What is Discipleship? with Kent Dobson

It's my privilege this morning to introduce to you our guest speaker.

We have a guest speaker.

I met Kent in person for the first time last year.

His name is Kent Dobson.

He was our tour guide over in Israel.

It was more of a pilgrimage really, which is why I liked.

You know why I like Kent is that he's just a deep individual and thinks deeply about a lot of things, and so when we were over in Israel there's all kinds of tours you can take over in Israel, but ours was, I feel, like a unique one, and then it was more of a pilgrimage like this spiritual journey as we journeyed in the footsteps of Jesus and other.

You know these other ancient Bible stories, but before that I actually had bought he has his own commentary on the Bible.

He has like an NIV commentary that he did all the commentary, for His background is in biblical studies and you'll hear a little more later on.

But so he's got this wealth of knowledge about the bible, the first century especially, and the jesus stories which were phenomenal that when we were in israel.

It's great to hear from from him on those, on those stories, and we've become friends over the last year or so, and then yesterday he spent a whole day with us and about 25 guys at a bob ruprecht's house doing our guys retreat just did some some wonderful things out there.

I cannot tell you what we did, it's top secret, you have to be a guy and you have to have been there.

So I'm just kidding.

But it was a good time to be with him and so, yeah, I wanted to have Kent come out and speak with our guys but also have him come share with you on Sunday morning Because, again, I think his knowledge about the Jesus stories ancient, biblical, you know sort of scholarship and things that are going on in these stories in the Bible it's second to not many at all and so it's my privilege to introduce.

Would you please give a warm welcome to Kent Dobson this morning.

Yeah, hey, everybody, it's nice to be here.

It's nice to see so many people here.

It's nice to be here.

It's nice to see so many people here.

Yeah, it's my privilege to be a part of this community, for today I felt very welcomed.

It's a lively place, which is very encouraging.

Because the first thing I want to say might sound a little discouraging when I lived in Israel, I moved there to graduate school almost 20 years ago now and I became friends with a priest there, an Anglican priest, and he used to say regularly he'd say you know, western society is moving spiritually backwards.

And I thought, well, the first thing I thought was this is kind of what old people say, you know, all right, this is kind of what old people say, you know, all right, we're moving backwards.

But I don't know the more years that have ensued since first hearing that there's something about that phrase that our Western culture, our Western world, is moving spiritually backwards.

That seems true to me, like, yeah, it does seem like we've lost our mooring, like we're a bit adrift and we don't know what to trust anymore.

Basic values and decency seem to be like, you know, water running through our hands, and not to mention I could mention a whole bunch of really dark things like politics.

I know that that's not the thing you're supposed to say at the beginning of the sermon start talking about politics.

But it's almost as if our political landscape has become a kind of new religion.

People are clinging on to it with almost like denominational fervor and fighting and it seems to be like a strange time.

Almost all traditions and institutions are being called into question.

I don't know if you've noticed that or not.

They're being questioned and pushed against and challenged.

You can say, well, that's just what the next generation always does, and I say well, perhaps, but there also seems to be something kind of that's spiritually backwards about our age.

In fact, I flew here.

I live in Georgia now.

I used to live in Michigan.

I just recently moved to Georgia.

That's where my wife's from and I was in the Atlanta airport this is the largest airport in the world, apparently, or the busiest airport in the world, and I was sitting there on my phone Okay, I'm not a saint, I'm sitting there on my phone and I put my phone down for a second and I looked up and this is a very busy airport and I'm not kidding you, I could not find one person who wasn't on their phone, even the people walking.

I thought this is strange.

Our culture is strange right now and the values that we're promoting, like fame and glitz and whatever's quick and instant and is flashy and interesting and tantalizing, and that's at our fingertips all the time and you wonder why people feel empty.

You wonder why people feel empty and they're hungry for something more.

And it seems to be like we're in that kind of age kind of like my friend saying the thing about Western cultures we're moving spiritually backwards and you could say, okay, maybe we should be concerned.

And yeah, maybe we should be concerned.

And I think about the time period of Jesus in light of some of this stuff.

Because, interestingly enough, jesus's time period, particularly the very beginning of Christianity, before it was a religion, it was just a little group of Jews who believed that Jesus was the Messiah.

It wasn't like a formalized institution in any respect was definitely a minority in the culture, definitely 100% a minority.

In fact, judaism about the time the first Christians were starting to wander around, the Roman Empire was banned and the Romans came in and they destroyed the temple in 70 AD I'm sure you've heard that story before the.

So the temple is destroyed and then there's another war with the Jews in 135 AD, and the Jewish people themselves, not to mention all the Christians who were, who were more or less Jews at that point, are sort of scattered to the wind here, and Christianity is not a legal religion For 300 years.

For 300 years, people, christians, who were followers of Jesus that's probably as simple as they would have called themselves just were followers of Jesus, this Messiah figure from Galilee.

Some of them had never even been to Galilee and never met of course, not met Jesus in person somehow still survived, which is interesting to me.

Somehow it was attractive enough that you're sitting here.

In other words, you're not Jewish.

I mean, maybe some of you are, you know your heritage is, I don't know, but probably most of you are not.

How did you end up here, in this part of the world, with a cross and with this whole conversation and with communion, this original meal that Jesus hands off to his disciples?

How is that possible?

How did that happen?

And the first thing I'd like to say about the how of that is it wasn't because Christians had any power.

In fact, they had zero power, I mean of the political kind.

They had zero power.

In fact, it was something of an underground movement, something of a counter-cultural movement.

So when I hear things like Western culture is moving spiritually backwards, I think, okay, that might not be such a good thing, but I don't know how much of a problem that is when you think about the origins of Christianity, when you think about how the thing was set up in the first place.

So what I want to ask today actually comes out of the gospel reading this morning, and that is how did this movement work?

What was the I don't mean to sound fancy methodology?

What was the methodology?

That was the word Ryan gave me.

I got to slip that in.

What was the methodology used to?

I don't want to say make this attractive, because I don't think Christianity was like a sales job okay, it's not, like you know, selling used cars but what made it interesting enough to people where they found a kind of orientation of value and a longing to be a part of this, when it was illegal in the first place?

And the answer to that is already right at the beginning of this scripture reading that we started with.

This is how Jesus begins.

He says come, follow me.

That's about as straightforward as you can get.

He doesn't say okay, wait a minute, I need you to believe five things, all right, and here's a little you know list and you check them off.

He says just come and find out what I'm doing.

That's it.

Come follow me.

And apparently they say, okay, and maybe they didn't have anything better to do.

They're like fishing's boring today.

Let's you know, let's go.

But that's how it begins and we call those people the disciples.

The passage that we just read is the calling of the disciples.

Now I want to read you briefly the very end of the Gospel of Matthew.

So just to reiterate Jesus begins by calling disciples and this is the final thing he says to them.

He says All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father.

Hey, come and find out what I'm a part of, come be a disciple.

And he ends by saying okay, come and find out what I'm a part of, come be a disciple.

And he ends by saying, okay, go make disciples.

Do you feel how like, utterly simple that is?

He doesn't say all right, let's take up an offering so we can build a church.

I mean, I'm not against these things, by the way but he doesn't say make sure you set up a nice hierarchical system and here are the five doctrines that you need.

He just says go make disciples.

And he says I'll go with you in a kind of a mysterious way.

He doesn't actually say how, but he's like I'll be with you in spirit, I'll go with you to the very end of the age, but all you have to do is do the thing that we've been doing, which is go make disciples.

So the first question I have is what is that?

What is a disciple?

And that might be.

You know, we could talk for the next hour or the next 10 years about such a question.

By the way, I used to be an evangelical pastor, so 20 minutes isn't long enough for any kind of talk, so I'll try to be I'm not saying that's better, you know 50 minutes you're like whoa, this is a lot.

In any case, what can we say in just a few minutes about the essence of being a disciple?

And I want to say a few things, and I want to start, of all things, with a kind of history lesson, because I can't help it and that's my background and that's interesting to me.

So I'll try to make it interesting to you, because here's something that's true about the word disciple and rabbi that's associated with it.

So Jesus is the rabbi and of course, the disciples are the disciples is that it's not mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament.

There are no rabbis anywhere.

In the first half of the thing, the Bible that's, you know, sitting under your pew no mention of disciples, no mention of rabbis.

It's completely, you know, it seems to come out of the blue.

That's the first take, and we would want to be curious about that.

Well, where did that come from and why?

Why was this suddenly important in the first century?

And of course, if we know a little bit of information about that, we can then ask why would Jesus say?

This is the thing I want you to carry forward.

So here's my brief history, lesson In five.

I'm sorry there's a lot of young people today like oh great, here we go.

In 586 BC, the Babylonians destroyed the first temple.

So this was Solomon's temple, if you're familiar with any of the Old Testament narrative here.

So Solomon built the temple.

It was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586.

And the Jews were taken into exile.

This is actually in the Old Testament.

This whole story is in the Old Testament.

The Jews are taken into exile and, interestingly enough, they do fairly well in Babylon.

The Babylonians get conquered by the Persians.

The Persians make Judaism, or the religion of the Israelites, legal, so the Jews are allowed to return back home.

They rebuild the temple, but, interestingly enough, most of the Jews stayed in Babylon for a long, long time.

There are still some Jews in Iraq today.

In fact, all the way from 586 BC, in any case, they faced a serious problem, and here was the problem how does our religion survive when we have no temple and no place and no land?

That is not an easy question.

No temple, no place to go, no land that's our own.

How are we going to survive?

You know what happened to most ancient peoples who were conquered and their religion?

They disappeared.

They assimilated into the.

Whatever the local religion was.

They disappeared, their traditions disappeared, and that's what Judaism faced in 586 BC.

What they decided to do was turn their attention to this thing that we call the Bible or the Torah.

They called it the Torah and they said okay, if we have no temple, we have no place to gather anymore and priests don't really matter.

What's a priest going to do out there in Babylon?

He's got nothing to do, no animals to cut up, no burnt sacrifices.

What are we going to do?

They said let's turn our attention to the text.

And that's exactly what they did.

They started copying it, memorizing it, having conversations about it, arguing about it I don't know if you've ever met any Jewish people, but arguing about the Torah making a central part of their communal life.

They even started gathering in small settings, which later they called the Bet Knesset, which gets translated into Greek as the synagogue.

So the synagogues were born in exile and all a synagogue was was a gathering place.

This is a synagogue by technical definition a place where people assemble.

And what do they do?

They look at this text, they read things, they talk about it, they wonder about it, they argue about it and they make that central and right.

During this time, the people who happen to be pretty good at talking about the Torah and interpreting the Torah how do we keep these laws later came to be called rabbis, and all a rabbi was was a term of respect, it's not a formal.

They didn't go to seminary like rabbi, seminary or something.

It's just whoever in the community had a certain foundation in the text.

It's just whoever in the community had a certain foundation in the text, had good interpretations of the Torah, was a model person.

That was the rabbi, and then if you were wanting to study with the rabbi, you could do so, and thus you have the system of rabbi-disciple.

So when Jesus comes onto the scene, when people start calling him rabbi, we know right away he's an expert in the Torah and he's like living a life that is worthy of emanating in some way, and if you like that sort of thing, you're attracted to it.

You can become a disciple of that particular rabbi.

Now there's, by the way, a slight difference.

Most of the time you started following a rabbi, usually around the age of like 14, something like that.

I'm just giving you general numbers from like.

It's a bit.

Scholarships is a bit tricky when it comes to this question how old were the disciples?

But most of the time it's young people who begin a life following a rabbi around.

It's not like 40-year-old guys with beards like all right, jesus, let's go do something.

I mean more than likely the disciples who are fishing are just young people, and then they get to follow Jesus around for a while.

They learn from him, they put into practice his teachings?

That sort of thing.

Have I made sense?

Teachings that sort of thing, have I made sense?

Now, here's the simplest definition I can give you as to what a disciple is.

The word is talmid in Hebrew, if you want to know the word, but it means student.

Now, that's not like a big shock, I'm sure, but think about the difference between being a student and an expert.

And what Jesus is saying is I want students.

And the very last thing he says to his students is go find more students.

He doesn't say, okay, now you get to graduate and I'm gonna give you a special wand that's gonna be your rabbi wand, and now you're an expert.

He says no, remain students.

Jesus, think about Jesus's line.

Unless you change and become like a child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

Now I have kids, you know.

So I know everything.

I okay, I'll just be more direct.

What is a kid?

You know?

How does a kid move and operate in the world?

Well, with a lot of curiosity, a lot of wonder, a lot of questions, a lot of challenges.

I don't know if my kids, you know, they don't always listen, all right, but that kind of spirit is what Jesus is saying this is the center of my movement.

I want students.

I want them to be like kids.

I want them to be open and curious and learn and put this stuff into practice, and that's my big idea for spreading the gospel.

And he leaves it at that.

You go do it.

And apparently they took it seriously enough that you're here, they took that model seriously enough that you and I are somehow a part of this are disciples in our own way.

So you can begin to ask yourself questions like well, what's my relationship with being a student of this?

By the way, I think churches might fare a little better.

You know, the fastest growing group in America are the nuns, not like the nuns with habits, but like those who have no particular religious affiliation.

Are you familiar with that?

The fastest growing group of, and most of those people who might call themselves spiritual but not religious by the way, I'm not against this, you know.

I'm just saying this is a major group of people don't want anything to do with religious gatherings, religious organization or any kind of organized religion.

And you can ask yourself why.

You probably know the answers.

But here's one possibility because hardly any of them are acting like students.

We're much more prone to act like.

We have the truth and nobody else does.

We're the experts.

You're a bunch of idiots, not you.

Of course you wouldn't send out this vibe, but others have been known to send out this vibe okay, but it's like we haven't listened very well to the final words.

That Jesus says Just go be a student, try it, learn it, put it into practice.

That Jesus says just go be a student, try it, learn it, put it into practice.

I trust that you can do these things, you can embody these teachings.

You go love your neighbor as yourself.

That's very hard to do.

I don't even like my actual neighbor all that much, to tell you the truth.

I mean, I'm serious.

He's not here so I can say this, but it's difficult.

But he says you go do it.

And how are you going to go do it?

You be a student of these things.

You try, you try it, you put it on, you embody this, you carry it forward.

You put it on, you embody this, you carry it forward.

I'll be with you in some mysterious way, but it's for you to carry.

And it seems that Jesus trusts that such a thing is so countercultural that it doesn't matter what the spiritual climate is what the political climate is.

Who's ruling?

Who's ruling where?

Where the power systems are?

For most of Christianity, it just flowed like an underground river, and you and I can be a part of that.

So what's your relationship like with just being a student, just putting one foot in front of the other?

Am I making sense?

Okay, okay, Okay, one more piece here.

I want to end with a little story.

It's a story that probably all of you have heard, and I want to just sort of draw out a couple of things that I hear in this story at least.

So the Sea of Galilee is a lake.

I know it sounds kind of fancy, the Sea of Galilee, but it's a lake.

You have lakes in Minnesota that are probably 10 times the size of the Sea of Galilee, but it's significant in this respect.

It's about 600 feet below sea level and it's surrounded by mountains, and some of those mountains are almost a thousand feet above sea level.

So weird things happen with the weather because of the altitude, and so it's not uncommon for just this little lake to have a big storm whip up.

I've been there many times during a storm, and this is what happens to the disciples.

They're fishermen, they know the lake, they know what they're doing.

Okay, they're out there and they're traveling from one town to the next by boat along the shore, which was very common, they all grew up doing this but it's a storm and it says the wind is against them, so they're like rowing.

I'm sure they're saying what are we even doing out here?

It's ridiculous, or whatever young kids are likely to say, whatever kind of cuss words were available in Hebrew.

They're rowing, okay, and they're making their way along the shore and Jesus is not there, which is classic.

He's often MIA in situations like this.

Even sometimes the disciples come looking for him.

They can't find Jesus.

He heals somebody, he runs away, he feeds people, he hides in the mountains.

He's got this very sort of like appear, disappear sort of relationship with crowds and he's not there.

They're rowing along and then it says something interesting it's night and it says Jesus comes out to them walking on the lake and in one of the Gospels, maybe Mark, it says and he was about to pass them by, which I always think is a little bit funny, I know it's like hey, you know, just go this way now, and so anyway, it's a bit of an odd scene and my guess is none of the disciples that had ever seen anyone walking on water.

So they're freaked out, they think it's a ghost, they're scared, they're frightened.

They're in the boat and Peter says something very interesting.

Peter says to Jesus if it's you, tell me to come out to you on the lake.

And Jesus says, okay, come, which echoes the very first thing he said to Peter, except Peter didn't have a question.

Jesus said to him come, follow me.

And then, however, I don't know a couple years later, they're in this boat and Peter says if it's you, tell me to come out to you on the lake.

Now pause for a moment and just remember a disciple is a student and one of the things they're meant to do is follow the rabbi around and learn from him and put into practice whatever he's teaching and to be like him.

So it's a very simple question, or it's a very simple answer to the question why is Peter doing that?

Because he's trying to be like Jesus.

It's like that, straightforward.

All right, if this thing is real and I'm really a disciple, all right, let's find out and I'll follow you.

In this sense, I'll try it and you probably know the story.

He gets out of the boat and maybe it works for a second.

I mean, it doesn't exactly say.

It's like it appears to work for a moment.

And then he starts sinking.

And I don't think any of the other 11 were that surprised, like okay, yeah, this is what happens, all right.

And Peter sinks and then Jesus reaches out his hand and pulls him back up and says those famous words oh you of little faith.

And I remember hearing that as a kid and I thought, oh, jesus is kind of like criticizing Peter.

He's sort of saying like you know, you should have believed more, or something like that.

Or you know, or probably what I was hearing is you're an idiot, you know.

Or probably what I was hearing is you're an idiot, you know, something like that.

But I don't really hear it that way anymore.

In fact, I think something else is going on about the nature of the relationship between the rabbi and the disciple.

In one sense, I think Jesus is quite proud of Peter for doing such a thing.

Guess who's not doing it?

All of the 11, you know, guess who's not doing it All of the 11, you know they're like you go first, you know, we'll find out what happens.

So Peter has, in a way tremendous courage to give this a try and he fails, and that's also not a problem to Jesus.

He just says, okay, you don't have that much faith, fine.

And he pulls him back up again.

So to me, the essence of being a student in this respect that's what I hear in this story is just try.

That's it.

Just try and guess what.

It's not always going to go that well, and that's also okay.

Jesus is the kind of person who reaches out a hand.

What could Jesus have done?

He could have been like all right, peter, I don't know how Jesus would mock Peter, but that's what I was trying to do, you know.

Like, oh, you can't swim you know wherever, I don't know, but that's not it at all.

He just says, all right, try again.

And pulls him back up again.

I think, in a way, probably the arrest of the 11 felt more embarrassed than Peter, did you know?

At least he said well, I did it, you know.

So I think there's something powerful about what Jesus is offering here and why this story is recorded in the Gospels.

That, in a sense, no matter what the age is like, like Jesus says, I'll go with you to the end of the age, no matter what the news cycle is constantly spinning through.

The invitation is very simple Just be a student here.

Just be a student Like.

What's the difference between this row of kids in their first communion and you?

I'd say nothing, not really.

You know, we're just students, we're in this together.

Jesus, by the way, says let no one on earth call you rabbi, let no one on earth call you rabbi If you have one rabbi, the Messiah.

That means we're all students.

You're a disciple, I'm a disciple, you have some faith, you know.

Your neighbor has less faith, it doesn't matter, you know.

And one more PS.

Oftentimes, when we hear the word faith like because Jesus says, oh, you have little faith we think, usually think about belief.

That's the way most Westerners hear, that they're like oh yeah, faith is what you believe.

Like if I said you know, I believe the Vikings are gonna win the Super Bowl, you'd say that guy has a lot of faith.

All right, wow, what a believer.

All right, that's how we ordinarily think about it, but that's not really so much like the way the Hebrew people thought about faith.

In fact, abraham is called a person of faith because he left his family, his country and his father and went to a land that he had never heard of before.

There's always an action component to it.

I'm not saying belief is unimportant.

Belief is.

You know, belief is fine.

It's kind of like an on-ramp, but it's an on-ramp for what?

It's an on-ramp for action.

It's for like taking like just one step out of the boat.

That taking like just one step out of the boat, that's it.

And Jesus says if you have even faith or we might translate action that's as small as a mustard seed, you can move mountains.

That comes right out of the mouth of Jesus.

So, yeah, this feels like a good place to stop.

So I wanna end with a benediction.

I wanna end with a benediction that I've come to learn is common here, but I'll tell you a little history about it.

It's called Aaron's Benediction, and my archaeology professor in graduate school found a very tiny scroll in a tomb around the neck of a woman, and it was a very tiny scroll and he was unsure how to unravel it because, I mean, I don't know when the last time you unraveled a silver scroll was, especially an ancient one, and so he had to get some lasers and he was able to cut the scroll and he very carefully unrolled it, and this is what it said on the scroll.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

May the Lord cause his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and may he give you shalom peace.

Thanks for listening, amen.