This is the third in an 8 sermon series following Greg Ogden's Essential Guide to Becoming a Disciple: Eight Sessions for mentoring and Discipling.
We have all experienced the death
of someone very close to us. In December
of 1999 I lost my father to cancer. The funeral
home visitation threw me quite a bit. It
was one thing to see my father going down and quite another to see him and he
not be there. I know how final death is.
Yet, death isn’t the final word;
not for my father, not for any of us. The
Gospel proclamation is God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit raised
Jesus, God the Son become human, from the dead. God the Son took on sin-diseased human flesh
to heal his creation of sin and it’s consequence of death by living the
faithful life we cannot live yet still suffering sin’s consequence of death. He died and yet powerfully came out the other
side being raised bodily from the dead; thus, nullifying sin and death and
setting in motion the rubrics of a New Creation in which sin and death and evil
are no more; a New Creation which will come fully into effect when Jesus
returns and all things will be made new and the dead will be raised. For now, Jesus calls us to come experience a
foretaste of this New Creation by living as his disciples bound to him and to
one by the Holy Spirit who dwells in and among us transforming us, healing us,
to be more and more like Jesus in every way.
Death isn’t the final word. New
life in Christ, New Creation, that’s our end.
We are called to believe this Gospel. To believe it isn’t just to put it into that
category of religious fantasy in which we say something may or may not be so but
I of my own volition choose to accept it as the Truth. To believe the Gospel is to live in the
reality of it. To believe the Gospel is
to devote ourselves completely to Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit
live together in Christian fellowship, New Community, as living testimony,
living witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the coming reality of
resurrection and New Creation, and the unveiled and unhindered reign of
God. To believe the Gospel is to live in
the reality of it.
Looking here at our reading from Luke’s
Gospel, I am curious as to why Luke says the disciples were “unbelieving”
because of their joy and amazement at seeing Jesus bodily raised from the dead. Why does he say they are “unbelieving”? We can euphemize it and say it’s just a way
of saying they are so joy-filled, gobsmacked, that they can’t believe their
eyes. But, I think there is more here
than a euphemism because “unbelieving” is such a pointed word. Everywhere in the New Testament that
“unbelieving” occurs its meaning is to be unfaithful. It doesn’t make sense here for Luke to the
disciples are being unfaithful for the reason that they are filled with joy and
amazed that Jesus has been raised.
What’s going on?
Well, here’s my kick at the can. In
normal day to day life people rising from the dead just doesn’t happen. It is a bit beyond our ability to comprehend,
to process such a thing. The disciples could
not believe he had been raised. Even
though Jesus proved it was he, the same Jesus that was crucified by showing
them his hands and feet; and even though he proved he was flesh and blood alive
by eating food, the reality was just too big for them to comprehend and
accept. The dead don’t raise, but here
is Jesus bodily raised standing right in front of them. If being faithful—believing—is living the
reality of the Gospel, how does one live the reality of Jesus raised from the
dead? I think they are clueless, and
will remain clueless or “unbelieving” on how to live in the New Creation
reality that has come about with Jesus’ resurrection until the Holy Spirit
comes upon them. Without the Holy Spirit
living in them it was impossible for them to live faithfully.
In John’s Gospel it’s at this
Easter evening appearance that Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on them. But for Luke and Matthew, Jesus simply
remains with them teaching them for several weeks until his Ascension back to
the right hand of the Father and then the Father and he send the Holy Spirit
upon the disciples at Pentecost. Pentecost
is the point when they begin to “believe”, the point when they begin to live
the reality of the Gospel of Jesus’ resurrection, to live the new life we have
in Christ. God the Holy Spirit comes to
live in them and they are alive in Christ.
When the Holy Spirit came on the
disciples three things began to happen.
They began to participate in the mission of spreading the Gospel that
God had raised Jesus from the dead and new life was available now in him. They became living witnesses to Jesus and the
new life that is in him in all their relationships. They are changed and continue changing to be
more Christ-like. And, they began to do
things that gave other people real reason to have real hope in God, that in
Christ God really is saving his creation from the futility of Sin, Evil, and
Death; a salvation that is presently available.
I ponder the power of the movement
that the early church was back in that day and how it was a “Go” movement and I
say “Wow!” Then I look at the state of
the church today and I say, “What happened?”
We don’t “Go”, but rather keep expecting people to “come” to us…and they
don’t.
Well, I know what has
happened. We’ve got the Gospel wrong. We’ve inherited a Christian faith that does
not take Easter seriously, that does not take Jesus’ resurrection seriously,
that does not take new life in Christ seriously, that does not take the power
and presence of the Holy Spirit seriously.
It is easier for us to believe a truncated form of the Gospel that says
Jesus died in our place so that God can forgive our sins and we can go to
Heaven when we die provided we believe this and be good people; it is easier
for us to believe that than it is for us to believe we can have new life in Christ
right now and live. If believing the
Gospel is living the reality of the Gospel, then we, like the first disciples
on Easter evening with Jesus standing right in front of them, are
unbelieving. We’re not living new life
in Christ and are rather just trying to live good lives in the hopes of
pleasing God.
That’s what’s happened, how do we
get out of it. The answer to that
question is discipleship—meeting together in small groups to be mentored in the
Jesus way by more experienced disciples.
It’s like what sponsors do in AA.
Those further along the road of recovery will help others work through
the 12 Step Program and in time those sponsored becomes sponsors
themselves.
I’ve got two groups of men that I
am discipling now with a program developed by Greg Ogden in his book
Discipleship Essentials. In one of the
groups we just passed the first third of the way through checkpoint and were
evaluating how things were going. The
two men were saying just how good this has been for them and how confident they
are becoming in the faith and they know they are changing. They asked me how it was for me. I answered them that you just have to know
what it is like to spend a good bit of your time preparing sermons for Sunday
morning to largely no effect and then getting to that to sit down with them and
work through this stuff and watch them grow.
Here’s an analogy. There are
people that I play my banjo and fiddle for with my obscure mountain tunes and
they are so “Meh” about it or at most impressed with the novelty of it. Yet, there are three retirement communities
that I play in on a monthly basis. I’ve
seen people in those homes who are near vegetative perk up and dance to this
music. If I’m being rude, I’m sorry, but
that is the difference between doing church and doing discipleship. Amen.
