Discipleship 101
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 13, 2008
Acts 2:42-47; 1Peter 2:19-25; John 10:1-10

Acts 2:42-47 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

1 Peter 2:19-25 For it is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.

John 10:1-10 Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.
So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

I. BEGINNING

As Christians we talk a lot about discipleship. It’s part of that “church speak”, as Miriam calls it, that we like to use that no one outside the church understands. United Methodists have a lot of words like that, like “connectionalism,” “two-point charge”, “itineracy" and "apportionments." "Discipleship" sounds like one of those words that we toss around all the time as part of being "church people."

Obviously, the reason for this is that the church looks to follow in the role of Jesus’ disciples, to claim the mantle of their discipleship as a model of Christian living. We emulate the disciples’ example and seek to follow it as best we can.

II. The Ancient Church’S EXAMPLE

The text from Acts that we read earlier is one of those texts that the church uses to discern what Christian living looks like. In fact, our own Bishop Schol has modeled his “Discipleship Adventure” on the behavior of the disciples in this passage from Acts. He points to a Christian community that worshiped together, that engaged in fellowship together, development of their faith together, common service, and sharing the Gospel and growing their numbers. This is what the bishop talks about when he says he wants to build “Acts 2” churches—churches that resemble the Ancient Church in that passage of scripture. A church of discipleship.

III. Discipleship

But what does discipleship actually mean? What does it mean to be a disciple? Whenever you heard the word it is used in only one of two contexts: in reference to the early followers of Jesus or the devotees of some religious leaders that we’re suspicious of. If, for example, I told you I had a number of disciples, you’d either think that I had a rather inflated estimation of my religious authority, or that I’d started a cult. The term ‘disciple’ has taken on itself a connotation of something particularly religious.

Does “disciple” perhaps mean something like ‘sheep’? We hear that imagery all the time: the Lord is my shepherd, “I am the good shepherd”, we are the flock, etc. So, we might come to the conclusion that being a disciple means being a member of the flock. A somewhat comforting but also unsettling definition, since it seems to imply a herd mentality.

But all the word really means is “student.” In Greek, in Aramaic, in Hebrew—all the languages that are relevant to looking at a word in the New Testament—the word for disciple is the same as “student” and related to the word for “learning.”

That’s an important thing to understand about discipleship. We are many things as Christians: we are preachers, we are service providers, comforters, advocates, musicians, social coordinators, managers, caretakers, public relations experts. But first and foremost we are students. We learn.

I think that’s important because if Christian discipleship is about learning—then it suggests an attitude of humility throughout. It does not suggest that we have mastery over our course of study. For we are the students and Christ is the teacher. As Jesus says in Matthew: “A disciple is not above the teacher….” We ought not be so full of ourselves to think that we ever have it all worked out. We are studying our whole lives long. Discipleship is a process.

The Annual Conference’s own materials put that way, saying:

Discipleship is a journey. Through discipleship we discover and encounter the story of God's presence in our lives and the world. We believe that discipleship is a continuous journey; that discipleship is learned and experienced; that discipleship magnifies God's presence in our lives, begins with a personal encounter with God nurtured in community, leads to the practice of spiritual disciplines, is expressed outwardly through mercy and justice, and shares its story.

"Discipleship is learned and experienced...." The hallmarks of the student life: learning and experiencing.

IV. What we Learn

What is it we learn? How to be more like Christ. Jesus says that “A disciple is not above the teacher… it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher…” What we study, then, is how to be like Jesus. We model our behavior after Jesus. Now Jesus does not come here directly and lead our Bible studies or our Covenant Discipleship groups. He does not preside over our church council meetings or the meetings of the United Methodist Student Association. So we have to learn from those who learned from those who learned from those who learned from Jesus. And that’s why we follow the example of the Disciples in the early church—not because they were holy in and of themselves, but because they had learned at the feet of their teacher what Christian living was to be like, and we learn from them.

And so what do we learn? Let’s look at the text again:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Well, first things first: they studied what the apostles taught. A good beginning for students.

But they did not devote themselves to the teaching alone, but to fellowship with the apostles—that is community with them. They studied community. That’s becoming an ever more important thing to know. We live in an age of text messages, online communities, instant messaging, and yet people are becoming less able to relate on a face-to-face basis. But Christians study community and learn how to build community.

They devoted themselves to breaking of bread and the prayers. They studied table fellowship and devotion.

Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

They studied common life and taking care of one another, materially, not just spiritually. They met people’s physical needs. They studied living with justice.

The early church was busy studying.

V. How we Learn

Now to many of you, this may not sound like the most appealing proposition. You’ve probably had enough studying. You don’t want your faith to be another thing you have to cram for. Is there someway that we can be good disciples without a lot of extra reading?

Is Christianity yet another thing you have to know?

As many of you know, I was a Russian language major in college. Since the time I got my degree, I have forgotten a lot of the vocabulary words I once knew. But I will never forget the Russian words for “clothes hanger” and “fuse”. They are вешалка vyeshalka and предохранитель predokhranityel' respectively. I will never forget them because I had to learn them in order to buy those items, especially since our room lacked them and I’d blown the fuse to my power converter. But the experience taught me one thing—to learn something, to really learn something, the knowledge can’t be in the abstract. It has to be put into practice. I could have learned the word for hanger and fuse in the classroom. But nothing cemented those words in my knowledge like walking into lighting store after lighting store asking У вас есть предохранители? (“Do you have any fuses?” They didn’t, by the way.) Putting the language into practice helped me to really learn it.

And so it is with us. We can meet here every week and I can talk to you about what true worship is like, or how we need to commit to social justice, or practice hospitality. We could have meeting after meeting where we talk about. We could have discussion groups where we learn about the Christian history of social activism or the Christian warrant for hospitality. Or we could just do those things.

Not to be saved—that was already accomplished for us by grace. Not to be busy. Not so that we can pat ourselves on the back for how busy and active we are. But so that we can be better students of our teacher. We do them because in the doing is the learning about Christ and what it means to be his students.

It is the same with us when we would seek to pass on what we have learned to others. It is so much easier to teach by showing than lecturing. Who here doesn’t know how to throw a football? I could tell you how to throw a football in a spiral. Or I could show you. Or better yet, I could invite you to try it yourself and learn by doing.

Did we not all learn something a little more profoundly about hunger and poverty earlier in this worship during the Agape Meal/Hunger Banquet? Did not the experience of actually seeing disparity among the haves and the have-nots drive the point home far more effectively than anything I could have preached? That is how we learn, it is how we teach: by doing.

Now of course, when we try by doing we don’t always get it right the first time. And that’s okay. We’re doing this our whole lives. We’re not expected to get it right on the first try.

That’s what Wesley meant when he said we were “going on to perfection in love”—our lives as Christians are lives of process. Lives of a journey. Lives of study.

It is important to remember that our studying as Christians is not an intellectual exercise. And ultimately, it is not about what we know, but what we are able to do. Our studying is not even really about having the right answers or the right opinions. What we are studying for is not a theology exam. Wesley himself echoed this sentiment in his preaching when he said:

A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers; he may think justly concerning the incarnation of our Lord, concerning the ever-blessed Trinity, and every other doctrine contained in the oracles of God; he may assent to all the three creeds, -- that called the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian; and yet it is possible he may have no religion at all, no more than a [non-Christian], or pagan. He may be almost as orthodox -- as the devil, (though, indeed, not altogether; for every man errs in something; whereas we can’t well conceive him to hold any erroneous opinion,) and may, all the while be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart.

Our faith is an experiential faith—experienced in actions, experienced in our heart. It is not simply something to be contemplated, but something to be lived.

VI. END

We live in a broken world. A hurting world. We live in a world full of challenges. A world full of tests of our compassion, our commitment to justice, our love and our faith.

Through God’s grace we are up to the challenge. Through us, God will perform ‘signs and wonders’ as with the ancient church. For though we may face great challenge and great testing, we are preparing for those tests.

For we are students. Students of Jesus Christ. This discipleship, this studying to be like Christ, through learning and experiencing, is not just a word we church people like to say. It is our calling. It is our life’s work.