Being A Disciple

Easter 5                                                                                                      2 May 2010

John 13: 31-35

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  So said Jesus on the night of his betrayal, just after he had finished washing the disciples’ feet. Earlier he had put it this way: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”  We understand then that Jesus had something specific in mind when he talked about love.  I am sure that he would approve of church people liking each other and being friendly.  But his example showed that his commandment to love each other meant mutual service, a commitment to care for each other’s good, to be actively involved in the lives of others.  When we act this way, he said, we show that we are his disciples. 

And what is a disciple?  A disciple is a student, or an apprentice.  The disciple is determined to understand what his master teaches and to live according to his master’s example.  The disciple is determined not to fall into the trap Jesus mentioned in Matthew 7: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”  So we can take it that the will of the Father is that men and women become disciples of Jesus—and that in this way, his kingdom purposes are coming to realization in this world.  It is obviously Jesus’ intention that people who come to faith in him as God’s Son and Saviour, also learn to do what he said and to imitate how he lived.  We talked about that last week when we said that Jesus showed himself to be the Good Shepherd in two ways: he explained to his sheep how to live by his words and deeds, teachings and example.  And he gave them a way to share in the power of his own life.

What we omitted from last week’s engagement with Jesus the Good Shepherd, however, was the question of how we get to be one of his sheep.  We assumed that we all were part of his flock.  Today, however, it might be good to take on that question directly.  If we agree that Jesus’ command to love one another as he loved us is the summary of what it means to live according to his teaching and example, then it is also obvious that we cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus to any meaningful extent if that is not what we are pursuing in our lives.  We have used that word, too: follower of Jesus.  It is the same as disciple or student or apprentice.  The question for today is: how do we follow Jesus?  How do we become his disciple?  I am not going to consider a different question, namely: is there any way to be a Christian without being a disciple or a follower of Jesus?  There are some who think that all you need to be saved is some kind of inner faith in Christ that may never be translated into action or life.  Maybe there is a chance that that is true.  But it hardly seems probable to me that Jesus would have done all he did in order to give people with no interest in being like him an opportunity to be saved by him for a life of which loyalty to him is the main content.  But I digress.  My intention today is to show how one can become a disciple of Jesus.  And actually it is very easy to understand, if not always easy to do.

If Jesus has told us by word and deed how his followers are to live, then the first thing a  potential follower of Jesus would want to do is examine what Jesus taught and how he lived and to see if it makes sense.  Those who have done this and then decided they were signing on to Jesus’ way of living and thinking have come to the conclusion that Jesus’ way is the only one that really makes sense out of this world and this life.  They have been overwhelmed by the beauty of the truth of what he said and the glory of who he was.  There are alternatives to Jesus’ teaching in our world, of course.  But those who have decided to follow Jesus believe that none is adequate in comparison with his.  Remember what our old friend Dallas Willard said about the four basic world view questions?  Jesus has specific answer to the questions that everyone needs to ask.  The first question is: What is real? What is reality?  Jesus’ answer is: God and His Kingdom.  The second question is: Who is really well-off?  Jesus’ answer is: anyone who is alive in the kingdom of God.  That is to say, anyone who lives in that interactive life of fellowship with God which Jesus came to manifest to us and secure for us.  The third question is this: Who is a really good person?  Jesus teaches us and shows us the answer: the person who is pervaded by the same love that sent the Son into the world, the love that rules in the Kingdom of God.  The good person is filled with love for God and then that love overflows into a love of neighbor.  And finally, the last of the basic world view questions: How do you become a really good person?  And Jesus responds that we are to place our confidence in him and become his apprentices in Kingdom living. 

So when Jesus says in our Gospel this morning that he is giving us a new commandment, the mandate to mutual love, he is saying that his community of followers is being asked to manifest the life of the Kingdom of God in this world.  In this way his community will live into reality, it will be filled with those who are really well-off, who are really good persons. 

The way they are to do this is by following him in faith.  Faith is not something you have which takes the place of discipleship—it is the way you live as a disciple: because you have come to believe in Jesus, to trust him, now you can follow him with confidence.  So, then, how do we do it?  First, we look and listen and think.  And Second, we pray.  Or maybe it is the other way around or maybe we do them all together.  But there are two phases which correspond to the two things we said last week about Jesus being our Good Shepherd.  First, he taught us the good life by word and example; second he made his own life available to us to that we could live that good life. 

So then, part one: look and listen and think.  This is just another way of saying that if one wants to be Jesus’ student—which is the meaning of disciple—then one has to study.  Our text book is the New Testament.  There we have the records of what he said and taught and did.  This is the subject matter that we have to master.  How can we live like Jesus if we have not thought deeply or studied extensively about what he said?  We study not only what he said but we also look at how he lived.  What we are aiming at is a way to think and live and be like him.  This is not how modern students study their subjects.  Most modern students don’t care to imitate the lives of their teachers, they only want to learn the material the teachers present.  But it doesn’t work that way for us.  Jesus was the teacher par excellence.  He was the smartest man who ever lived.  He knew the hearts of men and women and he knew the heart of God.  And he offered his life and teaching to us so that we could understand how to live in a way that was true to ourselves and to God. 

So we have to think and study and learn.  That is bad news for those who don’t like that kind of thing.  But there is no hope for it.  On the other hand you don’t have to be what the world thinks of as smart to do it.  Learning Jesus is not like learning calculus.  Some people just cannot understand calculus no matter how long they try.  No, learning Jesus is more like learning how to be healthy. (My favorite list of healthy rules for eating, for example, comes from Michael Pollan: “Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly vegetables.”)  You may not want to do what you need to do in order to be healthy, but it is not really hard to learn the secrets.  Of course, it is also going to take some time.  No student who ever lived was able to master an important field of study over night.  Nor can we who are students of Jesus.  In fact, it is going to take considerably longer than most courses of study because there are some things we may not comprehend until we have been Jesus’ disciples for most of a life time—and even then we may not have it perfectly. 

There are also some parts of our training in discipleship that we cannot do by ourselves.  One of the ways we learn Jesus is to be with other disciples—both the old hands and the newbies—because what we are learning is not just a body of material, but a way of life.  What we are learning is a way of living—on our own and with others.  So we need time to spend alone with our Bibles but also time to spend in conversation with other students of Jesus.  We need the help of other people to see how Jesus’ teaching actually works in the lives of those who take it seriously.  Then, the proof that we are actually mastering our material is found in our interactions with others—both students and non-students of Jesus.  That is where the love that summarizes all we are learning is to be put into practice.  When we can actually love people like Jesus loved them, then we are starting to learn our lessons.

What I see, after having been at this now myself for quite a while, both as a Christian and as a priest, is that many people who theoretically might like to be disciples of Jesus don’t want to take the time.  They don’t want to spend time in private study and they don’t want to spend time in group work.  They might be at church a couple of times a month—the equivalent of a student going to class on occasion—but don’t want to spend their private hours reading or going to small group discussions.  The problem with this approach to Christian living is that it just doesn’t work.  You never get any better at it with time; you are not really serious.  Life is too complicated and difficult for that approach to work.  There is no discipleship without spending serious time at it.  Of course, it doesn’t take the same kind of time to be a serious disciple as it might take to be a teacher of disciples.  I cannot specify how much time is needed—only that without doing what it takes, Jesus’ teaching never makes it deep enough into us to really affect our hearts and minds.  That is a serious issue in modern Christianity—we are not thinking as Christians in many of our church discussions and disputes, because we are not spending the time we need really to learn Christ.

First, then: learning.  We need to take the time we need for it.  Second, prayer.  The other half of the discipleship issue is learning to share in Jesus’ own life.  We don’t have the internal resources to be true disciples, no matter how much time we spend in thinking and learning.  We need to share in Jesus’ own life.  It is his very own life which he imparts to us through prayer and worship and sacraments.  Learning to pray is a challenge to most people.  There are different kinds of prayer.  Some praying we do in private, other praying we do in public.  Some we do in words and other takes place without them.  Sometimes we are strongly moved emotionally and at other times hardly feel anything.  The main idea of praying, though, is that God, who is a Person, can relate to us personally and we can know his presence in a way that is similar to the way in which we relate to other people.  If we are willing to take the time and find the conditions, we can learn to pray. 

We can, for example, go to a private place and in solitude remind ourselves that God is everywhere and so he is present with us.  We can remind ourselves that Jesus’ presence is made available to us by the work of the Holy Spirit.  So, reminding ourselves of this, we can simply dwell in God’s presence and seek to know him—and we will find him.  Generally, however, we become aware of God’s presence as we read Scripture.  Jesus makes himself known particularly to us as we meditate on his words.  So the learning that we need to do and the praying we need to do come together as we prayerfully read the record of his words and deeds.  What happens to us in our praying is that our hearts are changed—gradually, over time, we are refocused internally towards the will of God, towards the commandment of Jesus to love as he loved.  We pray for and about everything in our world, everything that concerns us, and as we pray over them—that is, talk with God about them—we are changed towards God’s own side with regard to them.  Is there a person you cannot love?  Pray for him or her, daily, seeking God’s will, until he changes your heart and you can see how to love as Jesus loves. 

But our personal praying will be weak without the discipline of regular corporate worship.  That is why we still keep at this institutional, corporate life of worship and prayer which is the Church, in a day when many are suspicious of so-called “organized religion.”  Our own personal relationship with Jesus springs from the one relationship we all have with him in his Body the Church, which is nurtured sacramentally and through corporate prayer and praise and teaching.  Our relationship with Jesus is personal, but it is not individual in the sense of being different than anothers’ relationship with him.  We are all one in Christ and share his Sonship with the Father.  We are baptized into this life and it is nurtured in us by the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  If we are serious about our discipleship, we shall be serious about our meeting with the Body of Christ every Lord’s day for worship and communion.  Our own personal relationships with God cannot survive without it. 

The other part of praying that is an important bridge between the purely personal and corporate, is the Daily Office, said with others or alone.  This helps us learn a language of prayer, the church’s prayer, which will become rooted in us over time, until the rhythms of the scriptures and the seasons of the church and the cadences of the great historic prayers will become second nature to us.  Part of the difficulty of learning to pray is having an adequate language for it.  This is what we learn in the Office and in the Mass.  This is why we have a liturgy in the Church instead of coming every week and having the priest make up his own prayers.  The prayer of the Church is already going on and has been for nearly 2000 years.  Newcomers to the life of prayer come to be immersed in what is already there and learn to make it their own.  Again, this is going to take some time.  But it is OK, we have the time.  We are learners, disciples, apprentices—we all have only one Master.  He will never give up on us, unless we give up on him. 

So I can summarize my entire sermon today in only two words: study and pray.  That is how a person becomes a disciple, a sheep of Christ’s own pasture, a follower of Jesus.  Of course, as I mentioned, both are to be put into practice.  The life we are learning by study and prayer is meant to be lived.  The quality of our learning and praying is seen is how we actually love each other.  So the unlovely neighbor, the difficult aunt, the cranky fellow-parishioner, the self-important doctor, the fussy third-grade teacher, the unfriendly cop, the grumpy store-manager, the unfriendly check-out clerk, the arrogant rich person, the officious teller at the bank, as well as the illegal alien, the Muslim who lives nearby, and the new black family in town—all of these are people to be loved.  If we have a hard time of it, then it is back to more study and prayer to see what we have missed, until we get it right—more practice until loving is second nature.  Very few of us have ever come to the absolute limit of our capacity to love.  The absolute limit is what we anticipate in the age to come.  Right now, however, there is a lot we can do.  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”