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Pentecost 2013
Father Adam Trambley
August 4, 2013, St. John’s
Sharon
The Discipleship Arm Dance – Part
7:
He chose four others.
This
week we are going to continue working through the Discipleship Arm Dance. If you know it, join me:
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He
heard the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
So far,
we’ve looked at the first eight steps, and we’re headed down the home
stretch. We’ve talked about the
surrender to God in the context of a local church, and the need to step out
into the life God has in store with the support of the local church. We’ve thought about the Holy Spirit coming
down and filling us, and how we can hear the voice of God tell us we are his
beloved when we allow God to come into our entire lives. We’ve looked at what it means for Jesus, and
for us, to go into the wilderness and defeat the devil, and just how we might
win that victory. We talked last week
about Jesus’ purpose and how our purpose fits into his. Today we are focusing on: “He chose four
others.”
OK, so
the first question on everybody’s minds is, “What do you mean, ‘He chose four
others.’? We know about Jesus choosing
the twelve apostles. We know about Jesus
choosing the seventy and sending them out.
What’s with the four?”
 |
| Not these four |
Well,
if you look at Matthew, chapter four, right after Jesus announces his purpose,
he chooses four others. He is walking
along the seashore and there are Peter, Andrew, James and John. He calls them and they follow him. After they leave their nets, Jesus ministers
to the crowds and begins the Sermon on the Mount. So he chose four. Certainly he later chose the twelve. He chose the seventy. He had one-hundred and twenty followers in
the upper room at Pentecost. He preached
to, healed, and fed thousands at a time.
But the four were especially important because they were taught
everything they needed to know not just through information, but also through life-on-life
formation.
Throughout
Jesus’ ministry, these chosen four are with him, or at least three of them are. At the Transfiguration, Peter, James and John
are on the mountain with Jesus. When he
raises a young girl from the dead, Peter, James and John are in the house with
him. In Mark chapter 13 when Jesus is
talking about the future of Jerusalem, Peter, James, John and Andrew are the
four who are present. When he is in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter, James and
John are close by. These four are the
people who experience the most significant moments of Jesus’ life, so they
learn not only the content he teaches, but what it means to live out that
teaching. Next week, we’ll look at the
content. Today, what’s important is how Jesus
passed on that content.
Jesus
chose four others who could each live out his teaching in their own ways. Even though they were sets of brothers, they
had pretty different personalities.
Peter is most familiar to us.
He’s the brash one who isn’t afraid to step out in front and make a
mistake. If Jesus asks a question,
Peter’s hand goes up. If Jesus is
outside the boat, Peter is going to walk on the water. If everyone is thinking something, Peter will
say it out loud.
 |
| St. John (by Alanzo Cano) |
Then we
have John, who we know as the beloved disciple and the source of the fourth
gospel and the letters of John and Revelation.
He’s the introspective poet and worship leader. While Peter’s rallying the troops for a work
day, John’s leading a contemplative prayer meeting before he writes some praise
music. He one of those people who is
just blissfully happy being in love with Jesus.
We know
less about John’s older brother James.
He seems to have been more of the institutional sort, being interested
in getting a good spot in Jesus’ kingdom and asking whether fire could be
called down on a town that rejected them.
He was the first apostle martyred, and maybe Herod persecuted him
because he was the one primarily responsible for organizing the early church
and keeping it running.
Finally,
Andrew was the socializer, out and about.
Somehow he missed being present at the Transfiguration, but he was the
one who knew the kid who brought five loaves and two fish to the picnic. He was also the one who worked with Philip to
bring the Greeks to Jesus right before the passion.
Among
themselves, these four made a small core community. Each of them readily took
to parts of Jesus life and teaching, and each struggled with different
pieces. But together they could, and
did, pass on everything Jesus taught them by how they lived their lives.
A
hundred people, or even twelve, couldn’t be privy to all the problems and
struggles Jesus’ faced. He could only
share that with a select few, not because he only wanted to choose four, but
because there are only so many people at a time that one person can have an
intense family kind of relationship with.
It’s hard to cry out to God about the trials you are facing in front of
a dozen people, but a few key friends could be supportive. Even Peter, James, and John needed further instruction
about what they experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration, and Jesus could
never have talked to Moses and Elijah with dozens of people present. They would have built the booths before the
conversation was over. Even with the
instruction he gave the twelve, and the authority he gave the seventy and the
signs he gave the crowds, there were still things that he could only share with
his three or four closest disciples -- not special secrets, but the living example
of what he taught everyone else.
Then
those four passed it on to others, probably choosing a few close friends they
lived with, as well as the crowds they taught.
We don’t have written down a lot of what the disciples did, but
traditional tells us that Peter passed on what he knew to John Mark, who wrote
the second gospel. We can assume the
others had similar core followers, as well.
We know that Barnabas chose Paul to work with, and Paul later chose
folks like Silas and Timothy and Titus, who chose others themselves and taught
them everything they needed to know.
Now
this may seem counter-intuitive to the spread of the Gospel. We think of making an impact with huge
numbers at a time. Church, to be considered
successful during our times, has generally involved programs with significant
attendance and large crowds. And
certainly there is a time and place for big events. Even Jesus fed and preached to thousands of
people on certain occasions.
But if
our focus is on helping unchurched people become Christian, or even helping
previously nominal Christians begin to live their whole lives for God, then the
big events aren’t enough. The only way
to help people live for Christ in all aspects of their lives is to allow them to
experience how we live for Christ in all aspects of our lives and to ask
questions along the way. What does it
look like to live in a Christian family?
How does a Christian deal with money?
Or work? Or anger? Or sex? Or fear? How does a Christian incorporate prayer and
worship into their lives? While all of
these questions could be answered intellectually in a very long new members’
class, none of them are really going to take root until a person sees someone
they respect, someone who cares for them, someone who take the time to be with
them, someone who is living out their Christian values and helping that new
believer along.
Of
course, this approach is going to take more than a chat at coffee hour every
other Sunday morning. This step really
means choosing up to four people and making them part of your life on a regular
basis. After we have given ourselves
over to God and defeated the devil in our life and know our purpose, we are ready
to look for people in the non-church parts of our lives and choose them. Maybe we know people who are in a financial
mess. Maybe we know people whose
families are falling apart. Maybe we
know people who are desperately searching for meaning and not finding it. We can choose those people and let them know
we have a better way and teach them what they need to know, even if they don’t
start out going to church and even if they have never expressed the slightest
interest in the God or the Jesus they were previously told about – a Jesus who
didn’t have followers that loved them enough to help them get their lives back
together.
Now
choosing four others isn’t about finding people whose business you want to get
into and tell them what to do. Instead,
we are looking for people who we can take the risk to love enough to invite
into our lives and see a better way of living than they know now. Then, slowly, over a couple of years, they can
learn not only what Jesus said, but how to put those teachings into practice. And, by the way, as we show them, we’ll live out
Jesus’ teachings better ourselves.
One of
the beauties of this approach is that it allows for multiplication, which is
much more powerful than addition. The
traditional approach of a church that isn’t growing is to get as many people to
come together to hear from an expert.
Then everyone goes home and does what they can on their own. Maybe two people, who are friends that both
attended, talk about what they heard.
Certainly there are times and places for classes and forums, usually to
strengthen and develop current disciples.
But by choosing four others and teaching them what they need to know, every
active Christian can pass on how they live a Christian life to one to four
others over a couple of years. Then,
once those people have gotten it, they can go choose four others
themselves. And so on. Within three years, if everyone in church
choses four others, the church more than doubles. (In fact, the church is multiplying in exactly
this way in parts of Asia where churches are using this model.) Even if just a small group of leaders decided
to try to make disciples this way, the church is going to grow exponentially
pretty quickly. Five brave Christians
this year going out and choosing a few others leads to fifteen new disciples in
three years, fifty in six years, and over two-hundred in ten years. Those who are chosen and learn everything
they need to know don’t just become church attenders, but are people living
Christian lives who are ready to choose others as well.
Following
Jesus’ life-on-life formation offers powerful possibilities, and is the only
way that the church can hope to grow at the same rate as the population is
growing. Note, too, that many of the non-Christians
we choose will be from unchurched families and social networks, so when they go
out and choose others they will reach whole communities of non-believers that
those of us here today can’t easily reach ourselves.
Certainly
God wants us to feed and teach hundreds and thousands of people when we
can. Small groups of a dozen or so, like
the apostles, are also necessary, especially for ministries and development of
current Christians. But Jesus model is
also to choose four others that can be significant parts of our entire lives, lives
which we have dedicated to him. We can’t
expect to reach unchurched, non-Christians with the same kind of advertising we
have used over the past decades to draw crowds to church events. But we can love a few receptive people to a
significant degree. The work isn’t easy,
which is why so few churches are engaging it.
But choosing four others will be fruitful and life giving to those we
choose, as well as to us.
All
together:
Jesus
was baptized by John.
He came
up out of the water.
He
received the Holy Spirit.
He heard
the voice of God, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
He went
into the wilderness.
He
defeated the devil.
He came
out of the wilderness.
He
announced his purpose.
He
chose four others.
He
taught them everything they needed to know.
He sent
them out.
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