Pentecost 6 2014a
July 20, 2014
July 20, 2014
Trinity Lutheran Church
(NALC)
“The Four ‘Ds’ of
Discipleship: Discipline”
Matthew 6:7-13, 16-18
Paul Decker writes about a father who was talking with a
five-year-old friend of his daughter’s, a little girl named Elizabeth, one
day. The subject of birthdays came up,
and little Elizabeth said that her birthday was on March 30th. Decker told her that his birthday was on
March 27th. He said, “Our
birthdays are only three days apart!”
And little Elizabeth looked up at him with a very serious expression on
her face, and she said, “Yeah, but you grew a lot faster than I did!”
Which
leads us to a question I want to ask you this morning: how fast are you
growing?
Today
we continue our sermon series on “The Four ‘Ds’ of Discipleship.” In Ephesians
chapter 5 we hear that being a disciple of Christ is living in imitation of the
Lord and walking as he walked. Last
week we talked about the first step in discipleship – diminishing our will and
giving God’s will primacy in our lives. And today we tackle the second ‘D’ in
this process of following Christ. And it
is a word that has to be one of the most unpopular, most unpleasant words in
the English language. The second ‘D’ of
discipleship is… DISCIPLINE.
Too
often when we speak of discipline in following Jesus an image pops up in our
minds that is far from true. Immediately
we see some angel in a uniform with one of those ‘Smoky the bear’ hats on his
head, and we imagine we hear him screaming at us: “You want to follow Jesus!
Well, drop and give me 20 push ups! And
stop doing anything that’s fun!
Following Jesus isn’t fun!”
But the
truth is: following Jesus is full of joy.
And the discipline of discipleship is not meant to break us down, it is
meant to build us up… and yield us a blessing.
In
following Christ, there are expected behaviors… things that we must discipline
ourselves to do. That’s what we hear in
our Gospel reading this morning.
As our
reading begins, Jesus is teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. He is sitting on a rock, the hillside below
him filled with people; a great crowd.
But the crowd was just overhearing the lesson, because in Chapter 5 verses 1 and 2 it is
made perfectly clear: these teachings are aimed first and foremost at His
disciples. And it turns out that being a
disciple means that we will engage in some expected behaviors.
Verse 5: Jesus says “when you pray…” Verse
16: “when you fast…” If we study the original Greek language of
this passage we find something interesting – Jesus is speaking in the
imperative tense. These are not just
suggestions, they are commands. Being a
disciple means we WILL pray; it means that we WILL subjugate our bodies and our
appetites to Him. BEING A DISCIPLE MEANS
THAT WE WILL PRACTICE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES.
Ooooh,
there’s that nasty word again - discipline!
We hate that word discipline. It’s filled with imagery of denying the
self and doing things we may not want to.
But IF WE ARE GOING TO WALK THE WALK… WE NEED TO WORK THE WORK. Spiritual discipline requires effort. But unless
we submit and put out the effort we will not grow as disciples of Christ. We know that, yet we resist; because there is
something inside of us that wants to avoid the effort and get the results some
easier way.
Take
the way we deal with weight loss in this country. We have an epidemic of being overweight in
this country. Being overweight, we know,
can have damaging effects on our health. The formula for losing weight isn’t
rocket science… it’s really pretty basic: you decrease the fuel going into the
furnace by dieting, and increase the fuel burned in the furnace by
exercise. Diet… exercise, it isn’t
rocket science. But those two simple
steps require self-discipline and effort, and people don’t want to have to be
under discipline or put out the effort. Soooo… we invented diet aids! Pills, powders, special diets that let us eat
desserts and pizzas with fewer calories.
ANYTHING… to avoid having to discipline ourselves or put out effort to
change.
Do you
know that last year in this country, we spent over $ 40 billion on diet programs
and weight loss supplements? That’s
billion with a ‘B’! $ 40 billion is 10
times as much as the National Cancer Institutes spent last year on finding a
cure for cancer; it’s 62 times more than we spent on finding a cure for
Alzheimer’s last year. People spent that
much because they were trying to avoid diet and exercise. They wanted an easier way without pain or
effort.
Here’s
the truth about discipleship. In imitating Christ… in being a disciple… there
is no easy way. We need to discipline
our hearts and our minds and our bodies and do what he calls us to do. A champion marathon runner doesn’t prepare
for the race by sitting on the sofa watching old movies, and then on the day of
the race go out and expect to be successful.
Training to run a marathon requires training; there is no shortcut...
there is no magic pill! Neither can we
be armchair disciples. There is no such thing! IF WE ARE GOING TO WALK THE
WALK, THEN WE MUST WORK THE WORK.
We need
activities of spiritual discipline in our lives, and two of those spiritual
disciplines are prayer and engaging the Word of God.
We
engage God’s Word by reading the Bible, yes; but also by hearing God’s Word
proclaimed in preaching. The Word
sustains us and guides us and makes the reality of God known to us. The Lord wants to nourish our faith with His
Word, but if we don’t discipline ourselves to read the Scriptures or we don’t
come to church to hear the preaching: we deprive ourselves of what we need,
even though what we need is right there for us in our Bibles and our churches.
A pastor writes about taking his family for a vacation
down in Florida. They were driving
through orange country down there: that area of the state filled with orange
groves, and they decided to stop into a diner for some lunch. As they were giving their orders to the
waitress, the youngest child said that he’d like orange juice to drink. And the waitress shook her head and she said,
“I’m sorry, but the machine that dispenses our orange juice if broken. You can’t get orange juice here today.” And the father looked out the window, and
everywhere he looked there were orange trees – full of juicy, ripe
oranges. Orange juice was right there
waiting to be picked, but the staff in the restaurant didn’t want to do the
work… to get it.
If
we’re going to be disciples, we have to do the work. In our Gospel, the disciples drew near to the
Lord to experience His Word. If we are
going to be disciples, we need to discipline ourselves to do likewise.
And we
are commanded to pray. “When you pray…” Jesus says
in verse 5 of our Gospel; “when
you pray…” he says again in verse
6. We are expected to pray, not
just in church or before a meal or before we go to bed. 1st Thessalonians 15:17
tells us that we are to pray continuously.
Prayer discipline is a critical component of discipleship.
A lot
of us have worked in factories or offices or stores or hospitals. Let me ask you, what’s one of the first
things you do when you begin your shift?
Most people check in with their supervisor. They touch base with the boss and they find
out what is expected of them that day; and they make their needs known so that
the boss can meet their needs; if they think they need help to get the job done
then they ask the boss for help. Then,
they listen to their boss and hear what he or she has to say.
These
are the two parts of disciplined prayer.
We talk to our Heavenly Boss, then we listen to His response.
Now,
when we talk to God in prayer, we don’t need to use flowery phrases. So often people think that their prayers need
to sound like poems… like very LONG poems!
I want to tell you, God doesn’t care about the language structure. In Matthew
6, Jesus tells us not to pile up lots of words in our prayers. Martin Luther caught on to this. In his
writings he said, “The fewer the words,
the better the prayer.” Disciplined
prayer should be honest and direct and from the heart.
One of the best prayers I can think of
was uttered by Alan Shepherd, the astronaut.
In 1961 Shepherd became the first American to travel into space. As he sat in his tiny space capsule that
morning at Cape Canaveral, he knew that the eyes and ears of the entire world
were on him. And he felt the weight of
his duty, and he thought that he was all alone… he didn’t realize that his
radio microphone was on live, so he prayed a prayer directly from his heart.
“Oh, God, please don’t let me [mess] up.”
Only… he didn’t say “mess up”, he said something else (he was a Navy
officer, after all).
But it was a prayer from the
heart, direct and real and filled with sincerity. God our Father in Heaven wants us to talk
with him that way. That’s what disciples
do. Maybe with flowery poetic phrases,
maybe with words that reflect our brokenness apart from Him. The first part of prayer discipline is to
talk to God; to give thanks and to make our needs known.
Frankly, the second part of
discipleship prayer is the hard part.
The second part of prayer is listening… it is sitting still and letting
God respond to us. One of the hardest
things we can do in the modern age is turn off our cell phone or our computer
or our TV: and focus our minds in discipline to hear God’s voice. But listening
is an important part of communication.
When Franklin Delano Roosevelt
was president, one of the things he dreaded the most were the long receiving
lines at White House dinners. Hundreds
of people would line up to shake his hand, and he complained that no one really
ever paid any attention to what he said; they weren’t listening, just going
through the motions. One evening he
conducted a private experiment. To each
person who passed down the line and shook his hand FDR murmured, “I murdered my grandmother this morning.” And the guests all smiled as if they hadn’t
heard; they all said something like “Marvelous! Keep up the good work, Mr. President!” Or, “It’s an honor to meet you!” It wasn’t until the last person in line that
someone actually listened to what he said.
It was the ambassador from Bolivia, and as he shook Roosevelt’s hand the
president mumbled, “I murdered my
grandmother this morning.” And the
ambassador leaned in and whispered, “Well,
I’m sure that she had it coming, sir!”
So often Christians treat prayer
like a receiving line; a quick formality where we get the last word… without
giving The Boss a chance to get a word in edgewise. But the prayer discipline of discipleship
calls for a dialog: speaking and then listening… following the model of prayer
that Jesus showed us as he so often went off into the wilderness to talk and
listen to His Father in Heaven. If we are to be disciples… if we are to be
imitators of Christ… we must spiritually discipline ourselves to pray likewise.
Discipline isn’t easy for us. It
can be a lot of work. But if we practice
spiritual discipline, then we find something wonderful: a closer, more intimate relationship with our
Savior that’s based not on our desires… but in pleasing God.
Vince
D’achiolli writes about getting a new puppy at his house: a tiny little golden
retriever they named Katie. Katie seemed
to adapt well with the entire family, but she really latched unto Vince most of
all. She would follow him everywhere,
and it seemed like her favorite thing in the world was being near him. One morning Vince was the first one awake,
and he went downstairs to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee. He was standing in the back door, sipping his
coffee and praying to God as he looked out on the back yard, when all of a
sudden he felt a warm pressure on his foot.
He looked down: there was Katie; she’d draped her little puppy body over
his slipper, and she just laid there looking up at him with her big puppy eyes…
just so content to be with the one she wanted to be with more than anyone
else. And Vince says that he heard that
still small voice speak. It asked, “Vince, how does that feel?” And Vince said, “It feels wonderful, Lord! It’s wonderful to know that she wants to be
near me so much.” And the voice
whispered again. “Vince, that doesn’t even come close… to how I feel… when you
draw near to me.”
In Holy
Baptism we are made children of God, and our Father in Heaven loves us, and
wants us to be close to him. Do we want
to please the Lord? Then let us start by
disciplining ourselves: by studying His Word, by drawing near to Him in
frequent prayer, and by disciplining our bodies and our lives so that nothing
distracts us from Him; and nothing interferes with us experiencing the fullness
of His presence with us.
This is
what God desires for us… AMEN
The Reverend M. A.
Greenauer 2014
Permission is granted to
reproduce this work in whole or in part if the glory for its content is given
to the Lord
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