5th Sunday after Pentecost 2014a
July 13, 2014
“The Four ‘Ds’ of Discipleship: Diminishment” July 13, 2014
A
man walks into a church one day and kneels down to pray. "Lord," he
says, "I’ve made mistakes, but I’m determined to change. If you let me win
the lottery, I promise to be a good servant and never bother you again."
Nothing
happens. So the next week the man tries again. He goes back to the church and
he prays, "Please, God, let me win the lottery, and I’ll come to church
every week."
Again:
nothing happens. So the man decides to try one last time. "Lord," he
prays, "why haven’t I won the lottery? Have you abandoned me?"
Suddenly
a deep voice booms down from above. "My son, I have not abandoned you, but
at least meet me halfway—buy a ticket!"
So
often as Christians, people want to win the lottery without buying a ticket;
they want the wonderful life with Christ that we see in the Bible and that we
see in people who live saintly lives – they WANT that… but they’re not willing
to take the steps necessary to be all that they can be in Christ.
Christians
who try to follow Christ without walking the path are called believers.
Now,
being a believer is a good thing. To
believe shows that we have faith, and it is faith that justifies us before God.
But make no mistake: Jesus wants us to move beyond mere belief and live as
disciples. In the New Testament, even
Satan BELIEVES that Jesus is God… but he doesn’t follow him. In Matthew
28, Jesus doesn’t command us to go make “believers”; he commands us to
make “disciples”. And what he wants us
to be, too: disciples.
So…
how do we do that? What is the first step in being a disciple? Well, we see the first step in our Gospel
reading today. Jesus is walking along
the seashore in Galilee, and he sees the men he wants to be his first
disciples: Simon and Andrew, a couple of fishermen caught up in their normal
day-to-day lives. And what are the first
words that Jesus uses to call them into discipleship? “Follow me…”
From
the very beginning, being a disciple requires submission to God over our
self. Discipleship is diminishing the
importance of our will relative to the will of God. (Let me repeat that: the first step in becoming a disciple of
Christ is to diminish our will relative to the will of God.)
In
Greek this is called ‘kenosis.’ It means, literally, emptying the self. If we are going to let the will of God fill
us and have dominion over us, we need to empty out our will to make room for
His will. This is how we follow Christ
His way, not our way.
It’s
always been hard for people to put God’s will first. In the Old Testament we see this in
Jonah. “Go east to Nineveh and give the
people there my message” God tells Jonah, “Go east.” And what does
Jonah do? God says to go east,
Jonah hops on the first ship he can find going west! He winds up in the belly of a big fish until
he submits to God’s will instead of following his own will.
Now
here’s why this first step of discipleship is such a stumbling block to so many
Christians. Diminishing the self means
letting go of the steering wheel
of your life and letting God drive.
Frankly, a lot of Christians would rather have God riding shot gun;
sitting next to them in the passenger seat while they continue to drive the car
of their lives. They respond to the call
to discipleship in one of two ways: they pretend that it doesn’t apply to them
and they ignore it. They’re like workers in the factory or the office – when
the boss steps out at 4 o’clock and calls out “I need a volunteer to stay late
tonight”, suddenly everyone looks busy… they act like they didn’t hear. So often Christians ignore the call, or if
they do respond they settle for the Readers Digest version. You remember Readers Digest where they take books
and they condense them down – a 300 page novel gets condensed into 70
pages. A lot of people try to condense
the path of discipleship, too. They try
to reduce it into attending a class or attending a seminar or reading a book…
instead of committing to a daily continuous process of becoming what God wants
them to be. But there can be no shortcuts in following Christ.
When
Jesus approached Simon and Andrew in our Gospel reading, notice that he didn’t
say, “Hey! Where are you guys
heading? Do you mind if I come
along?” No, he said, “If you want to be
my disciple: I lead, you follow. FOLLOW
ME…” he says. The first step of
discipleship is diminishing our will and making God’s will more important than
our will.
This
is a stumbling block to a lot of Christians.
It is so much easier to just believe and keep Jesus at arm’s
length. Being just a believer lets
people continue to live how they want to live and still gives them a place to
go on Christmas Eve. As merely believers
they can keep on focusing on their own priorities in their lives. If we’re merely believers, it becomes easy
for us to reduce the Word of God to a buffet meal: in a buffet if we don’t
enjoy the beets or the salad we can just skip over that and go right to the
shrimp cocktail or the desserts. If the church they’re attending doesn’t simply
validate them as they want to be, then they pick up and move to another church
that does validate them; or they can find a pastor who tells them what they
want to hear… and conveniently doesn’t tell them what God says they need to
hear.
So
many Christians seek to have God conform to them, instead of conforming
themselves to God. This first step of
diminishment is a hard step to take.
But
if we are willing to submit to the will of Christ, then something wonderful
happens. From the very beginning of our
discipleship journey we experience the fruits of discipleship. Two of those fruits are power and joy.
Philippians 2:13 tells us “…for God is at work in you, both
to will and to work for his good pleasure.”
When we surrender our will to Christ, God is able to work in us
and through us; and we receive His power in us.
We say, “Lord, I am going to stop
doing things as I want to do them and I’m going to start living as you want me
to live. I’m going to follow you and try
to imitate you every hour of every day.
I am going to stop living for me… and I am going to start living for
you.” When we make that kind
of commitment to God: we suddenly experience power in our lives.
God’s
power makes us stop saying ‘Lord, I can’t
stop doing this thing in my life’. When
we experience God’s power… we can.
Before we diminish ourselves in discipleship we say ‘Lord, I can’t do what you want me to.
I don’t have the energy or the time; I’m too uncomfortable doing those
things… I just can’t!’ When we
experience God’s power… we can. Before
we diminish ourselves in discipleship we say ‘Lord, I can’t understand. These
things have happened … some of those things in the Bible… I can’t understand, Lord, I just can’t!’ But when we experience God’s power,
suddenly we begin to understand; and what we can’t understand – we find the
faith to accept.
The
power to live as God wanted them to and to understand were exactly what Simon and
Andrew and James and John wanted in our Gospel reading today. Jesus didn’t just give them what they wanted,
he called them into a journey of discipleship. “Follow me…” he said, and
they followed. The fruits of
discipleship don’t come to us unless we are willing to diminish ourselves and
follow the path of discipleship. You
want to win the lottery jackpot? Well,
first you have to buy a ticket…
One of the fruits of discipleship is God’s power. And another is joy.
I think so often churches have poo-poo’d
joy in following Christ. Almost every
parent has told their kids in the pews at some point, “Stop laughing! This is church!” And when we learn to come forward to receive
Holy Communion, the body and blood of Christ, how many of us have ever had the pastor
say to us, “Remember to smile!” You’re
coming forward and holding out your hands to receive as a free gift of grace
forgiveness for every sin you’ve ever done and the renewed promise of eternal
life… when you come forward God Himself
affirms to you that you are going to live forever: but don’t you dare be happy
about it!
We
delude ourselves into thinking that following Christ is supposed to be somber
and joyless. I tell you it is just the
opposite! In John 10:10 Jesus tells us, “I came that you may have life,
and that more abundantly.” Joy
is part of the abundant life that we experience in discipleship. Think about this and tell me if this isn’t
true. The moments in our lives when joy is hardest to find, aren’t those the moments when we were living in our own
will and not Jesus will? When we submit
ourselves to Christ in discipleship... we find a joy that passes our human
understanding.
Tony
Campolo speaks about a friend of his who is really living in the joy of
discipleship; a man named Brook. Little
things that would really bug most people don’t seem to bother Brook nearly as
much; he seems to have the power to just laugh them off.
Tony
says that he and Brook drove over to the beach in New Jersey one day just for
fun. And as they were walking back to
the car, and Brook realized that he’d lost his wallet. Now, Tony says that if he lost HIS wallet: he
would just go to pieces. Wallet,
Driver’s License, credit cards: he says he would be wailing and gnashing his
teeth. But his friend Brook reacted
differently. He looked over at Tony with
a big smile and he said, “Hey, guess what!
I lost my wallet!” Ha! Ha! Ha!
They
got in the car to drive home, and as they drove they tuned in a disk jockey for
a New York radio station; the disc jockey was inserting little tidbits in
between the music. And they heard him
say, “Do you know friends that 83 % of car owners in America don’t know their
own license plate numbers?” Brook said,
“Well, I don’t know mine!”, and he laughed.
As
they drove home, they decided to stop in a little town called Egg Harbor. They stopped in Egg Harbor because Brook had
a garden, and in Egg Harbor you could buy chicken manure for 50 cents a
bushel. He brought two bushels; along
with four canoe paddles… because Brook liked to go canoeing. So they filled the trunk with chicken manure
and canoe paddles and they got back in the car and started driving again.
They
hadn’t gone too far when all of a sudden a police car pulled in behind them and
turned on its lights and pulled them over.
The cop got out and walked up alongside Brook’s car. Brook rolled down the window… looks at the
cop… and bursts out laughing. Now folks,
when a cop has just pulled you over for
speeding, when the cop is standing alongside your car: beg for mercy… plead for
forgiveness… grovel in the dirt before him:
but don’t laugh at the cop!
The
cop said, “What’s so funny?” Brook said,
“You are NOT going to believe this!
You’re going to ask me for my driver’s license and registration card, right?” The cop said, “Right.” Brook said, “I lost them!” And he laughed even harder. The cop… did not laugh. With a stone face he looked down at Brook and
he said, “Sir, you have no driver’s license, no registration. I don’t even know if this is your car. Can you tell me the license plate number of
your vehicle?” And Brook started
laughing even harder. He said, “Officer,
do you realize that 83 % of car owners in America don’t know their own license
plate numbers?” And at that, even Tony
Campolo started laughing with tears rolling down his cheeks.
That’s
all the cop needed. Tony says that’s how
it came to pass that he, an ordained minister, found himself spread eagled on
the car while the cop frisked him and frisked his friend Brook. Then he searched inside the car and he said,
“You’re clean. What’s in the trunk?” Now
Tony and Brook almost fell on the ground, they were laughing so hard. The cop said, “What’s so funny?” And Brook
said, “You are not going to believe this!”
The cop said, “What aren’t I going to believe?” Brook said, “What’s in the trunk.” The cop said, “What’s in the trunk?” And he was laughing so hard he almost
couldn’t get the words out, but Brook said, “Chicken manure and canoe
paddles!” The cop was not smiling. And
he said, “Gimme the keys! Gimme the
keys! Gimme the keys and get back in the
car!” And Tony and Brook fell into the car they were laughing so hard, and the
cop took the keys and went around and opened the trunk; that cop… that cop never did come back. From inside the car Tony could hear him
muttering, “Oh, I don’t believe this!”
And he got in his car and Tony and Brook could hear him laughing as he
drives away.
And
as the cop drove away his friend Brook turned to Tony and said, “You know what,
I think that the Lord said, ‘That cop has had a hard day… and he needs some
joy.’”
Folks,
Romans 15:13 tells us that as
followers of Christ we will be filled with joy.
When we diminish ourselves and amplify Christ in our lives, we are
suddenly filled with a joy that passes human understanding. Joy is a fruit of discipleship.
Let’s remember that in Matthew
28 Jesus doesn’t tell us to go out and make believers: he commands us to
make disciples. And he desires for us to
move beyond being believers and become disciples ourselves. The journey of discipleship is a path… a
journey of becoming all that we can be in Christ Jesus our Lord. And the first step of that journey is to
diminish our own will, and put God’s will first. It is taking our hands off of
the steering wheel, and letting the Lord take control of our lives.
And
if we set out in faith on this discipleship journey, we will experience power,
and joy, and a depth of God’s love that will amaze us. For in following Christ, he abides with us,
and we abide with him, and with him… all things are possible. 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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