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What’s a Disciple to Do?
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, June 15, 2008
Matthew 9:35-10:8
If you haven’t seen the
church’s mission statement yet then you just haven’t been paying attention.
It’s everywhere! It’s on our website, on the church newsletter, and on the
worship bulletin you hold in your hands this morning. Right there on the cover
it says, “First Baptist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ” in the
same way a car company might say it exists to make automobiles. If you close
your eyes you can almost see disciples coming out the front doors of First
Baptist Church like cars rolling off the assembly line. But I know what a car
is for: it’s to get you from one place to another. So, what’s a disciple for?
We might be so busy making them that we haven’t stopped to ask the question:
What’s a disciple to do?
The Greek word we
translate “disciple” is mathetes, which means “learner.” It stands to
reason, then, that a disciple is supposed to learn something, from somebody, and
if we look to those first disciples as a model they learned something from
Jesus. Like apprentices working under a master craftsman they watched the way
he went about his trade, and his trade, as far as we can tell, was bringing in
God’s Kingdom. He did it by preaching and teaching, by healing the sick,
cleansing the lepers, raising the dead, and casting out demons. He did all he
could to bring heaven to earth and he did it masterfully. So the disciples
watched him. They took mental notes as he was preaching and teaching. They
noticed the position of his hands as he healed and cleansed. They stood
dumbstruck as he raised the dead and cast out demons. But eventually they got a
chance to learn in the best of all possible ways:
They got to learn by
doing.
Matthew says that “Jesus
went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and
proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every
sickness,” but it seemed the more he did the more there was to do. People came
from everywhere—by the hundreds, by the thousands! Still he couldn’t turn them
away; they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he said to his disciples,
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of
the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." In other words, “This job
is too big for one person. Ask God to send help!” So they did. It was Peter,
probably, who got them in a circle and began, “Our Father, who art in heaven.
Your boy Jesus needs some help. He’s doing a good job, a great job, but there’s
just more work here than he can do. So, send him some help, Father. It
wouldn’t even have to be very good help. It could be almost anybody, just so
they were willing. And it wouldn’t have to be much help. Probably no more than
a dozen men…”
And that’s when the
disciples knew they’d been had.
In the very next verse
Jesus summons his disciples and gives them authority over unclean spirits, to
cast them out, and to cure every disease and sickness. I think I told you a few
weeks ago, that the Greek word for authority is exousia, and that it
means “out of one’s own being, or substance.” Jesus took some authority out of
his own substance and handed it over to his disciples so that they would have
what he had when it came time to cast out a demon or cure a disease. Maybe he
lined them all up, and then went down the line giving them authority one at a
time. And maybe he did it as he did in John’s Gospel, where he breathed on them
and they received the Holy Spirit. Can you picture it? He puts his hands on
Peter’s shoulders, looks him in the eye, and then breathes on him. “Simon
Peter, receive the authority to cast out demons and to cure every disease and
sickness.” And then he moves on to the next disciple. “Andrew, brother of
Simon, receive the authority to cast out demons and to cure every disease and
sickness,” and on down the line until all twelve of them, even Judas Iscariot,
have received this awesome authority. Can you imagine standing in that line,
feeling the warm breath of the living Christ on your face, feeling his strong
hands on your shoulders? But can you imagine, also, thinking that you might
actually have to cast out a demon, or cure a disease?
Before the disciples can
even think about it Jesus gives them their marching orders. “Don’t go anywhere
among the Gentiles,” he says, “and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather
go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And I have to say—that just
doesn’t sound like Jesus at all. Where is the Jesus of John 3:16, the one that
“whosoever” believeth in may not perish? Why now does he seem to be excluding
Gentiles, some of whom are in this very room, and Samaritans, who are probably
not? Yes, Matthew is the most Jewish of all the Gospels, but even by Matthean
standards these instructions seem exclusive. If there is no good news for the
Gentiles, then there is no good news for us. And if I could ask Jesus a
question I’d like to ask him this one: “What do you have against Gentiles and
Samaritans?”
To which I hope he would
reply:
“Nothing. Nothing at
all. Some of my best friends are Gentiles and as you know I’ve met some very
good Samaritans. But you have to start somewhere, and for their sake I asked my
disciples to start with the people closest to them in culture and custom.” I
hope that’s what he would say because it reminds me of something I said to our
staff recently. They had told me even before I came to this church that they
were interested in reaching the historic Fan district and asked me how I would
go about it. First of all, I said, I would want to be careful with the word
reach: people might resent it if they thought someone was trying to “reach”
them. What if, instead, we said we were going to love the Fan? You
can’t resent love, can you? And so, two weeks ago, I brought a map of the
immediate neighborhood to staff meeting and highlighted the block where the
church sits, on the corner of Monument and Boulevard. Then I used the
highlighter to draw a big, yellow square around the church, two blocks out in
each direction. And then I challenged the staff to pick one block within that
square and write their name on it. I told them that if we were going to love
the Fan we would have to get to know the Fan, because you can’t love something
you don’t know, just as you can’t love someone you don’t know. And if we were
going to get to know the Fan it might help to do it one block at a time,
beginning with the blocks closest to the church.
You see? That’s just
being practical. That’s just following the advice of Jesus from Acts 1:8 where
he says, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends
of the earth.” He seems to envision a mission movement that will start where
the disciples are, like a stone dropping into a pond, with ripples moving out in
every direction. So here in Matthew 10:5-6 he says, “Go nowhere among the
Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but rather go to the lost sheep
of the house of Israel.” Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The
Message: “Don't begin by traveling to some far-off place to convert
unbelievers. And don't try to be dramatic by tackling some public enemy. Go to
the lost, confused people right here in the neighborhood. Tell them that the
kingdom is here.” And then he tells them to do a little more than that: “Cure
the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. You received
without payment; give without payment.”
Now, I didn’t tell the
staff to do that. I just told them to get to know their block, to walk around
it and see what it looks like, to walk around it again and pray for the people
who live there, and then, if they have the opportunity, to strike up a
conversation with someone sitting on his front porch, to get to know the people
of the block and not only the block itself. But I didn’t tell them to cure
anybody, cleanse anybody, raise anybody, or cast out demons. That seems a
little more advanced, doesn’t it? I may not ever tell them to do that, but this
passage has me wondering why not. They’re disciples, aren’t they? In Matthew
10 Jesus gives his disciples authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out,
and to cure every disease and every sickness. Was that a special dispensation
for the Twelve, or does Jesus expect all his disciples to do such things? If he
does he must be disappointed. I don’t know that I’ve ever cast out any unclean
spirits, and I can’t even cure an upset stomach, much less every disease and
every sickness. The excuse I use is that I’m only a disciple, a “learner.” I’m
still learning how to do the things Jesus did. But isn’t this passage proof
that there comes a time when disciples need to start doing some things, and not
just learning about them?
Sometimes I go into a
Sunday school class and see a map on the wall labeled, “the Journeys of Paul.”
There they are, sketched out in red ink around the Mediterranean Sea: missionary
journeys one, two, and three. And I think, “Well, that’s a good thing to
learn. And a group of disciples, of ‘learners,’ might want to spend a Sunday
school class or two learning about those journeys.” But I also have a feeling
that when we stand before the Lord Jesus he won’t ask us if we know where Paul
went on his second missionary journey. I have a feeling he’ll ask us where we
went on our second missionary journey. One of the notes I read in my
study for this week’s sermon mentioned that Matthew 10:2 is the only place in
the Gospel where Matthew refers to the disciples as “apostles,” but if you know
what the word means it makes sense. Disciples means “learners.”
Apostles means “sent ones.” As soon as these disciples were sent out on
their mission they became apostles.
Which brings me back to
us.
When will we stop learning
and start doing? When will we stop studying the missionary journeys of Paul and
go on some missionary journeys of our own? If there is any reason we don’t do
these things it’s probably because we are afraid that we can’t do them. As I
said before, I can’t even cure an upset stomach. How am I supposed to cast out
a demon? When I picture myself trying it scares me. I see myself laying hands
on someone, saying “In the name of Jesus, come out!” And then I see myself
failing, miserably, and that’s what keeps me from trying. The fear of failure.
But I’m encouraged by something I found in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
In that chapter Jesus sends out some disciples on a similar mission and Luke
says they returned “with joy,” saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us
in your name!” In other words they tried, and succeeded.
I have a feeling that if
we tried, we would be more successful than we might guess. In fact I think we
are already more successful than we realize. In our own, limited ways we do
proclaim the gospel, and there are people who hear it as very good news indeed.
In our own small ways we do teach people about the Kingdom of Heaven, and for
some of those people the kingdom comes. There are those of us who have had a
part in healing the sick and curing diseases, quite literally, others who have
brought healing to people’s hearts and souls. There are those among us who have
cleansed the lepers of our society, given them their dignity back, and brought
them into the full fellowship of the church. There are those among us who have
raised the dead, aren’t there? Haven’t you heard someone say, “I was as good as
gone, but this church brought me back to life again”? And there are those who
have cast out demons—the demons of despair, of hopelessness, or
worthlessness—people who remind the least among us, “You are a child of God, and
you matter more than you know.”
In all these things there
is joy, isn’t there? And in all these ways we are doing what Jesus told his
disciples to do—to tell people that the Kingdom has come near. And if we keep
on doing it faithfully and well there may come a time when we won’t need to tell
them, when instead they will tell us:
“Through you The Kingdom
has come near.”
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