The Life of the Disciple

It is an old question, and one which I never fail to ask myself
while preparing to preach my first Sermon before any congregation.
There are many schools of thought as to how to handle this kind of situation.
I could bore you to tears with a long autobiography.
I could set the tone for my ministry with you
by preaching a topical sermon of some kind,
outlining my vision for this congregation.
I could outline my personal theological convictions
my beliefs and thoughts on the Christian Faith
I could use any number of "introductory techniques"
and make today’s sermon easy for me to preach,
but hard for you to hear
and just as useless.
Or . . . or,
I could do much of the above in a much more faithful way.
I could just preach the Gospel.
I think I'll do the latter,
and any biographical data you may want
I can fill in as the weeks, months, and years go by.

Jesus said: "Whoever acknowledges me before others,
I also will acknowledge before my Father in Heaven;
But whoever denies me before others,
I also will deny before my Father in heaven."
I have one question for you today:
It's a question which every disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ
should ask of him or her self every day.
It's a question, unfortunately which is rarely asked.
And that's because the answer is usually too painful for us to hear.

Have you acknowledged Jesus Christ before the world lately?
If you haven't, you're not living the life of the Disciple.

Would you pray with me?

For many days an old farmer had been plowing with an ox and a mule together
and working them pretty hard.
One night, after a particularly long, hot, hard day's work,
The ox said to the mule:
"Let's play sick tomorrow and rest a little while."
But the old mule said:
"No, we need to get the work done, for the season is short."
The next day, the ox played sick
and the farmer brought him some fresh hay and corn and made him comfortable.
When the mule returned to the barn from plowing that evening,
The Ox asked how he made out.
"We didn't get as much done, but we made out all right."
The ox then asked,
"What did the old man say about me?"
"Nothing" replied the mule.
The next day the ox,
thinking he had a pretty good thing going,
played sick again.
When the mule came back that night, very tired, the ox asked:
"How did it go?"
The Mule replied: "all right, I guess, but we didn't get much donc-."
Then the ox asked, "What did the old man say about me?"
"Nothing to me" was the reply,
"but he did stop and have a long talk with the butcher."

Christianity is not an easy way of life.
We have been made to believe that it should be easy.
Just come to Jesus, and everything will come up roses.
Just come to Jesus, and everything will turn out right!
Just come to Jesus, and you’ll have nothing to worry about ever again!
Anyone who has ever spent two days being a faithful disciple
knows that being a Christian is difficult.

It's not fair, but it's true.
Giving up, and playing sick,
like the Ox did in the story,
might be a way of having it easy for a few days in this life,
without having to worry about hard, spiritual labor,
but it’s also the quickest way to get sent to the eternal butcher.

It's not fair
but it's true.
Christianity is not an easy life.
Faith is challenging, at times frightening,
and always demadning of willingness to step without sight,
but it’s the only way of life we have to eternity.

Oh, other ways to eternity have been suggested.
Good works
Trying to attain righteousness by our own strength and abilities
by our own understanding and sight
But these ways will always fail.

Only when we do what Jeuss says,
and live the life of Faith in him, in his death and resurreciton,
do we ever have a chance at being the kind Disciples that God calls us to be.

Unfortunately, when we do this,
when we live by faith
trust in God’s grace
in God’s love and presence,
and not in our own stregnth, vision, or wisdom
we attract spiritual attention to ourselves.

We’re on a spiritual battlefield, my friends.
We can either hide out in the back lines,
and not live by faith,
or we can get up on the front line of this spiritual war
and risk getting shot at.

“Shot at?” you ask.

Yes ... “shot at.”
This life is a war between the light of Christ
and the powers and forces of Darkness.
Jesus has the victory,
he won it on the cross for all eternity,
but Satan isn’t going to just lay down his arms
and walk away from the front lines.
No ...
He intends to make this as difficult for our Lord’s armies
as he can.

And we’re our Lord’s army.

Satan doesn't shoot at those who aren’t living in faith. He’s got them,
they’re already heading for his ranks in the depths of hell.
No ...
Satan shoots at those who are making neusances of themselves,
living by faith in Jesus Christ.

Through being a Christian, we’re getting ourselves into trouble...
But it's the kind of trouble that we want to be in, isn’t it?

Through being a Christian, we’re doing that which God wants us to do,
and not what Satan wants us to do.
I don’t know about you,
but I want to do what God wants.
Can I get an Amen?

But why does it have to be so difficult?
Charles Hartshorne,
a great theologian from the early part of the 20th century,
once said that this life is a “veil of soul making.”
Life is difficult, he said, because if it were easy
there would be no reason,
no opportunity
no occasion
for us to have to trust God.

Or, as I like to say,
If life were a bed of roses,
we wouldn't have to trust God
If life were easy, we would have few opportunities to
share our faith.

Life isn't fair.
The prince of the power of the air,
Satan,
Is out there,
and when you open your mouth to speak the Gospel,
He’s going to try and silence you.
When you dedicate yourself to living by faith,
He’s going to try and stop you.
This spiritual truth stands behind what Jesus was teaching is Disciples.

Jesus said to The Twelve:
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
Rather, fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell."

This can be disturbing,
troubling,
upsetting,
but he also told his disciples,

“Are not two sparrot4's sold for a penny”
They're cheep,
They’re Inexpensive
expendable in the grand skeme of things,
“and yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.”

"Even the hairs of your head are all numbered.
So do not be afraid.
You are of more value than many sparrowss.”

Wow.

God will take care of you.
That is the promise.

God will take care of you--
and so, you should not hesitate to acknowledge Christ before the world.

Have you done so, recently?
Or, have you kept your faith a secrete?
Have you,
in your actions,
if not in your words,
Denied Christ before the world?

If the Christian Faith is a personal faith
Then why can’t one’s Christianity just be a private affair?
Why can a person not be baptized privetly--
Indeed, why is it impossible to baptize yourself, alone.
“Just you and God?”

Why bother with joining a Church and worshiping publicly?
Especially if it's gloing to get you persecuted?

Christianity is personal, but it is never private.
It is a fellowship and not an isolated,
individualistic affair.

In our Gospel lesson today, twice Jesus refers to “before others.”

Whoever denies Christ publically will be denied by Christ before the Father.
Whoever confesses him publically, Christ will confess before the Father.
Christianity cannot be a private, seculeded affair.
It is to be known
shown
and confessed for all the world to see and hear.

That's why we're here, today,
my brothers and sisters.

If we are truely living the life of the Disciple,
we cannot confess our Faith just within these four walls.
Indeed, if we have come here for any reason at all,
it’s so that we can then go out there
and Confess that Jesus Christ is our Risen Lord,
and that the world needs him
even today,
in the closing decade of the 20th century.

Church, my friends, is--
among other things--
a training ground for confessing Christ before others.

Confessing him, here, today, is fine ...
indeed, it’s good, right, and necessary ...
but it's the others--
out there, beyond these four walls --
who need to hear
see, and
experience our confession.

We are really here, today, the be prepared and equipped to go our there
and confess Christ before a lost world
in word
and in deed.

And that is why I have come
to be be your pastor
your shepherd.
I have come to lead us in getting ready
to go out there
in the hard streets of life
and be the Discipples of Jesus Christ.

This is the Life of the Disciple.
It’s not easy
It’s not simple
It’s not quite
It’s not private.
But ...
It’s the only life for us.