Sermon of August 28, 2005
Presented by Rev. Chuck Ericson
Scripture lesson: Exodus 3:1-15

“The Anatomy of Discipleship”

I think most people in ministry have stories where they have been afflicted by moments of great panic. One of mine occurred when I was in seminary doing field education at the First Congregational Church of Stoughton, Massachusetts. It was after worship one Sunday, when I was out in the narthex, and a mother approached me clutching her daughter’s hand and she said, “Do you have a moment to answer my daughter’s question?” I said, “Sure,” and her daughter looked up at me and said, “What’s the difference between a disciple and an apostle?” I instantly thought, “They haven’t taught me that in seminary yet, and I kind of use them interchangeably!” So I just froze in panic and smiled and it started to come to me, at least an answer came to me, and I said, “Well, I think a disciple is somebody who follows the teachings of someone, like Jesus, and an apostle is someone who then is sent out into the world to tell others about that message.” And you know what? I was right. It just came right there at the moment, it’s one of those moments of panic but it’s also one where I guess I believed that God was with me, getting me out of that. I could have said, “I don’t know,” because I’ve used that many times in my life, but I thought she deserved an answer, and it kind of came out.

It’s true. That’s the difference, the main difference between an apostle and a disciple. A disciple is one who, in the case of Christianity, has heard Jesus’ teachings and has devoted their life to following Jesus and Jesus’ teachings. It comes from the same root word as “discipline”: you discipline yourself to follow the teachings of Jesus. We know there were 12 disciples who followed Jesus closely, there was a large group of 70 and in some sense all who were trying to follow Jesus might be considered disciples. Then a few of them, like Paul and some of the original 12 disciples, eventually went out into the world and spread Christ’s message and began churches and spread the good news as apostles sent out into the world. 

Well, disciple and apostle are both words that are very common in the Christian scriptures and the New Testament. We don’t really encounter them in the Old Testament, at least in the sense that we see Prophet in the Old Testament and Patriarch and Matriarch and words like those, but being a disciple is something that goes way back. Discipleship is about following, before Jesus, following God, following God’s spirit, and even though the word isn’t that prevalent, people like Moses and others were indeed disciples, followers of God who disciplined themselves to follow in God’s way. In this story this morning, of Moses at Mount Horeb seeing the burning bush, we have a wonderful picture of how discipleship develops. So I’m calling it “Anatomy of Discipleship” and I want to take a look for a few moments at how the call to discipleship emerges and what it means.

The call to discipleship begins by being alert: you have to be in a state of readiness, I guess, a state of being alert and willing to notice things around you. That’s how it starts for Moses. Now it says he was tending his flock. I have a feeling that some people think that shepherds are kind of a slow, lazy bunch that stand there with the shepherd’s crook and just hang out while the sheep are feeding. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that’s how I imagine that’s how some people think. By the way, I’m not going to go too far into this because (it wasn’t a panic moment) but there was a moment in my church in Fairfield when I was before I came here, where somebody came up to me once and said, “Don’t ever preach about shepherds. Nobody knows about shepherds anymore. It doesn’t connect with us, don’t preach about shepherds.” So I’m not going very far with this. But careful study has revealed to me that indeed shepherds are quite the opposite of slow, lazy folk. They’re very alert, very perceptive people. A shepherd’s job is not just to stand there, but to be on the lookout. To be looking ahead to where the next pasture might be, when this one is done, when there’s nothing left to feed on. To be looking for the stream where the sheep can water. To be watching for predators like wolves and others that might be coming in to kill the sheep or even other shepherds coming to steal the sheep, to be looking for a place where they can stay the night when the night grows dark. Shepherds had to be very perceptive if they were good shepherds, looking for those places where their sheep would be safe and well fed. So it was a very active job. 

So Moses as a shepherd, tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro and Midian, must have been a very alert person. In fact, his alertness comes into play when he’s going along by Mount Horeb and sees a bush burning, but it’s not being consumed. Imagine, there might even have been other people who went by there and didn’t see it. You know, sometimes we’re not all that alert, you know how people walk along with their head down? I do that sometimes. You’re not looking, you don’t see things, you’re just sort of unalert, walking, going to the car or something. I was driving in after lunch one day this week into the parking lot and somebody was coming out of the town hall and I was ready to wave but they were walking like this (head bowed down). I was trying to be friendly but they were just looking down. I wonder how many people like that might have gone by this bush that was burning but wasn’t being consumed before Moses? Well it doesn’t matter. Moses did see it. Moses was alert and he saw, he noticed things around him. And he saw the burning bush and he said, “I must turn aside and see this thing, this bush that is burning but not being consumed.” So it wasn’t just being alert, it was stopping and taking it in and that was the beginning of discipleship: being alert to some sign that was going to be inviting him in to following God.

I think for us, we can do well to be more alert in our lives too and not walk around like that so much. I know that I do it too sometimes, but to be really more alert and notice the things around us that can catch our attention and maybe, maybe, lead us to an encounter with God. I believe that can happen. I believe that does happen. I believe that sometimes we can see something like a shoot of lightning down from the sky or the sound of thunder or a star shooting in the midnight sky or even something like deer. We had deer in our backyard this week. It’s not that uncommon around here but it doesn’t happen to us too often so it was kind of fun to look out and see two deer feeding in our backyard. Maybe something that we’re alert to that catches our attention, that’s out of the ordinary, could be a sign to stop and take a moment, to see if it might be a moment that would awaken us to something that God is trying to say or something God is trying to call us to do. It doesn’t have to be about stars and lightning and thunder and deer and all. What God was wanting to say to Moses didn’t have anything to do with putting a fire out or a bush burning or anything like that, it had to do with just getting his attention. So maybe when something out of the ordinary catches our attention and we’re alert to it, maybe it’s a good moment to stop and pray or open your spirit to God. To see if there is something at that moment that God might be wanting to say to you or you might have wanted God to speak to you in some way, and if that’s the moment when it might come, to just be quiet and try to take it in. 

This morning after the first service one of the worshippers said to me that she had been called to go help someone but declined because her daughter said, “I don’t think you should do that.” It turned out that someone else called her to go do something to help in another situation an hour later and she did go and she realized that was the place that she needed to be. She said the difference was listening, being alert to her daughter’s encouragement to not go one place but go the other, and finding out that was exactly where God needed her to help someone at that time. This may be hard to believe, but maybe your children may be the ones, if you’re alert to them, who guide you in the right direction sometimes. Wonderful story, just about being alert and following something, an unusual sight or an unusual sound or an unusual command. 

Well after that moment, after trying to be alert to something, the second thing to realize is discipleship is about being sent out into mission, being engaged in mission. Moses was called by God to do something. Up until that moment I imagine Moses was somewhat observant of Judaism, of the religion of the Israelites at that time. He says his father-in-law, Jethro, was a priest, so he probably attended services on the Sabbath, maybe observed the high holy days and so forth, but it was more than just doing those things that were expected. Now he’s being called to do something big, to deliver the people out of slavery in Egypt, to confront Pharaoh and take them back to the Promised Land, to have a mission, a task, a major job to do. So there’s a difference we see in discipleship from a point where you’re just believing and sort of passively going along with things and agreeing with things, to actually actively doing something, being sent on some kind of a mission, knowing that your life’s work involves sometimes doing something incredibly important for God. 

It doesn’t have to be confronting the king, but still nevertheless in your realm, doing something important that makes a difference somewhere, going from just mere believing, mere thinking that Jesus’ teachings are good, that we should have peace, that there should be justice in the world, to actually rising up and doing something that Jesus called us to do: making peace somewhere, seeing that justice happens somewhere. 

The deacons have a subcommittee called “Engaging Membership” and we’re going to meet after church today at the same time as the Golf Committee. I’m going to try to get to that Deacons’ meeting also. (I’m so excited about this golf tournament.) But, the Deacons’ Engaging Membership Committee is about how do we engage all the members of our church or as many as possible in really being active in the mission of Christ’s church? Now this is not for you, you’re here. But a lot of it is how do we connect with people who are really on the periphery of the church, who may have been active at one time but they’re not so much now. How do we help them to be re-energized as active disciples with a sense of mission in their lives than just people who are on the periphery and just say, “I’m a member of the church”?

You know those words in our unison reading this morning that Paul wrote from Romans begin, “I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” That’s a powerful demand: to present your body, the active part of you that does things, as a living sacrifice, “To give up something of your time and your energy and your strength, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Change the way you are. Don’t just be passive, be active, be engaged in doing something.

So the Engaging Membership Committee is tasked with trying to help people feel alive again in the church. And it’s hard. Sometimes I think the people who are on the periphery of the church are those that we speak about when we read the Statement of Faith and it says that God seeks to help us find a way out of aimlessness and sin. We all have our definitions of sin but I think a big problem is aimlessness. Some people get aimless. They drift. They get on the periphery. That’s not something to criticize, that’s something to try to help with. How do you help someone out of aimlessness into activity, into meaningful, soul-filling, enriching activity? So that’s the second part of discipleship: realizing it’s something active and passionate, not something passive and just about believing a few things.

The last part about discipleship I think is that it is supported by a promise. When Moses said, “How am I going to do this? How am I going to go to these people and say, ‘I’m going to take you out of Egypt .’ How am I going to go to Pharaoh and say, ‘Let my people go’?” God says, “But I will be with you. But I will be with you.” The words that make a difference for Moses between saying, “Nope, I think I’ll just stay here and guard the sheep” to saying, “OK, I’ll do this for you.” I think the difference is when God says to Moses, “But I will be with you.” Those words echo again and again in our faith. 

This morning as I was coming back from getting my coffee at the Mobil station I was listening to the Lutheran church service and the preacher was talking about the phrase, “I will be with you.” So it was on there, too. I already had my sermon done. I didn’t copy that one, OK? But you know in the Christmas story when the angel comes to Joseph in a dream and is giving him strength to stay with Mary and have this baby who will be Jesus he says, “Remember the verse, ‘Behold a virgin will conceive and bear a son and his name will be called Emmanuel – God with us”. The Christmas story is about God being with us and Jesus. At the end of Jesus’s ministry, after the resurrection, he is also on a mountain and he says to his disciples, the last thing in Matthew, “Lo I will be with you to the close of the age.” Those words echo over and over again in our faith and they are our strength, they are the strength we have to do what God calls us to do even when it’s terribly risky and terribly dangerous sometimes.

The good news today is that being an active disciple, being a real disciple – taking discipleship as part of your life, as a transforming part of your life – is something incredibly wonderful, joyful, something filling and satisfying. Oh, it’s frustrating sometimes. You get angry about it sometimes. “Why did you call me to do this, God?” It can get in the way of your friendships sometimes, even family, but it also is, I think, it’s the greatest source of joy and fulfillment in life there is. Everybody has to pick their own call from God. Is God calling you, as Julia would like you to think, to be a teacher in Sunday school once in a while for the workshop rotation model? (This really isn’t going to be a commercial but I just felt I had to add that one in there). Does God call you sometimes to be active in mission, either to sit on our Board of Missions or be involved in coordinating the food for the food pantry or help with the shelter or the clothing bank or something else that goes on that we can get involved in we have to give up something of yourself and get up and be passionate and do something? Is it answering the call in the middle of the day and going one direction instead of the other as one of our church members this morning told me about? It doesn’t have even to do necessarily with something inside the church. It’s in your life, being a disciple. And when it feels risky and dangerous sometimes, remember the words that God spoke to Moses: “I will be with you.” Those are the words that give you power to take up the risk and the danger. If it feels like you’re giving up too much and you don’t want to give up everything and you feel like you’re going to miss out on something else, remember God saying, “I will be with you, that I guarantee you that what you’re going to do for me is better than what you think you wanted to do.” When it feels painful sometimes, when it feels like you may be failing or falling in whatever the task is and you’re worrying that it’s not going to go the way it should, remember that you’re not alone, that God is saying, “I will be with you.” Discipleship is what we’re all called to do. It starts by us being alert to something different going on around us that calls us to pay attention to God, to listen, to follow, to be passionately active in doing what God calls us to do knowing that, through it all, come those words: “I will be with you.” 

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