How Jesus Disciples Live

[This was shared during worship services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church yesterday morning.]

Mark 1:14-20
In today’s short gospel lesson, Mark 1:14-20, Jesus shows us something of what it is to be His disciple. It boils down to four words:

• Repent 
• Believe 
• Follow 
• Fish.

Our lesson, written in Mark’s rapid-fire style, falls after his narration of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist and Jesus’ time in the wilderness, immediately after John the Baptist's arrest by Herod.

Take a look at verse 14, please: “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” (Mark 1:14) John’s ministry had been preparation for this moment when Jesus began His ministry. John had worked to get people ready for the coming of Jesus, the King. “After me,” John had said, “comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.” (Mark 1:7)

Verse 15: “‘The time has come,’ [Jesus] said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”

The word translated as “time has come” is, in the Greek in which Mark wrote his gospel, Πεπλήρωται, from the verb πληρόω. It means full up, fully complete. The time was full up, Jesus was saying. Full up for the kingdom of God to be ushered into our world by the King of kings, Jesus!

There may be no more overlooked Biblical concept than the kingdom of God. Yet Jesus talks about it all the time.

When we think of that phrase “kingdom of God,” we might think of something that will happen in the future, beyond our own deaths, after our resurrections.

This view of God’s kingdom turns this life into nothing but heaven’s waiting room.

Not only is that incredibly boring, it’s built on a false understanding of the kingdom that Jesus came to bring to us.

In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to petition God, “Thy kingdom come.” When we say that, we’re not asking God to make us part of His reign after we die. We're asking God to reign over our lives right now.

In explaining this petition of the prayer, Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism: “God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit [now], so that by His grace we believe His holy Word [now] and live a godly life now and in eternity.”

Jesus says in John 5:25: “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

He says to those who come in contact with Him, “...the kingdom of God is in your midst." (Luke 17:21)

And 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us, “... if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

So, Jesus comes to bring us into direct relationship with God our King in these days, as we walk on this earth! We become citizens of His kingdom now. We don’t have to wait till we die!

Jesus explains exactly how the kingdom of God comes to us in verse 15 of our gospel lesson too. When Jesus brings God’s kingdom to us--in His Word, in the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, in the fellowship of other believers, we enter the kingdom of God and we enter it at deeper and deeper levels of connection and joy when we “repent and believe in the good news.”

Those are the first two aspects of being disciples in the kingdom of God: repenting and believing in the good news.

Let's unpack those two things for a moment.

As you know, a lot of people have the wrong idea about repentance. Repentance does begin with sorrow for sin, with regret over hurting the God Who made us and sent Jesus to die and rise for us. But after sin has been confessed honestly to God, repentance ends with the joy of reconciliation with God. It ends with God telling us we are forgiven. Repentance clears the clutter of sin that otherwise obstructs our relationship with God. His life flows to us again.

To believe in the good news is to believe in Jesus, to trust that when He died on the cross, He died for my sins, to trust that when He rose from the dead, He did so to give me life. That’s good news! “Very truly I tell you,” Jesus says, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.” (John 5:24)

Discipleship begins with repentance and belief. These two things alone are enough to save us. They are gifts God gives to those who are open to Jesus. Repentance and belief in Jesus, both of which only God the Holy Spirit can create within us, are the conduits by which we are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

But we live in a world darkened by sin. And until our own physical deaths, you and I will be dogged by our sin and the temptation to sin. Unless we remain resolutely connected to Christ, we can fall away from God. We can lose our ways.

This is why Jesus told the disciples who wanted to sleep at Gethsemane, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)

So, on top of repenting and believing, the disciple of Jesus will diligently seek to follow Him.

They follow Jesus so that they can be filled with God’s strength and not have to face life or temptations to sin on their own.

In our gospel lesson, Jesus finds Simon and Andrew, two brothers who are fishermen, and tells them, “Come, follow me…” (Mark 1:17). Later, Jesus calls another set of brothers, John and James, to follow and they do (v.20).

But what does it mean for you and me to follow Jesus?

Imagine for a second a couple who get married, then decide, even though they live under the same roof and have jobs in the same city, that they’ll just see each other for one hour every week...unless they have something more interesting or fun to do.

How deep do you think their relationship would be?

How prepared do you think they’d be when adversities hit?

You couldn’t really describe what they had as a marriage, could you?

As ridiculous as that illustration sounds, it precisely describes the manner in which most people who call themselves Christians approach the most important relationship in their lives, their relationship with Jesus.

They set up a time to meet Jesus every week (unless something more interesting or fun comes along) and then forget Him the rest of the week. Weekly worship with fellow believers is essential to the Christian life; I'm not knocking it. But if that’s the only connection you have with Christ over the course of your weeks, how deep can your relationship with Christ really be? How prepared will you be for life’s adversities when Jesus is nothing more than a distant acquaintance?

We need to spend some focused time each day in prayer, in reading God’s Word, in asking Jesus, “What do you have in mind for me to think or do in this passage of Scripture today, Lord?”

I also find myself as I grow older more closely adhering to Paul's admonition to pray without ceasing. Many times over the course of my days, I'll find myself talking with God about one thing or another. I'll be driving along in my car, praying. And I know people who pass by think I'm talking to myself. I don't care what they think! I want to keep praying that God's kingdom will come to people.

But even if you're not that crazy, having a daily focused time with God is important. If it seems too hard to do for say five days a week, try at first to do it one day a week, then two, and so on. And, if you need help in even getting started on following Jesus in this way, contact one of the members of our Life and Learning Team to ask them for tips.

So, disciples of Jesus repent, believe in the good news, and follow Jesus. And then, they fish. Jesus told Simon and Andrew to follow Him “and I will send you out to fish for people.” (Matthew 1:17)

This metaphorical description of every disciple's mission would have resonated with Simon and Andrew. And not just because they were fishermen.

You see, God’s people, the Jews, viewed the sea as a daunting, evil thing. It was a place of death and ferocious sea monsters. They remembered Genesis 1, in which God’s Holy Spirit moved over dark chaos to impose order, bring good from evil, and to create life.

To fish for people is to draw them out of chaos, sin, evil, and darkness.

To fish for people is to bring them to life with God, to the light of God’s goodness.

To fish for people is to make disciples.

I try to go fishing all the time, even though it doesn’t come naturally to me, even though I would rather keep to myself. (Believe it or not...and Ann will vouch for this, I am an introvert. God has had to kick me out of my shell and still has to remind me to move beyond myself all the time!)

So, at Jesus’ behest, I go fishing for people.

Last night, I made a run to a Kroger deli.

Not my usual one.

I was trolling different waters last night.

I happened to be in uniform, my clerical collar. That can be more of a disadvantage than an advantage.

Whatever, I followed my usual pattern of interaction: I struck up a conversation with the clerk who waited on me. “Have you been busy today?” “No need to put paper between every slice of cheese.”

This is the way you start when you go fishing for Jesus:

• You strike up conversations. 
• You ask questions. 
• You show genuine concern. 
• As time goes on and people get to know you, as appropriate, you mention your faith in Jesus. 
• As they share things about themselves, you ask if you can pray for them. 
• You plant the seeds of the good news of the God Who sent His Son Jesus so that all who believe in Him will never die, but have everlasting life with God. You go fishing.

Before you say, “I could never do that,” let me remind you of something. However you came to faith in Jesus--through your parents, through a friend, whatever, it ultimately can be traced back to moments when some Christian disciple went fishing. They cared enough about people swamped by the darkness, chaos, and sin of this world to share Christ with them.

Fishing for people is the greatest expression of love in the world.

Repent. Believe. Follow. Fish.

This is how disciples live.

This is how Christ uses us to make more disciples.

May we always be faithful disciples of Jesus. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

The Most Powerful Word of All

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Pastor and writer John Maxwell tells about a junior high basketball coach who was smart. If he had a kid who was lackadaisical on defense, this coach would call that kid Mr. Hustle. If he had a kid who was slow of foot, he named him Speedy. He hung these nicknames on the kids not as putdowns calling attention to their deficiencies, but with a straight face and seeming seriousness. “Did you see how ferocious Mr. Hustle was on defense?” he’d ask the team during practice. “I want all of you to work at being like him!”

Guess what happened?

When combined with the proper instruction and correction, kids whom the coach called Mr. Hustle really did become hustling defenders and those he named Speedy became the fastest ones on the team, able to lead the fast break.

Somewhere this coach had learned the power of words. He understood the truth behind a confession Mark Twain made: “I can live on a good compliment for a week.”

Negative words are powerful, too. A pastor came home from worship one day in a sour mood. Her husband asked what was wrong. “I must have heard ten people tell you what a great sermon you had,” he commented. “Yeah,” she acknowledged, “but Gladys Milkenrucker hated it.”

The old saying is wrong: Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can and do sometimes hurt us. That’s because words—good words and bad words--really do have power.

But nobody’s word is more powerful than God’s Word.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

Eugene Peterson translates this same passage in The Message: “[God’s] powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.”

I like this last line because, in fact, we do try to run away from God’s Word. We do it because God doesn’t always say what we want to hear.

And we don’t run away from God’s Word only when it warns us against the sins we like to commit—be they gluttony or tax evasion, sexual promiscuity or personal arrogance, lazy indifference to God’s call on our lives or gossiping about our neighbors. We also seem to run away from God’s Word when it forgives and affirms us because we convince ourselves that God couldn’t possibly forgive us.

We also run away from God’s Word when it seems to tell us to do something we don’t want to do. Forgive as we’ve been forgiven. Lend a hand to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Fight for justice and equality for those whose life styles may be sinful. Say a good word for the person nobody likes. Tell someone else about the hope we’ve found in Jesus Christ.

And on that last point, I know that more often than I care to remember, I have been hesitant about sharing Christ with others. I've been a lot like Jonah in our Old Testament lesson.

There have been many times when God’s Word has come to me as it did to Jonah, clear as a bell, whether while I’ve been reading the Bible at home or hearing it in worship. But do I heed it and do what God tells me to do? No, I’m like Paul, writing in the New Testament book of Romans: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good [that is, when I make a resolution to do what God’s Word tells me to do or to trust the grace that God’s Word conveys for me], evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self…but the evil that I do not want is what I do.”

And so, I run from God and from God’s Word. In effect, I do what our daughter Sarah sometimes playfully does when she hears an off-color joke or when someone gives her TMI—too much information: I stick my fingers in my ears and say, “La la la la,” to block God’s access to my mind, heart, and will.

This was exactly what Jonah did.

The Old Testament book of Jonah, a fun book with a serious point, describes life in Israel, the land of God’s people, the Jews, in the middle of the 8th century BC. A nation that neighbored Israel, Assyria, was less than neighborly. It was, in fact, Israel’s greatest enemy, murderous and warlike. Assyria’s capital city was a place called Nineveh. Ancient Nineveh set on the same ground as a modern city you may have heard about in the news lately: Mosul, Iraq.

At the beginning of the book of Jonah, we’re told: “Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying, ‘Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.’”

In fairness to Jonah, whose reaction to this call, his hatred for the Ninevites, and his surliness toward God throughout the four-chapter book that bears his name have given him a bad press through the centuries, if God told you to go to Mosul, a city where today the murder and intimidation of Christians is so horrible and pervasive that many have fled the place to find safety, would you go?

Or would you, as Jonah did the first time God’s Word came to him, run in the opposite direction and book yourself on a Mediterranean cruise?

I think that I’d take the cruise.

But, as those of you who have read your Bibles know, God’s Word is powerful. God was emphatic that Jonah needed to do what God’s Word had told him to do.

Once the ship on which Jonah boarded was at sea, the God Who can control the wind and waves, sent a storm. Jonah convinced his shipmates that he was the cause of this life-threatening storm and that they needed to toss him into the drink so that God would bring calm seas.

The second they did that, there was a dead calm. The storm had stopped and you might think that that was the end of Jonah, now experiencing the death penalty for his rebellion against God.

But you who’ve read the book also know that God initiated a unique bailout plan for Jonah. There’s a lesson in that for you and me: God gives second chances and new starts even to people who don’t seek them. No matter how far you feel you’ve wandered from God, God wants to speak His Word of reconciliation, peace, and purpose to you. God wants you to have second chances.

That’s exactly what happened to Jonah at the beginning of our Old Testament lesson for today: “The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ‘Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim the message that I tell you.’”

Jonah still didn’t want to do what God’s Word told him to do. But he was grateful for a second chance and he’d learned a lesson out on the stormy Mediterranean about the power of God’s Word.

So Jonah goes to Nineveh. There, he does the minimum that God tells him to do. He only walks a third of the way into the city and delivers what is in the original Hebrew a five-word sermon. Here it is: "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed." That’s it.

Now, if you had been a Ninevite and heard that sermon, how would you have reacted? Would you have laughed it off? Would you have gotten angry? Would you have ignored this strange foreigner covered with the stomach juices of the great fish that had swallowed and spit him out? I can imagine reacting in any of those ways.

But Nineveh heard it and the whole city repented. They turned from sin and turned to the God none of them had ever worshiped before. It’s not in our lesson, but the king of Nineveh even issued a decree that said, in part, “All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. Who knows? God may relent and change His mind; He may turn from His fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”

Nineveh was spared. Its people--at least the people living there in the eighth century BC--turned from sin and turned to God. God forgave them and they lived, reconciled to God.

What about that paltry sermon of Jonah’s changed the lives of all those Ninevites? It’s fairly simple and truly amazing, really: Jonah’s words weren’t just Jonah’s words; they were also the Word of God.

The Word of God is powerful.

God spoke His Word and the world and everything in it came into being.

God’s Word—the second person of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was made flesh and came into our world—came to you—in Jesus Christ.

God’s Word comes to us today in the Bible, in the water of Holy Baptism, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, in the fellowship of believers, in our confession of faith, and even in sermons, paltry and otherwise.

And God’s Word comes to you again today: to tell you “Whether to confront you for your sin, to confirm you in my forgiveness, or to send you to your own Ninevehs right here in Logan at work or home or school, believe God’s Word, trust it, and do what it tells you to do because God’s Word is still powerful, even today, even for you.” Amen

[THANKS TO: Mark at Stones Cry Out for linking to this post.]

A Look at This Coming Sunday's Bible Lessons (January 25, 2009)

Most weeks, I present a bit of something about one or more of the Bible lessons that we'll be using in worship on the following Sunday at the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. I do it to help both the people of the congregation and me to prepare for worship. But because we use the Biblical texts appointed by the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), used by most Christians in North America and elsehwere, I hope that these little jottings help others too.

Third Sunday after Epiphany
January 25, 2009

The Bible Lessons:
Jonah 3:1-5
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The Prayer of the Day
Almighty God, by grace alone You call us and accept us in Your service. Strengthen us by Your Spirit, and make us worthy of Your call, through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen

General Comments
The Epiphany Season theme of the presence of God among us is continued in the lessons for this Sunday, but with a variation. The focus of the first reading and of the Gospel lesson is on God calling people into service to God and neighbor, the call of all Christians, no matter what their profession.

In the Old Testament lesson, we read of God's second call to Jonah. (More on that below.)

The Gospel lesson tells the familiar story of Jesus' calling the first four apostles to follow Him. Don't let the familiarity prevent you from seeing the unique ways in which Mark recounts this incident.

I'm only going to write comments here on the Jonah text. It may or may not be the primary text on which I preach. But even if it isn't, it will still play a prominent role in my sermon on Sunday.

Jonah 3:1-5
The book of Jonah, recounting an incident from earlier in Israel's history, was probably composed in the period after the nation's exile. It was a time of retrenchment when Israel, drawing on its status as God's chosen ones, wanted to isolate itself from the dirty world around it.

This tale of a reluctant prophet who hated the foreign people to whom God wanted him to go, told with comic overtones designed to change people's minds by making them laugh, was a challenge to Israel's penchant toward being isolated and condemnatory of others. Israel was to be a light to the nations, after all, and it couldn't be a light if it kept that light hidden under a basket in the Judean countryside. (The book of Jonah, then, is the perfect companion to the Old Testament book of Ruth. Like Jonah, Ruth only runs to four chapters and through its tale of how a foreigner became ancestor to Israel's greatest king, David, also challenges Israel's insularity and prejudice against foreigners.)

In the first chapter of Jonah, God issued a first call to Jonah. Go to Nineveh, God said, and warn them that their evil has grown so great, I intend to destroy the place.

Nineveh was situated on the site of modern day Mosul, Iraq and was the capital of the Assyrian Empire which had always been hostile to Israel. (Just last week, by the way, a Christian from Mosul was murdered. It's a place from which Christians have fled because of intimidation and killings to which their community has been subjected. Last week's murder came after many Christians had begun to return to the city and their property.)

Understandably, Jonah didn't want to go there. Not only could he be reasonably certain of not receiving a welcome in Nineveh, he was even more certain that he personally hated the Ninevites and wanted to have nothing to do with them.

You can find our what happened next, by reading the book of Jonah yourself. Suffice it to say, Jonah went through an experience he likely wouldn't have wanted to repeat. So, when God calls him this second time, instead of running in the opposite direction as he did in chapter 1, he goes to Nineveh.

The book of Jonah says that Nineveh was so huge it took three days to walk its length. According to Wendy Baumgardner, a certified marathon coach and running enthusiast who runs About.com's page on walking, the average person without any complicating medical conditions can walk about eight miles in an eight-hour stretch, probably the maximum advisable distance. (See here and here.) So, a three day walk across Nineveh, as Jonah tells it, would entail traveling about 24 miles. Assuming that the city was as wide as it was long, that would make the place just a few miles smaller in area than metropolitan Houston today.

Now, my liberal friends will criticize me if I don't add that none of the archeological digs on the site of Nineveh indicate the city was ever that large. And at 576 square miles, Jonah's Nineveh would have dwarfed any other known ancient city.

But, along with my conservative friends, I would say, "Don't discount the information given in Jonah about the city."

The bottom line, of course, is that the book of Jonah, along with the rest of Bible, isn't a book of science. It's a book of faith with, if you'll excuse a poor turn of phrase in light both of Jonah's earlier chapters and of the Gospel lesson, bigger fish to fry.

The important thing to remember is that the place to which God is calling Jonah to go is not only hostile, it's also big. Big and hostile. Would you want to go there? I wouldn't!

Jonah complies with God's call. But just barely.

He spemds just one day walking toward the center of the city and then bellows out what is a five-word sermon in the original text (v.4): "Forty days more Nineveh destroyed."

The strange thing is that on the strength of those few words, with no indication that the foreign Deity represented by Nineveh would forgive them, the whole city repented. They turned away from sin and turned to God.

The question for you to ponder until we worship together on Sunday is simple:

Why?

Why did the Ninevites repent?

I'll see you on Sunday.