“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

It’s when we make that one decision that everything begins to change. Many of us belong to groups passively, just testing the water, unsure of whether we belong. This is as true of a walking group, or regular Thursday coffee, or settling into a community of faith.

We come along, check if it’s safe and whether we feel we can belong. Belonging may take time. At some point, we decide to stay, or not; to belong, or not; to commit.

In the gospels, the safety and obscurity of the crowd is where we often find ourselves; listening to what Jesus has to say, being fed with thousands of others, chasing him around the lake, expecting a miracle, or a show.

Then Jesus asks more of us. It might feel like too much. We watch him invite himself to lunch with that tax bloke. We see him eating meals with those disreputables. He makes extraordinary claims for himself. He asks us to follow him, risking everything – career, family, income, reputation, life.

When this happens, we find we can no longer just settle obscurely into the crowd.     

A suggestion. We’d like it we could buy the hoodie and the stubby holder, and not need to change how we vote, and how we spend our money, and how we live, and how we speak to others (especially the ones we find difficult to like). Just a suggestion.

In the letter to the Colossians, the author writes, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”

We can’t just buy some merchandise. We are asked to follow, to die and live.

It is only when we test ourselves against the words of Jesus that we discern whether there is real life there, or just a meme. Shall we risk loving – and forgiving – our neighbour, even our enemy?  Shall we risk being forgiven, in our turn?

When we trust that Jesus is more than a persona, more than ethics and morals, we discover there is life for us. And everything changes.