Discipleship

by The Reverend Scott Homer
In the name of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Jesus says to his disciples, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.” That’s pretty cut and dried isn’t it? Nothing vague, nothing ephemeral in that: the person who loves Jesus is the person who does what Jesus tells him to do. And yet, all over the country this morning priests and preachers will be discounting his words and qualifying what he says. They will spend an obscene amount of time and energy arguing that we can’t do what Jesus tells us to do and that Jesus never really intended us to. Not me. I think Jesus meant exactly what he said and like so much of what Jesus said, the words present an immense challenge to anybody who takes his words seriously.

The famous English author and journalist G. K. Chesterton once quipped, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” He is saying that the question we need to be addressing is not, did Jesus mean what he said or is it possible to carry out Jesus’ teachings. If we do the things that Jesus tells us to do we find our lives enriched. A life lived in righteousness is a better life. It is a desirable alternative to the ways of the world. It is a life full of blessing and peace and serenity. And it is the life that God intends for us to live. In fact, he insists upon it. And when we fail to live righteous lives, when we sin, we fall hard. We experience pain and suffering. We know separation from God. And this is not God’s will for our lives. Anybody who has lived on both sides of this equation will tell you that righteous living is better than sinful living. Ask a recovered alcoholic or heroin addict. Ask somebody who has experienced radical conversion in their lives. Seek out those who have experienced the shame of prison. They will confirm what Chesterton says. The Christian ideal is not wanting. It is not a blind alley. It really does lead to new life—better life.

And so the question churches all over the world need to be asking and trying to answer is, how can we do what Jesus is asking us to do? If Jesus has placed an immensely difficult task before us (and nobody is denying that, it is difficult.) Jesus must have provided us with the means to accomplish it. The God of our salvation would not create a no win situation. So, the question is not how can I twist Jesus’ words around in order to avoid doing what my Lord and Savior has asked me to do but rather what are the tools and resources that the Lord has given me, that I may pick up and use in order to accomplish his will? And then, how do I best use these tools? How do I become expert in my craft?

And I want to caution you that immediately upon hearing about the tools Gopd provides, the temptation will be to discount their worth. We will be attacked by the enemy because the enemy has invested a great deal of time and energy into persuading us that the tools the Lord has provided are too small, too insignificant, and too simple to work. He tells us that surely they will not equip us to live up to the demands. But it’s a lie. The truth of the matter is that God’s tools are more than adequate. They are completely sufficient to the task. And we need to banish the false thinking. We need to recommit to the goodness of the Lord and to learning how to use the tools he has provided us.

A hippy was sitting on a park bench in Central Park and a tourist approached and asked him, “Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall. And the hippy replied, “Practice man.” Both the question about what are the tools god provides and the question about how do we use them are learning, experiencing and growing questions. They are questions we live into not questions that have a quick answer. Keeping Jesus’ commands is not a matter of information. It is a matter of formation. It is not about learning facts. It is rather like training to be a doctor by doing what doctors do under the supervision of doctors; or like learning to play a musical instrument by playing in the presence of a master musician and playing in a band under the guidance of a master director. Discipleship is a lifelong task. Luminaries from around the world attended the ninetieth birthday party for the world renowned cellist Pablo Cassals. And in the middle of dinner Pablo excused himself and he was gone for about a half an hour. When he returned someone asked him where he had gone. He replied, “I was practicing.” (Maybe he had talked to the hippy) One of the dinner guests said, “Pablo you are perhaps the greatest cellist in the world. Why do you have to leave your ninetieth birthday party to practice?” And Pablo said, “I think I’m getting better.”

When Jesus says if you love me you will keep my commands he is saying that love will be demonstrated by a devotion to God and a commitment to God’s purposes. The one who loves Jesus is the one who determines to be his apprentice, who devotes herself to being an intern of our Lord because the one who loves Jesus desires to know the way, desperately seeks to experience the truth, and strives to walk in the life that Jesus teaches us. We are saved by grace through faith but God’s saving grace looks very much like a call to serve as his apprentice and to do the things that Jesus does.

If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I hope that you will get out of your comfortable pew and commit to following Jesus wherever it is that Jesus is calling you to go. Find a Bible study and commit to it for a year. Join a prayer team and commit to praying everyday. Stop worrying about not being able to give the right answer and come seeking the right answer by showing up for Sunday School regularly. Find a Christian mentor to open up to. If you don’t get anything else out of this sermon this morning I pray that you will get motivated to become a learner, an apprentice and an intern of our Lord.

I ran across this quote from Dallas Willard. He says,
“Non-discipleship is the elephant in the church. It is not the much discussed moral failures, financial abuses, or the amazing general similarity between Christians and non-Christians. These are only effects of the underlying problem. The fundamental negative reality among Christian believers now is their failure to be constantly learning how to live their lives in The Kingdom Among Us. And it is an accepted reality. The division of Christians into those from whom it is a matter of whole-life devotion to God and those who maintain a consumer, or client, relationship to the church has now been an accepted reality for over fifteen hundred years.“And in our day,” he says, “this long-accepted division has worked its way into the very heart of the gospel message. It is now understood to be a part of the "good news" that one does not have to be a life student of Jesus in order to be a Christian and receive forgiveness of sins. This gives a precise meaning to the phrase "cheap grace," though it would be better described as "costly faithlessness."
(Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper, 1998), p.301)

Jesus means what he says. The question for us this morning is, how can we make a start at reversing the trend? What tools can I grab hold of that will help me to do what Jesus tells me to do and to become the disciple Jesus wants me to be?

Doctors need to learn anatomy and physiology, diagnostics, surgical techinque and pharmacology among other things. Musicians need to learn rhythm, tone, and timber and the dexterity to play their instrument. Christians need to acquire expertise in four primary areas: Honesty—honesty—Purity—Love. Each of these is an absolute which is why learning them is a lifelong task and why no one has the right to boast. We all fall short of the glory of God and it is by his grace alone that we know life.

Honesty is a willingness to look at the truth about us, about God, and about the world. Honesty is having eyes opened to the truth and a spirit that is willing to hear the truth even when the truth is painful or difficult. Honesty allows us to behold our needs and the true sources by which those needs can be met. Jesus is wholly devoted to the truth. Time and time again we hear Jesus, Truly I say to you. And we also hear Jesus say, “I am the truth.”

Humility teaches us that there is no life within us apart from the life God breathes into us. Humility is the understanding that our past, present and future rest with God. We realize our true nature, see all the warts and blemishes, understand our propensity to prejudice, ignorance, and the seven deadly sins. Humility will inevitably lead us to the foot of the cross because only at the foot of the cross will we find hope.

Purity is about doing the right thing, about refusing the temptation, denying the urge, and fleeing from the seduction. Purity keeps us out of harms way, free from the sins that separate us from God’s grace. Purity sounds old fashioned. Too prim and proper for our time and yet Purity is virtue at its highest level. A life devoted to purity is a life lived close to the Lord.

And love—love is such an abused term in our culture. The term only vaguely resembles the term Jesus and the Apostles use. Love in its pure form is not selfish or proud. It does not seek its own way. Love is patient and kind. Love gives rather than takes. Jesus models love at its most extreme when he picks up his cross and sacrifices his life on the cross for us. This is a total self-giving for the sake of the beloved. He dies in order that we may live.

An apprentice must learn her craft by studying. The musician needs to be able to read music, needs to know the theory, needs to understand the music the hope to play. An medical intern has to study. And the reason they say that doctors practice rather than saying the perform is because doctors are always learning. The Christian must study. God has given us a holy book that contains all things necessary for our life and salvation but you can’t ever understand it fully and you can’t ever understand it even basically without studying it. The Lord has given us the Bible in order that we might study and become competent in our faith.

An apprentice doesn’t train herself. An intern does not perform a medical procedure without supervision. Christians can not learn their craft without submitting to the tutelage of another Christian. In every case, where there is a student there must be a teacher. The Lord has provided teachers and preachers to act as mentor, instructor, and helper.

An Christian apprentice is faced with a unique problem. They don’t have the ability to use the tools that they have been provided without divine help. We are stuck if God does not intervene and come along side and lift us up and carry us. And so the Lord has provided access through prayer. We pray and we receive the essentials we need to practice our way of life.
The tools we have been given are Bible study, Christian teachers, and prayer. And if we will learn to use these tools, and to practice our faith until we become expert at it we will discover that Jesus’ command, while difficult, is attainable.

And so being a disciple is about living out these absolutes to the best of our ability. We practice these principles in all our affairs and we discover that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. O forgot to mention the best part. Jesus says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments AND I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another counselor to be with you forever.” Our love for Jesus isn’t a pining love. It isn’t a distant and detached love. Our love for Jesus and his love for us is intimate, immediate, right here and right now because Jesus prays and the Father sends and the Holy Spirit is with us, in us, around us, through us. As long as our faith is an abstraction and we continue to live our lives according to the ways of the world, Jesus tells us that we will not see him or know him because the world doesn’t see him or know him. But when our faith ceases to be an abstraction and we begin to live our faith out in our daily life and work Jesus prays, the Father sends, and the Holy Spirit comes and we know him because he dwells with us and is in us.

This is all possible because of Jesus’ resurrection. He says, because I live, you will live also. Amen.