Sermon: “The New Disciple”

What great texts for the day of our Annual Meeting.  They’re both so much about church – how we come together and pray when we make important decisions, how church members share insights in calling new disciples and electing them to serve, and how our welcome of new disciples into the living vine of the church connects them, and us, to Christ.  That’s what nourishes us, and helps us to grow:  the bountiful and delicious grace of God, the bright and refreshing breath of the Holy Spirit, and the embrace of our brothers and sisters in church, who today embody the Risen Christ.  When we pray, when we share, when we welcome – these simple acts of connection give us the peace and wisdom and courage we need to go out into the world and serve others in Jesus’s name. 

Now I know it may be hard to get excited about a church meeting 2000 years ago.  But this text from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 1, records what very well may be the very first church meeting – and it couldn’t be much more exciting.  You see, the Book of Acts takes up right where Luke leaves off – after the crucifixion, resurrection, and dramatic ascension of Jesus, where he is lifted up in a cloud right off the top of the Mount of Olives.  That’s that wooded ridge of hills just east of Jerusalem, the great walled city that verse 12 says was just “a Sabbath day’s journey” away.  On the lower slopes close to the city was Bethany, the village where Jesus often stayed with Mary and Martha, and their brother Lazarus.  And it was to those slopes that Jesus and the disciples retreated to pray on the last night of his life, in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Until Judas betrayed them there, it had seemed to be a safe haven.  But now no place seemed safe. 

Remember how in Mark 16, which we read this Easter, Jesus tells the disciples to go back through the countryside to Galilee to find him.  In these resurrection stories in Luke and Acts, Jesus puts the disciples in much more danger, because he orders them to come out of hiding in the hills and go back into the city to wait to be baptized by the Holy Spirit.  So the remaining 11 disciples are on the run there in Jerusalem – the city that had arrested and executed Jesus – and they seclude themselves in the upper room where they were staying.  Acts 1:14 says, “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.” It was there that some 120 believers crowd in close to hear Peter call their first meeting to order.  Acting as the first Moderator of the church, he starts with the “old business,” and reports to them on the death of the traitor Judas, whose gory accident must have seemed a satisfying stroke of divine justice.  In verse 18, which we skipped over in our reading earlier, Peter says Judas “acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.”

Peter moves on then to the “new business, saying the time has come to pick the new disciple to bring up to 12 again the number on the council who will lead Christ’s church.  But under the threat of death, you have to wonder who would volunteer for such an honor?  Makes the job of our church Nominating Committee pale by comparison.  Acts says they had been praying constantly before they nominated two – Justus and Matthias – who then had to essentially “draw straws” for the job.  Acts 1:26 says, “And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”  Were their hands shaking?  Had they been praying they would NOT be chosen?  I don’t think we could have blamed them.  Discipleship has always been a risky business, and an honor we might be tempted to decline.  But as much as I hate to break it to you like this, I must inform you that by your very presence here today – listening to me preach the Good News – you have become, at least temporarily, a disciple of Christianity. 

Like the word “discipline,” the word “disciple” comes from the Latin discipulus, or pupil, which in turn derives from discere, to learn.  Mainline Protestant churches like ours have always had this focus on preaching as a kind of public Bible study – which is why in Congregational churches, the pulpit is so often up high like ours, in this central position.  In our tradition, I am called not a “priest” but your “pastor and teacher.”  Like those first 12 disciples, we believe we are called to learn from Jesus in order to know him and to follow his teachings.  And yet, most of us resist the role of pupil, at least a little.  I mean, for most of us, after 12 or 16 or even, for pastors, 20 years shut up in classrooms, it might be hard to muster much enthusiasm for spending any more beautiful sunny spring days inside listening to a teacher.  And yet, that is our call.  If you want to see what the latest 21^st century version of the new disciple is, all you have to do is look around you at the disciple in the pew next to you, or stop by a restroom and look at the disciple you’ll find there staring back at you from the mirror.

The Good News about that is in the John 15 text, about the vine and the branches, which is so much my favorite metaphor for church that my husband John read it at my ordination.  It takes us beyond the dusty road of discipleship, where we trudge forward to serve and learn, attend worship and go to meetings, in a relentless and exhausting cycle.  John reminds us that we can also rest in Christ and be refreshed by the Holy Spirit. We are living members of the risen body of Christ.  The lifeblood that flows through our veins is not ours, but his.  When we surrender our own lives to become part of his vine, that is when we begin to truly live – with energy and enthusiasm.  Enthusiasmos, by the way, is Greek for “possessed by a god.” When we live our lives well-connected to the vine, we get fed and nourished spiritually, and we can do what might have earlier been for us tedious, draining, or impossible.  Living in the vine, fed by the Word of God and watered by the grace of Christ in prayer, we grow and bear much fruit as we serve the Lord and produce good works with comparatively little effort.

This is why we on your Vision Task Force hope you will consider following our new vision – “Make Jesus Your Mentor.” This year, when we focus on the aspect we have named “Pray,” you might look forward to setting aside just a little more time to learn to study scripture and pray, as Jesus did.  And if that sounds like drudgery to you, remember we don’t HAVE to study and pray, we GET to study and pray.  The rabbis even before Jesus used to talk about the joy of Bible study, and they would savor it, they said, like an animal chewing the juicy marrow out of a bone.  They talked about the privilege it was to rest, entirely rest, on the Sabbath – and to do nothing but read and discuss ideas with trusted friends at the synagogue.  Most of us are so over-committed and busy that Sabbath rest probably sounds more attractive then restrictive.  Certainly the 2 dozen or so men who gather in our Fellowship Hall faithfully at 8 every Saturday morning would tell you so. For them, like many of us, prayer has become not something we do because we know we  SHOULD, but we NEED it – as the vine needs the rain, the fresh air, and the sun – in order to grow and thrive.  Many of us look forward just to the brief moments of prayer that begin our meetings and bring us back into awareness of God’s loving presence and, like breathing, fills us with the Holy Spirit and blesses us with peace. 

It’s really a shame, I think, that so many of us have been damaged by bad early experiences with prayer – the dreariness of church prayers memorized and rote, the negativity of some prayers of confession filled with guilt and shame, or the terrible silence of God when we were begging for something and seemed to get no answer.  But as the great theologian Soren Kierkegaard said, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”  This is how Jesus prayed, even in Gethsemane the night before he died.  This is what he tried to teach his disciples, what our vision priority for the coming year would call us to do.

We are NOT being called by this vision to DO anything different.  The Vision Task Force has simply tried, on your behalf, to NAME what it is we already feel called to do, what we already are doing. We pray, study, and welcome in worship every Sunday – of course we do.  We are the church.  We pray.  And our “Open and Affirming” welcome is not just about welcoming gay and lesbian people to join our fellowship – it’s about welcoming ALL new disciples, new members especially those who come to us from a slightly different faith path, like the Roman Catholics and Lutherans who most recently joined us, and our youngest new disciples like our Confirmands.  We welcome all the tough questions they may challenge us to face.  Our Sunday School is a place of great welcome too.  And it,  like the rest of our church, is a place where we share together too – our time, talent, and treasure, our ideas, our passions and our faith.

And unlike the first church, the one founded by Peter, the Rock, we can be so thankful that we no longer have to worship on the run and in hiding.  Today, in our great nation, we have freedom of religion – we can pray, share, and welcome all to our meetinghouse every Sunday – in Jesus’s name. 

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.