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April 02, 2006
The Discipline of Jesus
I Kings 19: 10-14, 19-21
John 1: 35-51
April 2nd, 2006
This morning I want us to think about the discipline of Jesus.
Discipline sounds like such a harsh word. It means punishment, doesn’t it, what happens after you’ve messed up? It makes us think of “spare the rod and spoil the child,” of a red-faced dad with a switch in his hand standing over a cowering child. Maybe more gently it reminds you of sitting in the corner for a “time out” when you were naughty. At worst it makes us think of our crowded prisons filled with Americans caught and disciplined, punished for violating the American way in one way or another, learning in prison what it is harmful to know. What unmitigated sorrows multiply from our worst ideas of discipline!
But the discipline of Jesus is very different. “My yoke is easy, my burden is light,” Jesus taught. “Come, learn of me.” Discipline comes from the word “disciple.” The Greek word for disciple is mathetes—one who learns.
Jesus’ disciples learned by watching Him. For three years they watched Jesus’ every move. We rarely read of Jesus scolding the disciples. He scolded a couple of them for wanting to be top dogs. He scolded Peter once pretty severely. But maybe if I asked you if Jesus scolded His disciples you’d say, “I don’t think so.”
Jesus’ first disciples watched Him intently. For three years they listened as He spoke to all kinds of people and they learned how to speak from listening to Him. For three years they learned by osmosis not only what He said but also how He said it. What Jesus said and how He said it were a winsome combination. They called Him “Teacher.” He was a great teacher. How remarkable that Jesus started with twelve in a three-year course and ended with eleven; the one that dropped out flunked himself. For three years these learners had their natural personalities gradually molded to reflect the character of Jesus.
When Jesus was ready to leave He told them, “Continue to do what you’ve seen me do.” From then on the best of them said as Paul put it, “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” Here’s how Christians are to learn, by imitation.
This is the Christian way, to imitate Jesus, to learn of Him. What is your idea of the Christian way? Sometimes we disagree over what is the Christian way. We have looked around a lot and we have looked in the mirror a lot to get our ideas about being Jesus’ disciple.
Each Sunday I remind you how it is. “The God of peace [will] make you perfect in every good work to do His will.” I repeat this each week for a purpose. I hope we get the idea.
But this will come after we’ve watched Jesus a minimum of three years, actually for a lifetime. Just keep on watching. Come here on Sunday morning to watch and hear. Come together in your home studies to watch and listen. Begin your day with your Bible open; listen and watch. Somehow, defective as we are, we’re also to learn from watching one another. In one way or another “The God of peace will make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing to the Lord.”
This wonderful saga, unfolding here and everywhere that Jesus is preached began as we read of it in the Gospel of John this morning. Jesus had been standing in line to be baptized by John the Baptist. John recognized who Jesus was, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
When John pointed toward Jesus his followers recognized it was really Jesus from whom they wanted to learn. So they transferred to Jesus. The first two disciples of John to move to Jesus were Andrew and Simon.
We know very little about Andrew, though he apparently came to have wide influence. The St. Andrew’s cross, the saltire, is one of the national flags of Scotland.
When Jesus saw Andrew’s brother Simon, He changed his name right away, “You shall be called Cephas,” the Aramaic word for stone. In Greek Cephas meant Petros or Peter, which means rock, the name we know for this burly fisherman-disciple. What do you think Simon thought as he heard Jesus continue to call him Cephas, “rock?” Me? A rock? Me? Impulsive me? A rock? Time after time, day after day he heard Jesus call him “Cephas,” rock, until he began to believe it and act like it.
Some have thought that the name Simon was a Greek form of the Hebrew name Simeon. But my classical dictionary tells me that Semon, which is how the word is really spelled here was the Laconic form of the word themon which means “heap.” What does this suggest? A heap? A little mound of dirt? A pile of sand? Whatever, we have no doubt what rock means. From now on Simon “the heap” would be Peter the strong, firm as a rock.
Then Jesus found Philip, a fellow whose parents named him after the father of Alexander the Great, Philip of Macedon. In those days parents chose names not just because they liked the sound. Did they want Philip to be a great leader? First he became a great follower, a disciple, a learner of Jesus. We know little about him. We wonder if he is the one mentioned in Acts 8 who taught an Ethiopian dignitary to trust in Jesus. Later in Acts we read of Philip, the evangelist whose daughters became evangelists too. They are called prophetesses. They spoke of Jesus too.
Then evangelist Philip found Nathaniel and told him, “We have found him of whom Moses and the prophets spoke.” But Nathaniel scoffed, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said, “Come and see.”
Jesus liked what he saw in this skeptical fellow. “Look, an Israelite in whom there is no guile.” That is, “this skeptical guy is a straight shooter.” It is Nathaniel who first said to Jesus what He hoped all his disciples would learn after He was finished with them.” “Rabbi, you are the Son of God.” Jesus said remarkable things to this skeptical fellow. What variety we see among the first four people Jesus chose to learn of Him. None of them were yet called Christians. That would come much later. All they had was their own names but they looked intently at Jesus. A pretty good way to start. But we must move on.
Bert read to us this morning from I Kings 19 about Elijah the great Old Testament prophet. It is a remarkable passage in which we see a very discouraged man. He feels alone. He looked at the people of Israel and saw they had forsaken God’s covenant, torn down the altars, killed the prophets with swords, and only he was left--alone. From Elijah pastors have coined the term “Elijah complex,” for those who are worn out and think the ministry is a futile life.
But from Elijah we learn the wonderful lesson of what to listen for from God. How many Christians who felt alone and wished God would speak to them have read verses 11-12. Elijah went up on a mountain to hear from God. A strong wind blew, and then came an earthquake, but God was not in either the wind or the earthquake. Then there came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire came a still, small voice. And when Elijah heard that still small voice, he wrapped his face with his jacket in humility. He knew God had spoken in that small voice. Maybe the voice said, “I am the Lord, do not be afraid.”
When I read of this quiet, small voice with which God reassured Elijah I think of how Jesus taught His disciples. His voice was gentle and He did not carry a big stick. We don’t know much about Elijah. He pops onto the stage of Israel’s history a grown man. We read that he was a Tishbite, but you ask, “What’s a Tishbite?” It means he came from Tishbe—wherever that is. But it doesn’t matter where he came from, who his parents were—just as it does not matter for you or me. What mattered was his name.
Elijah’s name was his message. Elijah meant, “My God is the Lord.” Every time people said his name they heard, “My God is the Lord.” His name was important to hear because most people in Israel no longer worshiped “the Lord.” The Lord was how we refer to the name of God, YHWH. Most people found the way the Lord had taught through Moses far less attractive than the ways of the people that surrounded them.
People then were like people now, influenced by what they see, by what’s going on around them. Ever since the days of King Solomon who brought foreign deities to Israel along with his multitude of wives, the people of Israel had ample opportunity to compare the ways of God with the ways of the surrounding deities. And quite frankly, the ways of the Lord could get boring and burdensome. And Baal worship had some pretty alluring elements to it. This worship could get pretty spicy, in fact. In fact, it could get as alluring as spring break in Cancun. There was more to it than this, but for reasons we don’t understand Israel faced the steady downward pull of other gods than the Lord.
So Elijah’s job was to live before Israel saying every time he told his name, “My God is the Lord.” Without priests to help him worship right, all by himself he tried to live the way God had taught his people long ago through Moses. And it got very tiring.
It’s always hard to go against the grain. It’s wearying. It can be very lonely. Elijah often felt under attack. In fact, he was under attack and had to hide. In many ways his life was just like Jesus’ life, who faced opposition in many ways as He tried to live the way of life God had revealed through Moses. It was a way of life much more than it was a system of sacrifices and ritual observances. The ways God taught through Moses had as their goal to re-form people inwardly.
We haven’t time to explore this here. Instead we pass to the end of the story where Elijah finds a fellow who was plowing a field with twelve pairs of oxen. This fellow had an important name. Elisha meant, “My God saves.” His name was a message to Israel as much as Elijah’s was. Elijah invited Elisha to follow him. Elisha replied, First let me go back and say good-bye to my parents. Not only that, he sacrificed the oxen he had been plowing with. No longer would he be a farmer. He would continue what Elijah had begun, difficult as this life would be. There would be no turning back.
There is a song we used to sing that is in our green supplemental hymnal, #37, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. Though none should join me, still I will follow. No turning back. No turning back.”
We often think of Jesus’ call of His disciples and Elijah’s call to Elisha as images of being followers of Jesus. And in thinking this way we are both right and for most of us, wrong.
Few of us will be called to leave our way of life when we set out to learn from Jesus. Not very many of us are called to sacrifice our oxen as Elisha did, to drop our nets and leave our boats as Jesus’ disciples did to follow Him. If you are a teacher, or a doctor, or a sales person, or if you work in a factory, deciding to follow Jesus does not mean quitting your job. In fact, just the opposite. You start to learn of Jesus right where you are and show right where you are what Jesus is like. Maybe it will take three years before you start to get the hang of it. Three years of looking at Jesus. Three years of listening to Him. At least three years of focusing on Him, using every means available to learn of Him—right where you are. In this we are mostly unlike Elisha and the disciples of Jesus.
But there is a way in which everyone who will learn of Jesus is like His disciples, like Elisha who followed Elijah. If we are His disciples, there will be no turning back. In one way we drop our nets, we sacrifice those oxen with which we were plowing—which means that we are occupied differently than we were before. But we will stay where are and learn of Jesus where we are.
A problem we all face is that the word “Christian” is used very commonly and rather without precision. But suppose that one used the word “pianist” in the same way. Suppose that it was popular to call oneself a pianist without even trying to learn to play the piano. Suppose a fashion got going of calling oneself a pianist so that the land was filled with “pianists,” but only a few people had any interest in playing the piano. Some of my piano teacher friends tell me that there are would-be piano players who don’t like to practice. And it’s no fun to teach or listen to a wannabe piano player who doesn’t want to practice.
And you cannot be a Christian without practice either. Practice what? Practice saying Christian-sounding words? Practice chumming with people who think as you do? Practice what? This is the problem we face. Jesus said, “Come learn of me.” Jesus said, “You are my friends if you do what I have commanded you.” But we have said, “I find practice hard, so I’ll not do it. I’ll call myself a pianist without practicing. I am a Christian even if I don’t really want to be a disciple—a learner.”
If we have begun to learn of Jesus even our names will remind people of the Lord. For a lot of people in the marketplace the term “Christian” may even draw disdain. But when they say the name of people who have begun to learn of Jesus, their name suggests the same thing that Elijah’s name suggested: “My God is the Lord.” If you are learning of Jesus, and show it, then your name will stand for what Elisha’s name stood for, “My God saves,” because it will be evident—something about you has been healed—your personality, your character is in process of being healed. “John,” “George,” “Sandy,” “Carol” will be names that have a connotation you give—if you are learning of Jesus.
“Come learn of me,” Jesus said. Perhaps it was Priscilla who blessed early Jewish Christians, “The God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, through the blood of the everlasting covenant will make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight.” And as this is happening, and if this is happening in you, then you are learning of Jesus—that is, you are a disciple of Jesus.
Perhaps we should think of ourselves not as Christians but as disciples—but not as a technical denominational title. What am I? I’m a learner, a person in training, a person looking at Jesus, the Author of my faith. What are you? I pray you are a learner, a person in training. Let us be a people in training, looking at, listening to Jesus. Let us learn of him. This is the discipline of Jesus—to learn of Him and thus to prove that we are disciples.
Let us pray: O Lord Jesus, make clear to us who cannot now see you what is your way that we may learn of you and so prove to be your disciples. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at April 2, 2006 09:30 AM