Learning for Life

Winston Churchill said: “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught!” So we may assume his readiness to learn was the key to his life and destiny

I remember a schoolmaster who coached the First XV recalling his first encounter with a 14-year-old pupil who showed great promise as a rugby player. He said that not long into their first practice session he knew the young man was something special. His talents were shining through.

However the master said the young player never stopped “running wild”. He was so keen and so elusive he just kept running up and down the pitch, to the right, to the left, swerving, doing u-turns, jinking and turning and trying to find a way through the opposition. It was a great show but he wasn’t, in the master’s opinion, playing rugby.

So at the end of the training session the master took the young player to one side and they had a long chat about rugby. He recalled telling the player to stop “running wild” and to involve the other fourteen players on his team.

The master said: “That day the young player discovered he was one of the XV and that they each had a part to play. He also discovered that his personal flair was given greater scope as a member of the team rather than when he played his own selfish game. So his rugby career was launched, his readiness to learn was all.”

The teenager went on to captain Cambridge, won 69 International caps and went on five Lions Tours. He became a rugby legend in his own lifetime

This is Education Sunday and according to one headmaster education is about preparing pupils for life in the fullest sense. The essential dynamic in that vision is a readiness to learn, something that we do well to hold on to throughout our lives.

Young David had a very keen appetite for learning and his dad asked him what he had learnt in Sunday School. David replied: “The teacher read from Exodus 15 about the Israelites fleeing from Egypt. Moses sent soldiers and engineers to the Red Sea to build a bridge and set explosives at intervals. He then led the Israelites across. When the Egyptians followed, the engineers blew up the bridge, killing most of the Egyptians. The rest went back to Pharoah”.

“Are you sure that’s right?” his dad asked. “No”, David said, “But if I told you what I was told, you’d never believe it”.

Of course a readiness to learn goes hand in hand with a questioning attitude.

Some social commentators have suggested that in today’s pop culture many young people have failed to question anything. Too many simply accept the trends and get carried along like flotsam in a fast flowing river.

The cult of consumerism, the decline of religion, easy credit, Alco-pops, morning after pills – all these things and more are eroding a readiness to learn how to live. As one writer said: “A whole generation that grew up with the Spice Girls and embraced their brash and sassy lifestyle without question now need to recover a natural sense of what is right and good.”

Today, ten years on, the Spice Girls or should we say Spice Women, are still desperate for fame as they embark on another world tour. One critic said they were trying to cling to youth and making a pathetic spectacle of themselves. She singled out in particular their impact on formal sex education. She blamed their lyrics and attitudes for reducing romance to “weekend love”, for taking away the innocence of the playground, for helping to destroy the concept of childhood, for separating love from sex. It’s a high cost to pay to satisfy the greed of the pop industry.

So in order to grow, to be fulfilled in life we need a readiness to learn, a questioning attitude, a sense of what is right and good.

When John and Andrew stood on the hillside with the fiery John the Baptist they were ready to learn. And it was the Baptist who very graciously pointed them in the direction of Jesus. It was a generous thing to do, the act of a humble teacher who wanted the best for his pupils.

 “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”  Thereafter the questioning began and this learning experience gripped their hearts and minds. “What are you looking for?” “Where are you staying?” “Come and see.” “They remained with him that day.”

St Augustine described this encounter with Jesus as symbolic of what he called “the Divine Initiative” that shows God meeting them half way. Augustine said, “We could not even have begun to seek for God unless God had already found us”.

“What are you looking for?” This was not a casual conversation, a word in passing. Jesus invited them to talk through their questions and to discover his identity and his mission in the world. It was about being together, not just talking, and also learning things only Jesus could teach them.

Isaiah tells us about the people of God who learnt the hard way. In exile they lamented their fate and the apparent futility of their lives. “I have laboured to no purpose. I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing”. It’s a sorry state of affairs and a seemingly dead-end existence.

But then the Divine Initiative intervenes. “Now the Lord says, I will make you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring my salvation to the end of the earth. The Lord who is faithful has chosen you.” In the worst of circumstances there is hope, they have a future, they can recover.

What an unlikely turn of events. But then if we have a readiness to learn, if we are prepared to seek and find and hold fast to things that are right and good; if we are prepared to “Come and see” and to follow Jesus in our worship and in our service, then life takes on a purpose and direction. In that relationship we find our Christian identity and vocation.

Andrew went out and found his brother Peter. St Paul stopped “running wild” and took on his responsibility in the Church of God, along with Barnabas, Timothy, Titus, Aquila and a host of others.

In learning Christ, in learning obedience to His call, in learning to live as children of God, we are as St Paul said: “enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind so that we are not lacking in any spiritual gift.”