“Time with God: Apprentice” Hebrews 5:8 Hebrews 12: 10-11

We don’t talk very much in terms of apprenticeships any more. An apprentice is someone who is learning the skills of a particular trade. This is different then an intern who works in order to simply get work experience. An apprentice works directly with a master in the occupation they are called to, an intern can be the low person on the totem poll, running errands and perhaps spending little to no time with the master.

When you are called to be a pastor there are several different forms that apprenticeships take. During seminary you have a year long supervised ministry program where you work with a particular pastor in a particular place, getting a chance to hone your ministerial skills under their leadership. You also meet with a committee of lay people who are a source of encouragement and another group of students at the seminary who you debrief your experience with.

Then once you enter into the local church, the journey does not end. I am an ordained elder. In order to be ordained you have to at minimum work in the local church for two years, with a mentor you can ask questions to, a conference committee called the Board of Ordained Ministry helping to emulate your work, and meet with a group of others going through the ordination process to learn together. Some call this residency. Others call it probationary membership. Its a blessed and grueling time of learning from so many amazing ministers around you in order to help you be the best pastor for God’s Kingdom possible.

But the truth in apprenticeships aren’t just for pastors or craftsmen and women. Have you ever taken time to consider that we are all called to be apprentices as disciples of Jesus Christ. We are called to learn from the master, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, about how to connect the needs of those that Jesus deeply loves with the Kingdom of God.

If we are honest for a minute though, apprenticeships are not always fun. They often involve learning hard lessons. One of the first difficult things I remember learning during the apprentice phase of ministry is that I cannot be all things to all people. I remember the United Methodist liaison at my seminary saying to us “The first thing that I tel my congregations is that I’m going to disappoint them. I cannot be all things to all people.” I learned that early on as I balanced serving a church part time with being a full time student, including a ten week live in residency in chaplaincy training in Hershey. I could not meet everyone’s perceptions and needs. 

What are some of the hard lessons that we learn from Jesus? Well they make my hard lessons as as pastor look extremely easy. One of the things that Jesus teaches us is that as disciples we are going to suffer. Hear again the words of scripture from Hebrews 5 “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through suffering” Suffering can be the end result of different things. The first place suffering can come from is sin. 

Think of the story of Joseph. Joseph was the most beloved son of his father Jacob and was shown favoritism, especially by receiving a coat that none of his siblings received. So his brothers kidnapped him and threw him into a ditch to die, before realizing that it would be more profitable to sell him into slavery. The brothers then returned to their father and told him that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Take a moment and think of where the sin was in that story. It abounded!

Where there is much sin, there is much suffering. Jospeh found himself as a slave to Potiphar, an important leader in Egypt. When Potiperh’s wife tried to suduce Joseph and he said no, she made up a tale that ended up in his imprisonment in jail. There however, things started to change. Joseph’s time of suffering became redeemed by God. He interpreted dreams for others in jail, which made him well known to the point where the Pharaoh of Egypt asked Joseph to interpret his dreams and by doing so, Joseph was able to help lead the nation into a time of prosperity, even when famine hit. 

When Joseph was eventually reunited with his brothers years later, he spoke these words, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve numerous people, as he is doing today.”

Part of our discipleship is realizing how sin and suffering are linked, but also to proclaim that God can redeem suffering for the glory of the Kingdom. Trials that we go through can help us get to know God better as we grow close to God and are more attuned to the voice of the Spirit. 

Two, apprenticeship teaches us the hard lessons of forgiveness. We have all been deeply hurt by other people during our time in life. When Jesus is teaching us about forgiveness, he is not doing so in a way that tells us to put a happy face on and pretend that everything is okay. Instead, the deep forgiveness of Christ, the forgiveness that he modeled for us on the cross, is releasing those people that hurt us into the care of God. And that is hard work. It is not something that comes naturally to us and therefore, is something that we need to learn. Human beings tend to respond to being hurt by other people with a slant towards revenge, not forgiveness. 

Three, discipleship teaches us to be obedient to God. The verses we read from Hebrews 12 today spoke of God discipling us when we go astray in order to bring obedience. But often we can misunderstand the role of discipline in the life of faith. A few weeks ago I was in Panera bread and overheard one women explain to another why God sometimes has to discipline us. She explained that when we have children we care about in our lives, we want the very best for them. We don’t want them to get hurt. So we try to discipline them in order to help them learn what will harm them from that which is safe. God sometimes disciplines us when we engage in sin that will harm us in hopes that we will cease that activity.

But God doesn’t want to discipline us for the sake of discipline alone. God wants us to choose to be obedient. God wants us to choose to love God voluntarily. God wants us to be obedient in order to remind us of our dependance upon God. God wants us to trust God alone.

Here’s the thing about apprenticeships. Yes, they are often required to enter into certain professions but we have a choice. We can choose to give our all, and follow the call on our life, by living as an apprentice, or we can walk away, saying that its too hard. My hope and prayer is that we freely and willingly accept being apprentices of Jesus. That we desire to learn from him how to live into the abundant life, even if it means that things will not always go our way. May we be known as people who are learning from the ultimate master and led by the Spirit. Amen.