Rev. Will Rice
Grace United Methodist Church
Corpus Christi, TX
pastorwillrice@gmail.com
“Disciple is a Verb”
I love languages. I love them because they are so organic and totally beyond our control. People try to control how language is used, with little success. English teachers at all levels try, in vain to enforce rules and new generations stomp all over them.
In English, nearly any noun can be instantly transformed into a verb without permission from an English scholar. If you look up the word text in your dictionary, you will see that it is clearly a noun, with its definition relating to the written word. Now, watch this. On my cell phone, I can send a text message to my wife. If my wife were to ask me to send her a text message to let her know when I would be home, she wouldn’t say, “send me a text message,” she would say, “Text me.”
Jesus does that sort of thing in today’s text.
After Jesus’ death and after Mary had reported to them of his appearance, the disciples all gathered at the place where Jesus had instructed them before. Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” He then says “go”, and what he says next is where he starts to mess with the language. Up to this point in the gospel of Matthew, the word disciple has been used 71 times, mostly as a noun. But now, Jesus decides to use it as a verb. Not even just as a verb, but as an imperative verb. We are pretty familiar with imperative verbs, we like to put exclamation points after them, go! Stop! But Jesus says, “Disciple!”
I know if you are reading along with me in your own bible you see the words “make disciples” and that is not incorrect. It is just that it may miss some of the emphasis. In the original Greek, Jesus says one word, “Disciple!”
There is a big temptation here to skip over that very important verb and go right to the next part which gets us all confused. Disciple is an imperative, it is the command, the rest is the who and how. We have to be careful not to get so caught up in the who and how that we forget the what: “Disciple!”
The next three words cause the biggest problem
all the nations.
We spend so much time worrying about whether or not that means we should be discipling Buddhists that we forget to disciple our neighbor, not to mention the fact were still not be clear on what it means to disciple in the first place. Up until this point we may have still thought it was supposed to be a noun!
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Ok, here is a part of what is means to disciple. We baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is a whole other sermon there, but I think pastor John Wright is preaching on Trinity Sunday next year so we will leave that to him.
I think by the time we get to the next part we are so tired from arguing about who all nations are and figuring out the trinity that we don’t even hear it.
teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.
I think the wording is important there. It is not “command them to obey all I have taught you.” It is “teach them to obey all I have commanded you.”
So if we are going to follow Jesus imperative to “Disciple!” we are teachers, not disciplinarians, not commanders, not even preachers, but teachers. But Jesus is saying this to his disciples Are we disciples? To that question, I would like to say yes. But are we disciples like the disciples that Jesus was talking to that day?
You see, by the time the disciples were standing on that mountain listening to their great commission they had been with Jesus for some time. They had sat as his feet as he taught, struggled with his parables and then heard them explained. They had also learned through watching what Jesus did.
The disciples were witnesses to the teaching of Jesus. Teaching is a very important thing in the gospel of Matthew. The verb to teach is used 13 times, Jesus is called teacher at least 9 times and Rabbi, which could be translated as teacher another 2.
With all this teaching going on, it is not surprising that when we are called to action, that action would include teaching. But with the disciples, learning was presupposed. They had been there when he taught. The ones called to “Disciple!” were disciples.
If we are to “Disciple!”, we must be disciples. Now most of us wouldn’t consider baptizing without be baptized. Why would we consider teaching without learning?
If we are to “Disciple!”, we must be disciples. And what does it mean to be a disciple? Disciples do three things. First, disciples study.
I just mentioned, the disciples were witnesses to the teaching of Jesus, first hand. Now we can’t just go to the mountain and hear Jesus speak, BUT Jesus can speak to us through scripture and community. When we gather in groups, and read and study scripture together, amazing things happen.
I just returned from a week in Dallas at the School of Congregation Development. It was held at a big fancy hotel. You know the kind with marble floors and bell hops and a concierge and giant indoor fountains. These conferences are exhausting. You sit in seminars for hour after hour. By the last day, I was just beat. I was ready to go home and I was waiting for the group I was riding back to Corpus Christi with. I was sitting up on the edge of one of these giant marble fountains. Behind me the water was spraying and bubbling, but I was paying no attention. I am staring over toward the escalator watching and wondering where my colleagues were because I wanted to go home. As I was sitting there, I saw a young family entering the hotel. A man and woman, a little boy in the woman’s arms and a two little girls walking. They came up to the big glass doors and the girls are just mesmerized as they go swoosh and open right before them. They entered the lobby and one of the girls stopped. The family continued on, but she stopped right there in the lobby staring off toward me. Her eyes grew real wide, her jaw dropped. I was wondering what she was looking at. The mother finally stops walking and turns around, at which point the girl said, “Mom! Look at the fountain!”
Seemingly forever ago, but just last year, I was teaching a class of the first course of Disciple Bible Study. I was sitting in the room looking over my notes for the class when one of the men in the group came in carrying his Bible like someone had just handed him a newborn child. He sat down next to me and said, “Will, you have to see this.” He turned to a page in the New Testament and showed me some words of Jesus that had come alive for him in a way that had just changed everything. Words he had probably seen before, in the context of the group, and the in depth prayer and study had become new and life changing. “Will, look at this scripture!” “Mom, Look at the fountain!”
Disciples study.
If we are to “Disciple!”, we must be disciples. Disciples study and disciples serve.
I thought when I first started out in ministry that I had to teach people that. It turns out, I just need to put people in touch with what God is already teaching them. Going back to that same Disciple Bible Study group. One Monday night I was getting ready to start the class and the class is was ready to get started. They were jabbering away like 5th graders right before lunch. I was starting to get a little impatient because we were going to study the Gospel of Luke and I needed to make sure they got the message about the need to reach out to the least, the last, and the lost among us. Finally, in an effort to quiet them down I asked, “what the heck are you all talking about?” The response, “Sorry, we were just getting ready for Friday night.” I asked, “What is happening Friday night?” “Oh that is the night we go downtown to the homeless shelter and serve dinner.”
I hadn’t told them to do that! This I had to investigate.
It turns out that a member of the class had been so moved back when we were studying the Old Testament that he had to do something about it. He heard through the scriptures and through the time in this small group a word about God’s special interest in those who are without and he heard a word from God about his role in that and got his group together and went downtown. When I went downtown to see what they were doing, I saw that they weren’t just cooking up food and handing it over the counter, they were interacting with people who were homeless, they were showing true hospitality and love for these people.
Disciples serve.
If we are to “Disciple!”, we must be disciples. Disciples study, disciples serve and disciples spread the good news. There is a reason for the order that I have put these in. It is not spread, serve, study. It is study, serve, spread. We can short circuit ourselves if we don’t consider the order. Don’t get me wrong, there is something special and important about the raw enthusiasm of a new believer who is so excited about finding their way to God that they just have to tell everybody. But, we shouldn’t stop there.
You see, I spent most of my life not knowing that good news. I didn’t know God, I didn’t know Jesus. I can tell you that someone once tried to “make me a disciple” armed with not a whole lot of depth. What you have to understand about my generation is we a just a little cynical.
This is how that went.
“Will, you should accept Jesus into your heart.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Jesus loves you and will save you.”
“From what?”
“Your sin”
“Which sin?”
That was about it. And I just went back about my business knowing nothing of the life changing world transforming good news of the grace of God which is good news for everyone.
It wasn’t until later in life when I met people who took their commitment to being disciples to another level that I started to understand Jesus. People who had tried to place themselves at the feet of Jesus as he taught his disciples. People who could teach what Jesus had commanded because they had learned what Jesus had commanded and were living that out.
I want to be very careful here that you do not misunderstand me. The people who taught me to understand the love of Christ and the grace of God were not all seminary professors or intellectuals with a mastery of biblical languages. The learning I am talking about is not necessarily an understanding of the archeology of ancient Israel or a fundamental grasp of systematic theology. The people who are able to “Disciple!” The people who are able to teach are those who make an effort to learn what it is that Jesus teaches.
When I teach any long term Bible study, the question always comes up about evangelism. “How do I talk to people about God?” People want tips. They want flashcards. What they find is when they study and serve, the spread part comes naturally. As we reach deeper in faith and knowledge as we move from raw enthusiasm to mature, grounded faith we become disciples.
As we become disciples, we find we can “Disciple!” because we come to realize how God helps us to use our own natural gifts and talents to spread the good news in ways that people can hear.
Disciples study, disciples serve, disciples spread the good news.
I challenged us a few weeks ago about being a church that prays. I want to report that I have been committed to that challenge, intentionally becoming more disciplined in my daily prayer life than ever. And now, I want to make another challenge. I want us to be a church that studies in small groups. There are a number of ways to do that.
I want to first make a specific challenge. I am leading a section of what I consider to be the best small-group, long-term Bible study ever created, Disciple Bible Study. There is a description of the course on an insert in your bulletin. It doesn’t matter if you have never even seen a Bible before or if you have been studying your whole life, there is a place for you in this group. I want 16 people to make the commitment to study with me for 34 weeks.
If you have already taken Disciple I, I want to challenge to you to flip that sheet over and commit to following up with another class. Or, in your bulletin you will see opportunities for two new short-term studies that are starting soon.
For the youth, I want to challenge you to take advantage of the wonderful offerings in Sunday school and youth group and confirmation. And I want you to take them seriously and make being there one of your top priorities.
For our youngest ones, we have a place for you as well in Sunday school. I want you to look forward to Sunday mornings when you have a chance to be a disciple too!
And I want all of us to support and encourage each other in this journey we are taking together. If we are going to “Disciple!” We must be disciples. Together we can be if we study, serve, and spread the good news that God is with us and God is Good!
