else. For Jesus, the supreme teacher who got people to think profoundly through his parables, who instructed his inner band of followers intensively, who confounded the religious academics of his day, who managed to communicate God to people in everyday language in ways which had them always demanding more, said, “Learn from me; for my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. Discipleship, learning, living were Jesus were supposed to be joyous and liberating, not miserable and draining. For he also said that he came to give us abundant life.

As we all know, the music world has been mourning the death of Dolly Parton. Famous for her glamourous outfits and platinum wigs, she said, “If I’m remembered 100 years from now, I hope it will be not for looks but for books”. Recognising that her father, “the smartest man she ever knew”, had been held back in life by his inability to read, Dolly made children’s literacy a key aim of her life. Not only did she establish the Dollywood Foundation, promoting children’s education in Tennesee’s elementary schools, but she founded the Imagination Library which sends free books to children from birth until their first year of schooling. This has grown to be a global project and has so far sent out 330 million books. At the other end of the education spectrum, Dolly encouraged graduates to keep on learning. “I believe that to learn more means to keep working at making your dreams come true,” she said. It’s no surprise that in 2022 Dolly – the “Book Lady” – received the National Education Association’s “Friend of Education” Award, its highest honour, given to an individual who has made a distinctive contribution to public education in America.

Let’s be encouraged by Dolly’s example and, of course, even more by Jesus’s words. At the start of this new academic year, may I encourage us all to go back to God’s school so that we, too, may learn how to understand and follow Christ better amidst the many pressures and complexities of today’s world.