Part 3 -- The Discipleship Arm Dance: He Came Up Out of the Water/He Received the Holy Spirit

7 Pentecost 2013

Father Adam Trambley

July 7, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

The Discipleship Arm Dance – Part 3:

He Came Up Out of the Water and He Received Holy Spirit

(Part 1 here and Part 2 here)

This week we are going to continue working through the Discipleship Arm Dance. 

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.

Last week we discussed: “Jesus was baptized by John.”  We focused on two pieces that were important parts of Jesus’ baptism.  The first was his total commitment to die to his old life, even though his life was a good life and even a sinless life, to be totally about his Father’s will and purpose for his life.  The second was his willingness to make that commitment in the context of a particular local community of faith.  This morning we are going to look at the next two of steps in the Discipleship Arm Dance, he came up out of the water and he received the Holy Spirit, from the perspectives of Jesus, of us, and of those we hope to disciple. Then we’ll continue through the rest of the steps in the coming weeks.

He came up out of the water.  Now we may not think much about Jesus coming up out of the water, but it wasn’t a given.  Baptism, remember, is about dying to ourselves, and baptism in the Jordan isn’t like having some water sprinkled on our foreheads with a silver conch shell.  Baptism in the river was full immersion, being brought and held down under the water by someone else.  Such a baptism is not just symbolic death to the old self – baptism could be literal death if the person doing the baptizing doesn’t bring you back up.  We are talking about total submission.  When John baptized Jesus, he could have held him under the water until he drowned.  He could have decided that he wanted the biggest TV ministry, to sell the most CD’s, and to have the most Bible books written about him.  But, thanks be to God, he didn’t.  Jesus came up out of the water.

So Jesus had that literal support of his local faith community after his baptism, but he also had to choose to come up out of the water.  He didn’t just keep thrashing about in the water, hoping that he wouldn’t have to go into the wilderness or end up on a cross.  He didn’t just stop and say, “Well, I can’t stay where I was, but the future looks too painful, so I’ll stay right here.”  No, Jesus came up out of the water.  He didn’t just die to his old self, but he decided to live his new life.    That new life was launched out of the ministry of John the Baptist and his disciples.

Now we have to make the same decisions to come out of the water.  Hopefully, none of us have felt drowned by our church, at least not this church.  I do know that some of us here this morning have ended up at St. John’s the hard way.  Some folks have tried to offer their lives to God at another local church and have been rejected for any number of reasons, and I’m sorry for that.  Churches are supposed to help us come up out of the water, and one of the gifts the Episcopal Church has had is helping people out of the water who have been soggy and water-logged and nearly drowned in other faith communities.  We all are trying to help everyone who comes come up out of the water, as well as continue to lift up all of us who have been here a while.  As either current church members or the new people we hope to disciple come forward offering their lives in new ways to God, we want to accept those gifts gratefully, and lovingly lift people out of the water to go onto the next steps God has in store for them.  I would hope not only some of our newer members have felt that support coming out of the water, but also some of our long-time members have felt that same support when they have decided to offer their lives more fully to God or to offer themselves in new ways at new stages of life or by beginning new ministries. 

With that support of our local church, we also make the decision ourselves to get up out of the water.  Floundering around in the river is not a fun place to be for an extended length of time.  Treading water is utterly exhausting.  But people do it all the time in various areas of life.  We find our current life is totally unfulfilling, so we leave it, but we don’t do anything to get to the next place.  We decide we want to lose weight or stop smoking or eat healthy or whatever, and we convince ourselves our old life needs to go, but we don’t take the steps to be successful with the changes we have decided to make.  We never join a program or a group or get our family to help us or whatever would be necessary.  We just flounder in the water miserably.  Or maybe we leave a job, or a marriage, but don’t make the changes in our own life necessary so that our next steps are more successful.  We all have seen people like that, or even been people like that at times.  We can make the same mistakes when we decide we really need to commit to God, but don’t want to take the steps necessary to live a life dedicated to God.  We somehow delude ourselves into believing that can keep the pain at bay by staying put, when all we do is wear ourselves out little-by-little until we go under the water, exhausted.  But when we get up out of the water, we are ready to face, and perhaps even embrace, the life-changing possibilities God has in store.

Those we would disciple have the same struggles we have, but are often have even more fear and trepidation about getting out of the water.  They need the firm hand of a loving church family on their back as they struggle to come up.  Many people we want to reach haven’t been in a church.  They haven’t heard hundreds of scripture readings and sermons, like we have.  (Even if we ignore them, we have some idea of what following Jesus is about.)   Once they make the difficult decision to die to their old lives, we need to provide them with such love and support that they can’t imagine not continuing their journey with us.  We want everyone who comes to us to find God to know that we can and will be lifting them up, not only out of the water, but every step of the way.

He came up out of the water.

He received the Holy Spirit.

This step of receiving the Holy Spirit is the most difficult one to talk about, I think.  The Holy Spirit blows where she will, and isn’t constrained by somebody’s three guaranteed steps for getting the Spirit in your life or whatever.  The Holy Spirit doesn’t come upon people in the Bible according to any particular pattern.  For the Apostles at Pentecost it was tongues of fire, while Jesus received a dove in bodily form.  I’ve seen various people receive the Holy Spirit and have never seen either of those particular signs. Then some people receive particular gifts, like speaking in tongues, when the Holy Spirit comes upon them, but others experience other things.  Sometimes the Spirit comes upon a person in response to specific prayers to receive the Holy Spirit, including in formal services like confirmation, and sometimes she just shows up on people when they are ready.

But we can say a few things about receiving the Holy Spirit that seem to ring true, and they go equally well for Jesus when he received the Spirit, for us, and for those whom we hope will receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit at St. John’s in the future.  The first is that we can’t fully receive the Holy Spirit unless we want to give our lives entirely over to God.  God will take what he can get from us and use us to the degree we are willing, of course.  We all have gifts from the Spirit, and the Spirit operates in all of us as we share those gifts for the building up of God’s people.  We can also see the fruits of the Spirit in our lives – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – to the degree we allow the Spirit into our lives.  But to fully receive the Holy Spirit, we need to make that entire surrender to God that Jesus made when he was baptized by John, and we make at whatever point in our own walk of faith that we can.  When we are bringing others to faith, part of why we want them to make a real commitment to God with their lives instead of just putting their foot in the door the easy way, is so that they can have the Spirit enter their lives fully.

Then, when we commit ourselves to God and receive the Holy Spirit, we are set on fire.  That fire does two things in us. The first is that the Holy Spirit warms every fiber of our being with the love, joy and peace of God. The second is that anything sinful or evil in us gets burned away.  The second effect, obviously, can be more painful in the short-term than the first, but both are essential to live a life dedicated to God’s mission and purpose.  These two effects correspond in our dance to hearing the voice of God say, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” and going into the wilderness to defeat the devil.  We’ll go on with those next week.

But let’s finish this week by doing the entire Discipleship Arm Dance 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.

Part 2 -- The Discipleship Arm Dance: Jesus was Baptized by John

6 Pentecost 2013

Father Adam Trambley

June 30, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

The Discipleship Arm Dance – Part 2: Jesus was Baptized by John

(Click Here for Part 1)

Some of you may remember the Discipleship Arm Dance from last week.  

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.

This morning we are going to look at the first part of the Discipleship Arm Dance: Jesus was baptized by John.  We are going to look at this component from three perspectives: the perspectives of Jesus, of us and of people we will want to disciple.

Jesus was baptized by John.  Let’s start by thinking about what this baptism didn’t mean to Jesus.  Jesus was not being baptized to wash away his sins, because he hadn’t committed any.  John the Baptist proclaimed a baptism of repentance, but Jesus didn’t need to repent, either.  He didn’t need to have a personal relationship with Jesus because, well, he was Jesus.  For similar reasons he didn’t need to accept himself as his Lord and Savior either.  So this baptism in the Jordan wasn’t necessarily the same baptism that we have experienced, especially if we were baptized as infants.  But what Jesus did in his baptism is still important for us, and if we weren’t ready to do the same things at our baptism, we need to make sure they happen for us at another time.

Jesus accomplished two very important things by being baptized by John.  The first was that he began a life totally devoted to God and God’s purpose for his life.  Second, he lived out that purpose being connected to a specific particular community of God’s people.

Think about Jesus’ life.  Outside of a brief incident at thirteen, we know nothing about Jesus life from his

infancy until the start of his public ministry.  We don’t know what he was doing, exactly.  He seemed to have lived a good Jewish life, maybe as a builder, who studied the scriptures when he could, spoke a couple languages like most folks living in Galilee, and didn’t commit anything we would consider sins.  Yet, he hadn’t really lived fully into the ministry his Father sent him here to do.  He wouldn’t be able to until he took the next step of being baptized, so that he could have the Spirit descend upon him and defeat the devil and take the rest of the necessary steps to start his ministry. (Photo of Jesus and the Carpenter is by Neal Parrow.)

By coming to be baptized, Jesus was dying to his old life so that he could begin a new life entirely dedicated to God and God’s purpose for him.  He was offering himself to be used however God wanted to use him, fully expecting to have his life changed and to be transformed himself into ways he may not have imagined.  He wanted what God wanted for him more than he wanted to hold onto the good life he had.  Until Jesus made that leap of faith, even the sinless life he lived wasn’t going to achieve the purpose God created him for.

Now we might think that he could have just decided to be about God’s purpose one day and start doing it.  He was God’s Son, after all.  But even Jesus needed to go to someone and be baptized by him.  He didn’t go to John because John was better than he was.  John himself said he wasn’t fit to tie Jesus’ shoelaces.  But he knew that if he was going to totally give himself over to God, he had to submit to somebody. Somebody needed to accept his decision, and a specific community needed to gather around him and launch him in his ministry.  We shouldn’t be surprised that at least one of Jesus’ first disciples, Andrew, was a disciple of John the Baptist. 

At some point in our lives, we need to come to the same kind of commitment Jesus did.  For some people such a moment might come at baptism, for others at confirmation, for others at a reaffirmation, and for some just at a moment of prayer with their brothers and sisters.  Sometimes the moment is when a person begins serious twelve-step work.  But at some point, before we are going to experience all of the rest of the steps of the Discipleship Arm Dance, we will decide to die to our life so that we can live entirely into God’s purpose for us.  At some point, we turn our entire beings over so that God can change us into the people he made us to be and so that we can live fully for him.  At some point, we go to some particular person who has already taken these steps and surrender ourselves to them as God’s agents to us.

Now this surrender is both more and less than we might imagine.  Dying to ourselves and our old lives doesn’t necessarily mean that we give up everything we have and leave all the people who love us to go halfway across the world.  But we are going to live in the midst of all the relationships we have differently.  We are going to think about how we use what we have differently.  We are going to want to spend our time differently.

Recently, I had a conversation that I think can demonstrate this difference in perspective.  I was chatting with a friend when his wife came over and asked me to talk to him because he was less than enthusiastic about going off for a few days to the wedding of one of her relatives.  Now, of course, pastors want nothing more than to get in the middle of marital disagreements, so we talked about the trip a bit.  Suffice it to say that there were some things that could have made the trip unpleasant.  But after discussing the wedding for a while and life in general, I silently said a prayer and told him, “For whatever it’s worth, here’s what I think.  You’re a night person, so every night before you go to sleep, think about how to spend the next day doing things to make your wife happy.  The trip is for her anyway, and trying to give her a good trip will give you something to focus on that will make you happier, too.”  He said he would never have thought of that, but would have just thought about everybody being miserable.  This simple change on a difficult trip from being satisfied with being miserable and dragging others down with you to spending your time and energy making your loved ones happy is a good example of the specific kind of transformation that occurs when we see our entire lives lived for God’s purposes.  We can all probably think of other examples where what we might naturally do for ourselves is not the same as what God’s purpose for us in the midst of that situation.  We no longer have the option of being mediocre spouses or parents or children or employees or friends because we are living our whole lives for the glory of God.

The person and the community that accepts our surrender to God are going to be the people who lead us as we set out on this new life we’ve chosen.  We know we can’t do it by ourselves.  If we could, we wouldn’t need to make the surrender.  God’s purposes would flow naturally in our lives.  But we join a local church community and begin to live out whatever the next steps that God sets before us.  Usually we find those through the life of our local church.

Just think for a moment about the people we want to disciple.  We will be asking them pretty early in the process of discipleship to die to their old lives and make a commitment to be formed by this community to live into a new life.  They may decide to visit for a while and even participate in various activities.  And nobody has to go through any of these steps to be saved or even to be part of the church at whatever level they are comfortable.  But before people are likely to feel God’s love filling the core of their being or be able to understand their deepest purpose in life, they will likely need to open themselves to be fully used by God.   

What circumstances could possible encourage people to make such a huge decision.  Some might come because their lives are so bad that dying to their current self isn’t much of a loss.  For this reason, Christianity has always grown with people at the margins.  We will probably have more success with people that need a church then with the people we would be most comfortable having join our church. But sometimes others with good lives might trade them in if we can witness to them about how much better and fuller our lives have become after we surrendered ourselves to God.  But our story needs to be compelling, the kind of compelling that only comes from living fully through all the stages of the discipleship arm dance.  So let’s do the dance together, starting with Jesus was baptized by John.

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. 

Part 1 -- The Discipleship Arm Dance: Overview

5 Pentecost 2013

Father Adam Trambley

June 23, 2013, St. John’s Sharon

The Discipleship Arm Dance – Part 1: Overview

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.

When I was in Mexico last month, I met a man named Mark Geppert.  Mark has prayed through many

Pastor Mark Geppert

place of the world that have not received the gospel or where Christians are persecuted.  He has been in jail in seven different countries.  He started an organization called South East Asian Prayer Center, and is helping spread the gospel and do gospel work like feeding people, starting orphanages, providing medical care, and doing microeconomic lending throughout Southeast Asia, while also supporting those efforts with partners in other parts of the world.  Today he is leading prayer teams in places like Northern India and the Himalayas where there are people groups who have never heard of Jesus and do not yet have the Bible translated into their language.  And, by the way, he grew up and lives in Pittsburgh.  So you can live in Western Pennsylvania and make a difference throughout the world.

Mark showed me this set of motions to describe the beginning of Jesus’ ministry as a process for discipleship of non-Christians.  We are called to follow Jesus, and his life and work provide a template for our own work of evangelism and discipleship.  We can do what Jesus did, and then invite others to do what Jesus did, and to help them become followers of Jesus, too. 

Pastor Bob Logan

Mark didn't have a name for this Macarena for Jesus, but I've been calling it the discipleship arm dance. Part of why I like it is because we need something like this to help us.  Almost nobody in the Episcopal church really knows how to disciple non-Christians.  If we did, we would be doing it.  But we aren’t, and, neither, for that matter, are almost any of the other mainline Protestant churches, or Roman Catholic Churches, or evangelical churches, or black churches, or charismatic churches.  We, and some other healthy congregations, are pretty good at incorporating people who grew up in a church and realize that they want to come home.  We aren’t good at finding a way to take people who have no religious background but who are desperately seeking something in their lives, and helping them become followers of Jesus.  But there are a few churches that do know how to do this important work--not many, but some.  Pastor Mark’s churches in Southeast Asia are figuring this out.  A pastor in California named Bob Logan who I work with also knows how to do this, and our staff is listening to some of his resources, as well.  But I truly believe that unless we learn how to reach non-Christians and do what we need to do to disciple them, we are looking at a pretty dim future for the church within the next twenty years.  When we do figure it out, however, and I believe that we at St. John’s will because we already have people praying about it and we have people struggling with it, and we have people that really want to bring salvation and healing and the good news to those who don’t have it, when we do figure it out, we are going to begin the next sixty year period of dynamic, life-giving mission and ministry.  After that sixty years, folks will need to figure out the next thing.  I’ll be a hundred years old and my kids’ grandkids will have to take care of things.  But by learning the simple pieces of reaching and discipling non-Christians, we can send this church on a glorious trajectory forward.  And that process is not easy, but it is simple.  

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.

I am going to spend a good bit of the summer going through this process for discipleship.  We’re going to look each step from three angles.  The first concerns Jesus’ life and what each piece meant for him.  Why did he do it?  What was so important that gospel writers wrote it down and made sure we paid attention?

Second, we are going to see how we have experienced each of these steps ourselves.  Before we can bring others through something, we have to know the path.  Part of our problem with discipling new Christians is that we haven’t necessarily lived through each step ourselves.  We might be able to get through life without them all, although something will probably be lacking.  We might be able to do church without focusing on every step, but we won’t bear all the fruit God planted us for.  We might even be able to bring some other church people into our congregation, but they will have the same difficulties discipling folks that we have.  We won’t be successful with non-Christians until we’ve experienced all these steps.

Think about how many good Christians you know who have never really heard the voice of God say to them in a way that they fully believe that “You are my beloved child.”  How many folks have never had to go out into the wilderness of their lives and received the support necessary to defeat the devil there?   Instead of being free, they are walking around bound by all sorts of things interfering with their happiness and peace.  Way too many of us hanging around in church have no idea what our purpose in life is, and we need to know because when we walk down the street we see way too many rudderless people who need help finding direction.  We need to announce our purpose before we can help others find theirs.  And of course we know most of us aren’t choosing four others and teaching them everything they need to know about faith and life, because if we were, the church would be quadrupling every four or five years. 

Now somebody will probably think – well, lots of people probably will think, but one or two people might ask– is this really Episcopalian?  We didn’t learn it quite like this.   Sounds a bit evangelical or Holy Roller.  And maybe it does sound that way, but everything we’ll look at is very Biblical and at the core of what we believe and how we believe we need to live out our faith.  The Episcopal Church has just been blessed for a while to be in a place where we could let some things slide and still have a thriving, loving church.  But, for good or for ill, times have changed.  We need to be more intentional about our own discipleship to help the growing population of non-Christians outside our doors come to Christ and a church home.  The fact that St. John’s has done such a good job of being a loving and prayerful church family when things were easier means we are at a place to take on these challenges now that the landscape has become more difficult.  Not every congregation is ready.  And I wish I didn’t have to be the one to come in and tell you that we need to be so much more intentional about difficult discipleship practices to survive, but I have to tell you what I’m seeing, and I assure you that I’m struggling along right beside you.

Then, third, when we think about what these steps all mean for Jesus and for ourselves, we’ll look at what they might mean for unchurched people among our family and friends who are searching for something important in their lives.  Once we’ve lived into the steps of Jesus early ministry ourselves, we’ll each be able to reach at least one other person and help them live into following Jesus, as well.

OK, before we close today, let’s all learn this discipleship arm dance.  I’ll say a line and make the motion, then you repeat it.  If we get good participation, then we’ll move on to the creed.  If not, we can keep going.  I’m not proud and nothing else is scheduled here until three o’clock.    

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.