“Go and make disciples…” Jesus said.
Anybody here ever make a disciple?
Do you mix together some flour and eggs and sugar and other ingredients and put it in the oven to bake at 350-degrees until it becomes a disciple?
Or do you rip some boards and drill some holes and screw it all together? “Look! A disciple!”
How DO you make disciples?
That’s a question we Christians are compelled to ask because making disciples is our main job. Those who think that Christians are to have faith in Jesus and to pray and to worship sometimes miss the point. Those things are good things to do, but they are activities that have meaning only insofar as we are doing our main job – which is making disciples. If you’ve ever tried to make a disciple, you know it takes a whole lot of faith and prayer to do so, and when you’ve made one, you really have something to worship God for!
Have you ever made a disciple?
I think that little group of Jesus-followers who stuck around after Easter Sunday were probably as perplexed as you and I when Jesus told them to “go and make disciples.” This is what is called THE GREAT COMMISSION – the final marching orders Jesus gave to his followers. “Go and make disciples…” The fact that Jesus didn’t hang around to explain or even to help them out with the task made it all the more confusing.
How in the world do you make disciples?
Even more basic, “What IS a disciple?”
I suppose most of us would say that a disciple is a student, a follower of a teacher, a servant to a master. Peter and James and John and those who comprised The Twelve – as they were called – are commonly known as Jesus’ disciples. So if our job is to make disciples we ought to take a close look at the original disciples. And when we do, there is a wonderful discovery to be made about what a disciple is!
Listen to what Jesus says to the Twelve in John 15, starting at verse 9:
“As the father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love…My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he or she lay down their life for their friends…I no longer call you servants, but friends, for a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything I learned from my father I made known to you.”
If we could cut through all the religious mumbo-jumbo of the theologians and religious writers of antiquity, perhaps we could hear Jesus’ Great Commission marching orders to his followers in a very simple and down-to-earth way.
“Go and make…FRIENDS!”
Would you know a bit more about “making friends” than making “disciples?”
My first attempt at disciple-making was a disaster. And now that I’ve had decades to reflect upon that failed disciple-making attempt, I think I know why. You see, I tried to make a disciple of someone who was already my FRIEND! And somehow, trying to impose some religious requirements upon what was already a good friendship, just didn’t work.
I was in college and had just experienced one of my many dramatic religious conversion experiences. I had been born again – for the fifth or sixth time. And I was so fired up for God! I was going to save the world…starting with my best boyhood friend, Dennis.
So at home one weekend and sitting out on our front steps one night I told Dennis all about what had happened to me and how – through the grace of God – I had become the world’s best Christian, had a calling to the ministry, had answers to all of life’s most difficult questions, had solved all my problems, overcome all my sins, and was becoming more and more righteous by the minute. And I told Dennis that he too could have this wonderful new life that I had found if he only would get down on his knees and…
Well, he did not respond exactly the way I had thought he would. I expected tears and contrition. I expected sackcloth and ashes. I expected humble gratitude for my loving him enough to straighten him out. But I never expected what I got.
Hysterical laughter!
There he was, rolling on the lawn, having a laughing fit.
“You? You’ve got religion? You? Get out! Really? You? You’re going to be a minister?”
“HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!”
“But Dennis, don’t you know the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is…”
HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!
I think I had pretty much lost him by then, and it struck me that I would not be making a disciple that night. And then Dennis spoke a truth to me that I did not appreciate then, but I have come to understand and value today.
He said – still giggling like a fool, “Butch (that was my nickname growing up), I know what you’re REALLY LIKE, and I’m going to follow you everywhere you preach and tell the people that you’re not who you’re pretending to be!”
“HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!HA!”
Well, that was a bitter pill to swallow, but it was one of many lessons I’ve learned over the years that have taught me that some of the best preaching does not come out of the pulpit, but out of the mouths of your friends. It may not sound very religious, but it is dripping with the truth.
“I know what you’re really like!”
I was having a conversation with someone this week who shared with me the struggle of being a person nobody really knows. Others know the superficial outside of this person, but not the fragile human inside. And even as I heard the words, I knew they were true of me, too. Everybody knows the Marty they see, but very few know the Marty I truly am.
That was the gift Dennis was to me in those days. He knew me for who and what I am – probably better than anybody did back then – and he loved me. He was my friend.
And today I understand that while I was trying to force a friend to become a disciple, he was helping this disciple get back to being a friend.
“Go and make friends…” Jesus said.
Strip away from the Great Commission all the fancy sounding theological stuff, and you’ll discover a very simple outline for how to be a good Christian friend.
First, “Go and make…friends!”
Jesus places the responsibility on you and me to take the initiative in making friends. “Go…and make…” One of the best examples of this in our church is Bob Puckett who we call “the friendliest man in Tellico Village.” When Bob is out in the Narthex, you can’t get by without exchanging some form of friendship. Bob is a hugger – and a handshaker – and if you’re a visitor, he’ll chase you down the hallway if you try to sneak by. Bob works hard at making friends.
But not all of us do. One of the newer couples in our church told me they almost didn’t stick around long enough to become members. They came to services several times, and no one said anything to them. No one “went…and made” friends with them.. Some of that probably has to do with the fact that we’re a large church and not everybody knows everyone else, so it’s difficult to know who a visitor is. I love the story about our founding pastor Carl Burke and his wife Caroline who came into the Narthex one Sunday morning only to be asked by the greeters, “Oh are you new here?” Carl thought that was pretty funny and restrained the urge to point at the large portrait of himself on the wall behind the greeters!
Not everybody knows who’s a regular and who’s not, and that’s okay. Our job is not only to welcome newcomers, but oldcomers too! So it’s a wonderful thing to reach out a hand to welcome not only a visitor, but even that person you’ve sat next to for ten years but still don’t know their name. And here in our community, we can use a built-in excuse – “You know, my memory isn’t as good as it used to be and I seem to have forgotten your name!” And if that person remembers who they are, they’ll tell you!
And this would be made all the easier, you know, if everybody really made an effort to wear nametags.
So “go and make friends” before you leave today, and when you arrive next week, and as you go about your life in this week to come.
The second thing Jesus says is to “baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Many people don’t know that the earliest meanings of Christian baptism had nothing to do with cleansing a person from the stain of sin. That came much, much later – after the religious crowd had instilled enough guilt in people that they thought they had something to wash away. But the original understanding of baptism was acceptance into the family of God. Baptism was a symbol that said, “Now you belong to us!”
People need to belong.
My first church was a great big historic white Congregational Church that had shutters that swung over the huge Palladian windows to either block or let in the sunlight. These shutters were the heating and air conditioning system in the colonial church! Well, one Sunday morning, a little neighborhood boy by the name of Paul was sitting on the front steps of the church with his dog. When I arrived I said, “Hello!” and asked Paul what he was up to. He was just riding his bike, he said, and was wondering about the church. He’d never been in a church before.
So I unlocked the doors and invited him in. And Paul was impressed! There was the big tracker organ in the choir loft at the back of the sanctuary, and the doors on the white pews, and – in a cabinet – there was the old tithing stick with the feather on one end and the knob on the other. In colonial times the feather was used to tickle awake the women who fell asleep, while the knob was used on the men!
Just on a hunch, I asked Paul if he’d like to help me get things ready for the service. He said he would, so I assigned him the task of opening up those big blinds on the windows. Off Paul went to do his job, and as he did, church members started arriving. “What’s your name?” they asked. “Paul,” he answered, “Mr. Singley said I could be the blind man.” And people laughed because there are wonderful stories in the Bible about blind men!
Every week Paul showed up early to open the shutters, and every week the people greeted him as “Paul, the blind man” and told him what a great job he was doing. And Paul started coming to the service – by himself, mind you – and people would compete to get him to sit with them.
And then one day, Paul didn’t come to church anymore. People asked, “Where’s Paul?” “Where’s the blind man today?” Well, it turns out his parents didn’t like it very much that he was going to church, and there wasn’t anything we could do to change that. But we all really missed Paul. He belonged to our church family.
People experience belonging not only when they are welcomed, but most especially when they are valued enough to be known by name, when they are trusted with important things to do, and most especially when they are missed.
“Go and make friends – help people belong…”
“And teach them my commands.”
There are only two, you know. “Love God and love your neighbor.”
Christianity is much simpler than we make it sometimes!
Make friends. Help people find a place of belonging. And practice love toward everyone!
And then Jesus says, “If you do these things, I’ll be with you to the end of time!”
Several weeks ago, when one of our church members died unexpectedly, I went over to the house to see the family and there they were – surrounded in their grief by friends. Good friends. Dear friends. Each one bringing some ministry of friendship that gave support and care.
We sat around and reflected upon the loved one’s life, and about how the lives of each of those friends intersected with the family. And as the stories were told, this is what occurred to me: they, like most of us, are people from someplace else – people who left behind family structures and support networks to come and begin a new chapter of life here.
Not that long ago, they were all strangers.
But now they were friends.
And as we shared together that night, I sensed the presence of Jesus.
In the going to make friends – in the helping to belong – in the practice of love – the promise came true:
“Lo, I am with you always to the end of time.”
So starting today, on this first Sunday after Pentecost, will you do it?
Dear friends, “Go…and make friends!”
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