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May 25, 2003
Who Qualifies for Discipleship to Jesus?
Who Qualifies for Discipleship to Jesus?
Psalm 18: 1-6, 16-19, 31-35 / Daniel 1: 1-9
Luke 6: 12-16
May 25th, 2003
Two weeks ago, as some of you know, I spent the weekend with fifteen people from our presbytery and two other presbyteries that were taking the Lay Pastor’s Training course. They were serious students.
I’d taught Church history for a number of years here at Purdue, so I was expecting that I would find a tug-o-war going on between them and me. You remember those student days in which all of us sometimes wondered how little we could do and still get a good grade. I had some wonderful students at Purdue, but few like these who bought every book I mentioned, and several had read them before coming to this weekend. I thought, here was something everyone could benefit from who wants to follow Jesus. The word for disciple in the Gospels, maqhthvı literally means “pupil.”
The place in the New Testament where the word Christian is used first, refers to people that Paul and Barnabas were teaching the faith. These “pupils” were first called Christians at Antioch.
In fact, it was not intended as a compliment to be called a Christian. Maybe it had a connotation in one way similar to our word “Geek.” A Geek is a computer genius. A Christian was a Jesus genius; we might say today, a Jesus freak. Only the word “Geek” is not a malicious term. It’s really sort of benevolent, a term of admiration for people who are really smart, who are a significant piece in the puzzle of modern life.
But to be called “Christian” was not a friendly thing. The other place in the New Testament where the word Christian is used, we read, “If any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name.” It was intended as a disgrace to call someone a Christian, a follower of a crucified convict.
But the name Christian has stuck and changed from a disgrace to simply a category of religion. The name “pupil or learner or disciple” has been lost, except as the name of a denomination, “Disciples of Christ.” When you are asked your “religion,” do you say, “I am a disciple?” Probably you say, “I am a Christian.” Maybe a Presbyterian or Pentecostal. It is healthful to the practice of our faith to remember our earliest forbears were called “pupils of Jesus.” As Jordy Sparks reminded last week, to be called a Christian may be just like a bar code on a package. It’s a label. But to be a learner, that’s another thing. You’re doing something if you are a learner. You do not just exist with a bar code.
When we take the Lord’s Supper, I remind you of Jesus’ words, “Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden . . . come, learn of me.” It is the same word. Come, be my pupil. Let me teach you. Teach what? Jesus wants to teach us meekness, gentleness of heart.
But there is another term we associate with Jesus’ twelve disciples. It’s the term “Apostle.” Jesus specially chose twelve men from all the many people who came to learn of Him and called them “Apostles.” Luke told us this morning, that after spending a night in prayer on the mountain, Jesus called his pupils to him and named twelve of them “Apostles.” Many of Jesus’ pupils went away disappointed that morning. “He didn’t choose me,” every woman pupil said when she went home. Maybe Mary Magdalene was in this group, and Salome—two women who were first to the empty grave on Easter morning. “He didn’t choose me,” many men said when they went home to very relieved wives and children. In a way it was a questionable honor to be an Apostle.
Apostle is a word that comes from the word that means “send away.” The word “disciple” and the word “apostle” do not mean the same thing. A disciple is one who is learning. An apostle is a disciple whom Jesus sends away.
Very many people came to Jesus to learn of him. But of these many, Jesus chose twelve to send out.
In the Gospel of Mark, we learn that Jesus chose these twelve men first “to be with Him.” To be Jesus’ special friend was to be marked, sent away, in order to proclaim the message He taught, and to have authority to cast out demons. When we read of Jesus’ expectations of these twelve men in the Gospel of Matthew, it sounds downright scary.
Don’t do it now, but perhaps when you get home, read Matthew 10, where this is laid out in grim detail.
So there is a distinction between a pupil of Jesus and an Apostle. Each of the first twelve Apostles began as a learner of Jesus. Only one of the Apostles, the greatest of all, was not first a disciple of Jesus. This was the Apostle Paul. Paul had a private tutorial from Jesus—AFTER Jesus called him to be an apostle. In Galatians we read of a three-year period in his life in Arabia when he went through a sort of seminary in Arabia and Damascus. When we take the Lord’s Supper, we remember that Paul said, “I received of the Lord what I delivered unto you.” So, Paul too was a learner before he did the work of an apostle.
Of himself Paul said, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God.” Paul may very well have been among the Pharisees who criticized Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. He doesn’t tell us, but he may have been in Caiaphas’ judgment hall when Jesus was arraigned and condemned to death. For sure we know that Paul (then called Saul) was there when Jesus’ followers were tormented after Jesus ascended to be with His heavenly Father. Those who stoned Stephen, the first Christian martyr, lay their clothes at Paul’s feet.
Paul saw the kinds of people who came to learn of Jesus. He wrote to early learners of Jesus in the congregation in Corinth, “ Look around, you don’t see many wise by human standards, not many powerful, not many of noble birth.” The cluster of men that Jesus chose as Apostles were like this to start with uneducated, ordinary, humble men. It has to be this way for those who come to learn of Jesus.
Because when we come to Jesus to learn of Him, we have to park our wisdom at the door, park our power, park our pedigree, and join the weak and heavy-laden. Jesus welcomes the wise too, and the powerful, and the people of noble heritage, but what He has to teach doesn’t find any of these qualifications an asset. If you’re impressed with yourself, your learning curve of Jesus will be steep.
This is part of the delight of the Church, where side by side we find the well-educated and the uneducated, the voters and the politicians, the aristocrats and the poor—all only learners of Jesus, if they have caught on at all to this faith of which we speak. How good it is to learn of Jesus. How good it is to be with people who still want to learn of Him.
This is the reason we should have a strong Sunday School and clusters of Bible study in the church. Worship and learning are the most important parts of life for a Christian. Our purpose as a congregation is to provide for this need.
Let’s think a bit more of the distinction between apostles and disciples.
We think of the Twelve Apostles as the most honorable cluster ever assembled in the story of the Church. Imagine being remembered throughout history as one of the original Twelve—all except Judas Iscariot, of course! Here was the extension of the twelve tribes of Israel, twelve heads of the extension of the Kingdom of God on earth. It’s for good reason we don’t know what tribe any of the twelve were from except the Apostle Paul. It no longer mattered because the wall was broken that separated Jews and Gentiles. Ironically Paul knew he was from Benjamin, a tribe almost extinguished in a civil war with the other tribes of Israel.
Here were the twelve pillars standing on the Foundation of Jesus Himself, who was the Rock-solid foundation of God’s plan for salvation. The Twelve were like the steel beams bolted onto the Foundation of the Church. Their purpose was to offer the world salvation, the most-needed gift of our Creator.
Spreading the message of salvation was the most important enterprise ever begun in human history. It took special people, special because they were NOT SPECIAL PEOPLE—to begin it all. If they thought they were special, it wouldn’t have worked.
I’m not sure everyone even in the Church sees it that way now—the importance of salvation. Salvation may not be important for people who think they are important to talk about. Because we think of “salvation” as something “religious.” Talk about boring! How very little “salvation” may have to do with what we think of as religion. Salvation is the fulfillment of what it is to be a person. Salvation is inner healing, reconciliation with God and people. Salvation is to achieve what every great person is really after—to be all we can possibly be, which begins and ends inside of us. The problem for many of us is figuring out what being all we can be means, and looking for it mostly outside of ourselves.
Our idea of greatness mostly has to do with wealth, with being well known, and power of some kind, some influence. The salvation of our souls, the definition of the purpose for which we were born—something we rarely think about--seems too remote to qualify as a great enterprise. Heaven can wait.
We are fascinated with great enterprises now that are possible to a wealthy and powerful nation. The World Trade Center will be rebuilt stronger and more stunningly beautiful than the towers that fell on September 11th, 2001. I see the Purdue campus displaying the results of massive financial resources. We will rise further in stature among the great universities of the world. But then I think of other enterprises people have achieved that we call great.
World conquest was the project of Alexander whom we call “the Great” and he succeeded. His empire spread as far East as India. He made the Greek language the language of civilized culture. And all this in a very short time. But where is Alexander’s empire now? How many students at our universities, much less our seminaries, bother with the Greek language? Immediately after he died, Alexander’s five generals fought among themselves and divided the empire. Within a little more than 300 years the Romans overwhelmed the last remnants of Alexander’s fragmented empire.
Where is the Roman Empire now? It’s a dusty detail in history books. Where is Britain’s great empire now, that once boasted that the sun never set on the Empire? Maybe you’ve forgotten that once Portugal had an empire.
But look at the project Jesus began, using twelve men of questionable credentials—fishermen first, a tax collector, and a revolutionary among them! What has become of Jesus’ project—extending salvation to the world? You and I are here this morning because we think salvation is important.
Every rich person on his deathbed must be overwhelmed with how useless his riches are about to become. The Indianapolis 500 would lose its luster quickly or not be run on Sunday if race fans thought they were on the edge of death instead of on the edge of their seats. Salvation is more important than vast learning that instantly dissipates the moment the heart stops beating and the brain dies, and is eclipsed with the next generation’s research. Salvation is eternal life, life to the maximum, lived in relationship with our Creator and one another—in beauty, justice, affection, generosity--unendingly.
You and I are here today because Jesus chose twelve learners to send away with the message of salvation. The message of salvation is something to be learned today as it was in Jesus’ day. Throngs of needy people, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, Pharisees and tax collectors, came to learn of Jesus, who was meek and lowly of heart, and they found rest for their souls. Twelve modestly “qualified” people spread this word to others. Over the course of nearly two thousand years this message has been passed on to people who were hungry to learn—to wannabe disciples, pupils, learners of Jesus.
Who qualifies to be a disciple of Jesus? We’re not asking, “Who qualifies to be sent away, an apostle, but who qualifies to be a learner, a disciple? “
In the Gospels two different pictures are given to us of how the earliest disciples connected to Jesus. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus chooses them, asking them to drop everything to follow Him. And they do.
But in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples seek for Him first. Followers of John the Baptist heard their teacher describe Jesus as the Lamb of God. They then went after this Lamb of God. Jesus saw them following and said, “What are you looking for?” They asked, “Where are you staying?” Jesus said, “Come and see.” The first of these was Andrew, who called his brother, Peter, to come and see. In John’s Gospel Jesus first asked Phillip to follow Him. And Phillip invited Nathaniel, who was skeptical of Jesus because He came from Nazareth.
Andrew and Peter first went to learn from John the Baptist because they were hungry for his message. I imagine they were like I was more than forty years ago when I desperately wanted life to make sense. And so I prayed, “O Jesus, if there is any sense to this Gospel, let it make sense to me. I want to follow You, but don’t know how.” And I became a learner. I am still a learner. And if you have come to the conclusion that you need something money can’t buy, that education at the university can’t teach, and that being well known can’t satisfy, you’re a candidate to learn of Jesus—that is, to be a disciple.
If you are heavy-laden inside, Jesus says, “Come, learn of me.” That is, “Come, become my pupil, my disciple. I will teach you where to find rest.” It takes a lifetime. Few if any of us will become apostles. But all of us qualify to come and learn of Jesus, that is, to be Jesus’ disciple. Some think this means they can stay forever in kindergarten. Some aspire to nothing more than baby steps, toddling far behind Jesus. That is their loss. Come, join, and never leave the ranks of disciples. I invite you, come, learn of Jesus.
Let us pray. Thank you, Lord God, for the kind invitation of your son, Jesus, “Come, learn of me.” Give us the wisdom to be satisfied with nothing less than learning the best—Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2003
Why the Sabbath Day Anyway?
Why the Sabbath Day Anyway?
Psalm 17: 1-7 / Exodus 20: 8-11
Luke 6: 1-11
May 4th, 2003
One of the earliest memories I associate with the term, “The Sabbath Day,” connects to a song with a mournful tune. We used to sing it on Sunday mornings out on the big porch at the mission boarding school, when I was growing up in India. We must have sung it often for me to remember it so well. “O Day of Rest and Gladness.” The tune was anything but glad. But what a happy idea, one day a week you have to rest. God insists!
The old Israelites and us kids and you grown-ups should have responded to the fourth commandment as kindergarten kids do to recess. School’s out; we can go play.
The Lord told Moses to tell the hard-working Israelites, “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. On it you shall do no work.” What a happy thing. A free day, one out of seven, to get some rest, to get some recreation, to feel refreshed. Parents could talk and play with their children. Husbands and wives could talk with and enjoy each other. Friends could enjoy each other. The Sabbath, like every festival day, was a day to bring people together! God is specially with us when we are together. Our native independence is replaced by something more noble. What a wonderful gift, the Sabbath Day.
Why did God command us to rest one day in seven? Two different reasons are given in the Old Testament. We just read in Exodus that the reason why we are to rest every seven days is because God rested on the seventh day after creating everything. God blessed and consecrated the Sabbath because He rested on the seventh day. This reason applied to everyone—Jew and Gentile alike.
In Deuteronomy we read another reason for resting on the Sabbath. Because once Israel was enslaved in Egypt. They had to work seven days a week, week after week. They could never rest. So when God brought Israel out of slavery, He said, “Never again will you have to work all the time. In fact, I insist that you rest one day in seven.” This reason applied specially to the Jews.
But things have a way of developing once they get to be part of “religion.” In Jesus’ day the religious leaders were upset with Him because He accepted the fourth commandment just the way it was, nothing more. They thought it needed something more. Like many of us pastors, the religious leaders of Jesus’ day read their Bible carefully and asked the probing question, “What does it mean?”
They asked, “What did God mean by ‘work’?” Maybe the answer is obvious; maybe it isn’t. Already in Moses’ day they started to ask and answer that question. What is work? Not working meant more than just not going to work. It meant not gathering sticks and building a fire, presumably to cook. In fact, a pretty serious penalty was set for building a fire on the Sabbath—death. So Israelites knew they should get the Sabbath’s food ready on Friday so that they could really rest on the Sabbath. When my wife cooks, I can see it’s hard work. She loves to do it and is terrific at it, but its work. Even though the fourth commandment doesn’t mention wives specifically, the meaning of work made it clear mother was to get rest on the Sabbath too.
But thinking about work didn’t stop there. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day came up with more refined definitions of work. In fact, in our lesson from Luke’s Gospel this morning we see Jesus running afoul two of these definitions of work. Plucking grain as you walk through a field is work. What kind of work? Harvesting. No harvesting on the Sabbath Day.
Healing someone who is sick is work. If he’s had an accident that might kill him, you can save his life. But you can’t make him better if he’s just sick, or has a withered hand. That’s work. These “blue laws” changed the picture of the Sabbath Day from a day of refreshment to a day of worrying about some activity being defined as work. At one point Jesus said “Let’s get something straight. God made the Sabbath for the benefit of people, not people for the benefit of the Sabbath.”
The earliest Christians tried to figure out how to carry on after Jesus left. Since they were mostly Jews, they thought they should just carry on where they were when Jesus was with them.
But more and more people who were not Jews were coming to trust in Jesus. But what to do when non-Jews and Jews worshipped Jesus together? The earliest Christians all started to treat Sunday as important. Why? Because Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday. But Jewish Christians went to the synagogue on Saturday too.
In the second century letters from the governor of Bithynia in northern Turkey to the emperor of Rome let us know that the Christians there met on Sunday mornings at dawn to sing, pray, take the Lord’s Supper, and to promise to be good citizens. And you think 9:30 is early? So what should Christians do about the Sabbath, that is, Saturday, if they did this on Sunday?
Some Jewish Christians thought that since God told Moses to command Israel to keep the Sabbath Day, it was Saturday in particular that was important—even for non-Jews worshipping with them on Sunday.
The Apostle Paul recognized the problem. He wrote, “Do not let anyone condemn you in matters of food and drink or of observing festivals, new moons, or Sabbaths.” The Sabbath Day, that is, Saturday, wasn’t the specific command God intended for everyone. It was rest that God intended for everyone. The law of the Sabbath, Paul said, was only a shadow. The substance was Christ who said, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”
What is a shadow? It is something that changes as the light casting the shadow behind the object changes position. You see the sun come up in the morning and the shadow of the trees is on one side. Then the sun keeps creeping up, and soon the shadow of the tree is directly underneath. By late afternoon the shadow has moved to the other side. Everyone knows that the shadow is only a shadow, and when the sun goes down, there won’t be any shadow—but the tree is still there. Jesus is permanent and is here for everyone, everywhere, of all time. The shadow changes.
F.W. Robertson, whom you have heard me mention before, noticed something else about Jesus’ remarks about the Sabbath day. The Sabbath separated the Jews from everyone else. The principle of Sabbath keeping for the Jews was maintaining their separate identity, remembering that they were a specially chosen people.
But the principle of our faith in Jesus is not separation but saturation. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” The light of the sun shines on everything. He said, “You are the salt of the world.” The salt seasons the whole loaf of bread. Jesus wanted His followers, though separated inwardly by love for Him, to go everywhere, saturating the world with the good news that He died to free them from the grip of sin and death. Sunday replaced Saturday not by a command, but as a natural product of gratitude to Jesus—as you celebrate your anniversary on a particular day because you love each other. December 20th is special to Bonnie and me. We need no command to celebrate it. This is the day our marriage started. Sunday is this kind of day, a weekly anniversary.
Paul was very concerned that Christians not begin to gather to themselves trademark practices as the Sabbath was for the Jews. What separates us is inward, our love and devotion to Jesus and people. Outwardly the attraction of Sunday is to be its holy joy.
This morning, after we take the Lord’s supper together, we’ll pray that God will make us as this bread. As the wheat is ground, crushed between the stones of the mill before it can become bread, so God takes the events that crush us in life, and uses them to bring us together. We find our togetherness in Him. We come here on Sunday to be with each other in Jesus’ name. We need Jesus. We need each other. Lots of people need to feel that here is a safe place, a haven, a place to find rest. Jesus gives rest.
How can we both preserve a regular day of rest and worship and not have it become a mere day of obligation? All of us are aware that many Christians keep Sunday very haphazardly. Soccer leagues take precedence over Sunday School for a lot of Christian boys and girls, and many Christian parents support this. Sunday soccer is almost treated as sacramental. A work project sometimes keeps some of you at home on Sunday. Something is not quite right when our very freedom from the law becomes the reason why Christians relegate worship to time not demanded by the sports leagues, by work, or by other kinds of entertainment on Sunday. Anyone can quote St. Paul to support this drift: “Let no one judge you concerning Sundays.” And we politely apply no pressure about Sunday. We do with it as we please. What is the end of this kind of thinking? We suffer in various ways when we choose not to make rest and worship indispensable.
Do you think there is a correlation between Christians getting drawn into a culture of buying and selling and working and yard sales and wasting, and what has happened to Sunday? Do you think there is anything tying in participation of Christians in the overall drift of morals, the decaying entertainment industry, and what has happened to Sunday? Do you think there is any tie-in between the decline of the family and the home and forgetting how God intended us to live together, and what has happened to Sunday?
John Calvin made the interesting observation that each of the Ten Commandments really is just one example of a general aspect of life in which God guides us to a good life. The fifth commandment that tells us to honor our fathers and mothers, teaches us to respect authority generally. The sixth commandment, telling us not to kill, teaches us not only not to kill, but that God has put other people into our care. I think he is right.
And the fourth commandment about the Sabbath day, is a reminder that we need rest. We find our rest in God. Whether it is the seventh day on which we rest and think of God’s goodness or the first day, the principle is the same: all our days, all our time, is a gift from God that we do well to remember and thank Him for. Sunday serves us in other ways. It brings us together to remember the meaning of life–– Jesus died and rose again for us. It is the antidote to loneliness as well as to godlessness.
There is some special genius to one in seven days of rest for body, heart, and mind. After the French Revolution, anti-church sentiment led to changing from one day in seven to one day in ten as a day of rest. The Church’s Sunday was discarded. But changing from one in seven to one in ten days for rest didn’t work. Production diminished. The psychological health of workers went down with the increase of weariness. They went back to one day in seven for rest. There is some genius to the sequence of one in seven days for rest.
Check out your own life. When you work day after day, what happens to your emotional and physical health? We’ve become used to feeling bad. Hearts attacks seem normal now. Rest is a sacred duty, God’s antidote to many ills.
John Calvin rightly observed that we don’t observe the Sabbath as a ceremonial duty, but when we keep one day in seven for rest and worship, we enjoy what God wants to offer us, the restoration of mind, heart, and body, as a regular part of life.
When we regularly join with others of like desires to live in devotion to Jesus Christ, we remind ourselves of what is really important in life. When we are not regularly together on Sunday, we gradually forget. We gradually lose contact with others who want to live with a high purpose, as unto God.
One day we will no longer need this rest. All of life will be unceasing rest, which means that garden work won’t contend with weeds. The seventh day of rest is like a medicine a doctor might prescribe as long as it is needed. When you have an infection, you take the antibiotic. When the infection is past, you stop taking the medicine. Sunday is God’s medicine for us.
You need to be with others here every Sunday. I close with a story from the land of my father’s birth, Scotland. A Scots pastor called on a member of his flock who’d not been in church for a long time. He was a silent fellow, a man of few words. The pastor heard that he was facing some dilemmas in life, and came by for a visit. When the pastor knocked on the door, his truant parishioner opened it and with a gesture invited him in. He motioned to a seat by the fireplace where a fire was burning. The pastor sat there. Nothing was said at all. The pastor noticed a piece of wood that had fallen off the fire. The fire was going out on that piece of wood. He got up, took tongs and put the piece of wood back with the other pieces of wood that were burning merrily. It soon leaped into flame again. The pastor then nodded to his parishioner, still not saying a word. The fellow saw him to the front door and nodded as the pastor left. The next Sunday his parishioner was in church, and it was observed afterward that the flame of his faith resumed, and his life became happier.
Remember the seventh day, to keep it holy.
O Lord, thank you for life, and for sustaining us, and for giving us the rest of the seventh day. Amen.
Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, Indiana
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM | Comments (0)