To be a follower of Jesus is to become a disciple, a learner, an apprentice to a master craftsman. The idea of apprenticheship, where a student learns by watching and copying one with more experience in a skill, has become less popular in recent years, but in the past, this method was highly popular, because people knew that the skills needed to become a master builder or blacksmith, for example, took time to master and went beyond the theoretical to the practical. People knew such skills had to be absorbed and honed through repeated practice. As the saying goes, ‘practice makes perfect’; learning is often incremental.

Jesus took twelve men and trained them to follow Him and the works He was ding. He taught them with words and actions for 3 1/2 years alongside Him, sharing meals with Him, watching Him work and pray, often being baffled by Him, but ultimately learning what it meant to live by faith and not by sight.

Twelve was a symbolic number, reminding us of the twelve tribes of Israel. It’s not a huge number – you can’t share your life intimately with thousands of people. We should never despise small beginnings: those twelve disciples had enormous impact on the world. Nor should we forget that progress is rarely linear: Judas, after all, did not stay the course.

Last week, twelve volunteers painted an art mural at the Railway Embankment. I think it’s safe to say none of us had ever done anything like that before. We were dependent on an artist (Lydia Caprani) for direction and instruction. She had done many outdoor projects like this before. She instructed us on which paint and brushes to get, mixed colours with skill and taught us how to paint. We may not have changed the world, but we did transform a brick wall into a work of art, which was a good week’s work!

Learning a skill takes time, patience, commitment and humility. It means learning from those with more experience than ourselves and being prepared to follow through unfamiliar territory. Jesus commissioned us to go and make disciples of all nations. (Matt 28:18-20) Discipleship will never happen overnight. Being a disciple, a follower, is a lifelong journey, working with the Master.

Matt 5:13-16 reminds us that we are salt and light in our communities. Light is revelational; salt is transformational. Light shows truth and reveals truth to us; salt is truth in action, where we set an example to others through our lifestyles. Salt stops things going bad; it has a positive influence. As we live out the truth of Jesus’s words, we affect others and can transform our society.

In the 1920, Cardinal Joseph Cardijn founded the Young Christian Workers who campaigned on a range of social justice cause. He developed the See-Judge-Act method as a way to reorient one’s life to God’s ways. The terminology may have been new then, but in the story of Gideon, we see this method acted out, as Gideon saw the angel, judged what was said to him and acted in faith as a result of what was said to him. (Judges 6) Gideon’s actions demonstrate to us the success that comes as we assess a situation (see), judge by the word of God what is true and then act on this.

Christians often hesitate at the point of judging, being influenced by Matt 7:1-5 and Luke 6:37-42. However, we cannot make a blanket decision never to judge anything, as other Scriptures (Rom 2:1, Luke 12:54-58 and John 7:21-24) make it clear that we are to judge correctly and what is right. 1 Cor 6:1-6 reminds us that Christians will judge the world and therefore we have to understand the distinction between what we can judge (weighing and assessing what we see) and what we cannot  (partial information, motives, and so on.) We will often have different opinions on matters and must not necessarily dismiss others because of different opinions.

Our actions need to influence others, to counter wrong and to promote good. As a church, we believe we are called to be ‘with God in the community, with God for the community.’ This will involve prayer but also action. Esther is a good example of someone whose faith influenced her actions (see Esther 3:8-9, Esther 4:12-14). She chose not to hide away, but rose to the challenge when her people faced great persecution. As a result of her actions, many were saved. She was involved in her community – we must be too.

There is a need for us to see – to be alert and aware of what is going on. We need to judge – how does God see this situation? How does this line up with what He wants? Then we need to act, so that we can continue to be salt in our society.

This morning in our series on ‘Questions’, we looked at the question Jesus asked Philip: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time?’ (John 14:9) Knowing Jesus is at the heart of our faith, and it must have seemed poignant to Jesus that even after over three years of following Him, Philip still seemed so bemused by the things Jesus was saying. So often, we feel the same, rather like the pupil in class who keeps silent because they don’t understand what the teacher is saying. Jesus’s teaching on leaving them and going to the Father (John 14:1-14) seemed unclear to His disciples who felt bewildered by all that was going on.

Knowing Jesus is at the heart of the gospel and the start of eternal life (see John 17:3). Jesus makes the Father known to us (John 1:18), but so often, we want to see something more. Jesus urged His disciples to have faith, to trust in Him not only for now but for an eternal future (John 14:1-4), to refuse to let our hearts be troubled because our future is secure in Him (see also Rom 8;37-39). Both Thomas and Philip had questions for Jesus – and it’s not wrong to bring our questions to Him – but still there is the sense in Jesus’s question that we need to grow in our knowledge of Him, no matter how long we have been on the road with Him.

Paul’s passion was to know Jesus more (Phil 3:7-11), and this must be our focus in life too. We must seek to know God as He is, not as we imagine Him to be or want Him to be. When we do grow in our knowledge of God, Jesus offers us the amazing promise that we will do even greater things than He did and that we can ask for anything in His name and He will do it. (John 14:12-14) It’s hard for us to grasp the scope of all that God can do for us if we will simply follow His heart and have faith in Him. Knowing God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit must be the priority in our lives.

This week was not without its setbacks. The first hurdle we had to overcome was the weather. The forecast for Monday to Wednesday was of constant light and sometimes heavy showers. The artist, Lydia Caprani, was travelling from Hull and staying all week here, so there was really no margin for delays, and it was obvious that constant rain would devastate the outdoor project. Painting in rain just doesn’t work. The paint just runs! The project itself had been delayed over a year because of Covid-19; if we couldn’t manage to paint in July, when on earth could we hope to do it?!

On Sunday afternoon and evening we had a thunderstorm and torrential rain. This could not even be called a heavy shower. Garry and I went to the site to pray for fine, dry weather as the rain lashed around us. I reckoned that if this project was God’s idea and not just my own crazy imagination, then He would have to do something about the weather, because I surely couldn’t. I reckoned that this was not without Biblical precedent: Elijah commanded the heavens to be dry and there was no rain for three years until he prayed again for rain to come (see 1 Kings 17-21). Jesus commanded the waves and wind to cease. (Mark 4:35-41) I needed God to demonstrate not only to me that He was in control of the elements (I knew that) but to show others something of His power. For me, I needed to know that this project was something He cared about and therefore I needed to see His power in action in visible, specific ways.

God’s faithfulness in this area was a great blessing to someone who finds it hard to let go of control, to someone who lives with self-doubt every single day. Each morning, the sky would be ominously grey and the spits of rain would be present. Each day I would command the rain to go in Jesus’ name and sing the chorus of ‘Build Your Kingdom Here’ in faith. Each morning, people would tell me ‘it’s not looking good today, is it?’ and each day I would say, ‘we’ll be fine; God can sort this.’ Each lunchtime without fail, the rain would pour down; each afternoon when we returned to the site after lunch, the rain would stop. People laughed as I told the black clouds to move on and asked God for blue sky, but despite one torrential downpour on Wednesday at 5 p.m. which meant a lot of touching-up the next day, the rain held off and Thursday and Friday were bright and sunny. “We were lucky with the weather, weren’t we?” someone commented towards the end of the week. I said that luck had nothing to do with it!

A community project involves all aspects of the community, and the plan was for 5 schools to be involved. Covid-19 had already dented our original plans, limiting each school to six pupils on site, but even that was thwarted. In the end, none of the schools could come, either because of staff shortages, positive Covid-19 tests forcing self-isolation onto pupils and staff or simply wariness because of increasing infection rates. It was disappointing not to have children involved in the project, but the adults who came along willingly to help worked hard and the project was completed on schedule even after this setback.

Pete Davies, a local resident and friend of the arts’ festival, came along twice each day to capture our progress on camera. What I found so wonderful about his photos is the way he captured the spirit of the work that week. Lydia, the artist, told me that she loved having photos like that because it reminded her not only of the work of art itself but the people who had helped create that art. Community projects are never just about the finished project; they are about the teamwork and sheer fun which go along with the journey.

On Tuesday, a man wandered in to the Railway Embankment site as we were painting. His car was being serviced in the garage opposite and he had time to kill, so, seeing the open gates, he decided to explore.

It must have seemed an odd sight to him: five people in various stages of painting a wall. He asked if we were doing community service (meaning a scheme whereby offenders do jobs in the community to atone for their misdemeanours.)

Of course, we were doing community service – just not quite in the way he meant! We were serving our community by giving up our time and talents to paint a mural for our community. Volunteering is very different to being mandated to do good. Here, people were doing good because they love where they live and wanted to enhance the beauty of the place.

Our church’s strapline (a phrase I detest) is ‘with God in the community, with God for the community.’ Our name is Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church. This is the reason I have spent so much time at the Railway Embankment this week. It has been a labour of love. I’m no fan of painting. I dislike the mess. I tremble every time I set foot on a stepladder. But I beleive passionately that God wants to do something beautiful in Goldthope and that this art project can be one way of serving Him in the community.

Community service – a way of living out your faith right where you live!

Working on the Railway Embankment art mural this week has been an object lesson, a parable, on life itself, and especially how we need the ‘bigger picture’ to see well.

Most of the week was spent close to a very large wall, painting odd shapes. It was not always easy to see if the surface had been fully painted or not, especially when painting light grey on white or a lighter shade of green on a darker one. The only foolproof way to check was to stand further back and assess from a distance.

Similarly, when up close, it was impossible to tell what we were painting at all. Only when we backed away and looked from a distance did the funny shapes become hill contours and the blobs become clouds.

Life is like this. When viewed up close, in the immediacy of the ‘now’ with all its crises, catastrophes and calamities, it’s hard to discern any pattern at all, let alone work out how God is working for good in all these things. But with the benefit of hindsight or the chance to gain some eternal perspective on our lives, we see that He is making everything beautiful in its time. (Eccl 3:11)

We need to see the ‘bigger picture.’ Just as we trusted our artist to bring a beautiful overall picture to completion, so we must trust God to make our lives beautiful, things that will bring glory to Him, however messy they may look in the making.