If you've been in church for as long as I have, hearing or seeing the word "discipleship" can almost send you into a coma. The picture that comes to mind is nearly universal: a group of people – it could be students or adults (the program is numbingly the same), sitting in uncomfortable chairs arranged in a circle, listening to a teacher talk on and on about the life and teachings of Jesus.
The success of a discipleship program is measured in attendance and memorization of Biblical trivia. Can you name the village near the well where Jesus spoke to the woman drawing water? How many times did Joshua tell the Israelites to walk around Jericho? If you can answer these questions correctly, you are deemed a "spiritual person."
For most of us, we will stay committed for a while but then we will get bored or busy and we will drop out. Occasionally, we will complain about the shallowness of the sermons we hear every Sunday, but few of us will put any real energy toward digging deeper into Scripture. Life is complex and difficult, and we don't see how a book with 2000-year-old words can help us negotiate our modern challenges.
How did the word "disciple" go from someone we are to something we do to an achievement to be mastered, like graduating from college? In the day of Jesus, a disciple would move in with their rabbi. They would be with the teacher 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Sure, the student wanted to learn what the teacher knew, but they also wanted to learn how the rabbi lived. When Jesus asked if the disciples wanted to leave, Peter responded by saying that only Jesus had the words of life. I find Peter's response interesting. Notice, he didn't say Jesus had the words of righteousness, or the way to get to heaven. Peter said Jesus had the words of life. More than having a lot of good knowledge, Jesus knew how to live.
It was that life Peter and his friends wanted from Jesus. You learned how to live life by living with Jesus. Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment