Discipleship Is Everything.

Matthew 4:12-23

January 26 MMXX

I.

Discipleship is everything.  

This has been my conviction since, as a teenager, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, The Cost of Discipleship.  Nothing that I have learned or experienced in the many years since then has shaken this perspective for me.

  

Indeed, the bottom line for me in evaluating any faith practice or opinion is: “Does it help me follow Jesus?”  That is, does it assist me in turning my life around and actually living as Jesus shows us and commands us how to live?  Does it make me more compassionate, generous, humble, forgiving, peaceful, wise, and joyful?  Does it help me to give up my old self and live into the New Self, which is Christ in me?  Does it move me from ego to Essence? 

I am not going to claim that I have been wildly successful at this.  Too often my discipleship has been aspirational or even theoretical.  Too often I am simply a hypocrite, as I continue to do all kinds of things on a daily basis that cannot be construed as following Jesus, even if I set the bar really low.  The best I can suggest is that such failures at least keep me engaged with the humility that is a component of discipleship.

At the same time, I do at least think that everything we do as a church, everything we do as humans, is to be an expression of our discipleship of Jesus Christ.  Worship, prayer, meditation, sacraments, study, work, play, relationships, our political views and commitments… driving on the Parkway… everything.  

I am even of the opinion that there is both an urgency and a universalism to discipleship.  The urgency is that if humans don’t start following Jesus and his life of simplicity, humility, wonder, respect, gentleness, forgiveness — even his voluntary poverty — humanity is doomed.  The ability of the planet to sustain human life in the ways we have become accustomed to is being seriously threatened because people behave in ways that are the exact opposite of following Jesus.  We follow instead the lust, greed, and gluttony which are the dark engines of our economy, and they are killing us.  

And the universality is that following Jesus is something that everyone can do, no matter who you are or even what your religion is.  At the end of this gospel, the Lord, after his resurrection, tells his disciples what to go and do.  Does he say, “Go and get people to join this new religion I am starting called Christianity”?  Does he say, “Go and get people to make a verbal commitment to me as their personal Lord and Savior”?  Does he say, “Go and conquer the world in my name and force people to adhere to the moral rules of your particular nation”?  

No.  He says, “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  He talks about discipleship.  He says to teach people all that he has commanded them, which is to say, what he has said and done in the previous 28 chapters, centering on the Sermon on the Mount and fulfilled in his death and resurrection.

II

The first thing Jesus says here, the words that summarize his message and which will characterize his whole ministry, Jesus’ veritable “mission statement,” is: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” 

Discipleship starts with repentance, which is a change in our way of thinking and acting in recognition of the nearness of what the Lord calls “the Kingdom of Heaven.”  The Kingdom of Heaven is always present within us and among us in our world, but it is usually invisible to us because our minds are clouded by the egocentricity of sin. 

In other words, we have to realize that there is something wrong with the world as we know it.  Jesus wants us to see that this world we think we know, the world we have always experienced, the world in which we have always existed, is just not right.  It is not true.  It is not the way it is supposed to be.  We are not the way we are supposed to be.

Therefore, step one of discipleship is to wake up, uncloud our mind, and see what is truly there before us.  We have to come to see, think, and act differently.  Repentance means awakening to the possibility that it doesn’t have to be this way, and becoming open to another way to see, think, and live called the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus’ whole ministry is to get us to see and participate in this reality.  He will proceed in the Sermon on the Mount in the next chapter to lay out the kind of values and behavior that prevail in this other Kingdom.  And in his subsequent ministry he will demonstrate, describe, embody, and finally enact this new and different way of living that is selfless, open, forgiving, accepting, sharing, and joyful, in union with God and all things.

If we live this way, according to his teachings and commandments, we will come to see and think differently.  So our job as disciples is repentance in the sense of living together according to this alternative values and practices.    

III.

The second characteristic of discipleship is what we call evangelism: communicating the good news to others.  Jesus is barely a free agent for 5 minutes before he starts adding people to his work.  Adding people is an essential part of discipleship. 

Jesus’ ministry requires followers.  He does not and apparently cannot do it alone.  Jesus is not a solitary itinerant preacher and healer; he gathers around him from day one a group of disciples.  Their presence is not incidental but essential.  Discipleship is a group activity.  His mission is from the outset about growing a community.

This community of those who follow him is itself open and welcoming.  Jesus is famous for his acceptance of all kinds of people, especially the rejects and the losers, the sick and the “sinners.”  Here he starts with four lowly workers, fishers hauling a meager living from the lake, and calls on them to follow him.

When he says these fishers will by following him come to “fish for people,” he means that those whom he gathers will in turn gather others.  Part of following him is sharing the good news of this other, wonderful, alternative Kingdom, this different reality, which is now available.

The metaphor of “fishing for people” means the disciples of Jesus are to help transition people from one world or environment to another.  Don’t forget that the Roman Emperor claimed ownership of all such bodies of water, and fishers had to “buy” whatever they caught from him in the form of a tax.  Thus there is another subtle layer of meaning here whereby people are bought and redeemed from the oppressive regime of the Emperor up into God’s shining natural light and goodness. 

Thus “fishing for people” means waking them up from a world of darkness to one of light.  They are led to see, think, and act differently.  They move from unconsciousness to awareness, from ignorance to knowledge, from blindness to sight.  This is what Jesus will do throughout his ministry of healing.  This is indeed the point to that ministry.  Through him people move from brokenness to wholeness, from disease to health, from death to life, from alienation to inclusion, from hunger to being filled.

IV.

Which brings us to the third characteristic of discipleship in this passage, which is healing.  Verse 23 says that “Jesus went throughout Galilee…  proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”    

During his lifetime, of course, Jesus is known as a healer and exorcist.  In healing, the good news of the Kingdom gets literally embodied, that is, it is manifested in people’s physical bodies.  People become living metaphors for the Kingdom of Heaven, the alternative reality Jesus announces.

Jesus’ example is that healing is the key to evangelism, the proof of repentance, and the fruit of discipleship.  The gathering of disciples witnesses to the Kingdom by being a place — not of entertainment, not of providing social order, not of sentimental nostalgia, not even of comfort — but of healing.  It is a place where people come to find wholeness, integrity, communion, hope, and peace.  It is a place that projects the saving love of God into people’s lives and into the larger world.

Sometimes we find healing of our physical ailments.  But more often and more importantly we find healing for our deeper more comprehensive brokenness and alienation.  And such healing, when it is projected and radiated into the world, looks like justice.  Justice is what healing looks like when applied to a whole society.

V.

Discipleship is everything.  It means acquiring a new way of thinking and acting, welcoming others, and gathering in a community of healing.  Thus we follow Jesus by reflecting and expressing the different reality he announces: the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Jesus will say that discipleship means in effect dying and letting go of our old self, the self under the regime of darkness and violence, despair and death, so we can be reborn and emerge into a very different spiritual place, one of light and life, wholeness and communion, where we belong exclusively to God.  

By discipleship, we emerge into, and in a sense as, him, nourished by his Body and Blood, informed by his teachings and commandments, animated by his Spirit, who is God’s Spirit, the Spirit giving life to all that is.

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