There are some things you don’t forget. It was more than twenty five years ago, the place was the University of WA, Winthrop Hall, I don’t remember the occasion, but the speaker was the principal of a prestigious school. The subject was university education and the audience was secular, with a lot of university people; it was a full house. I remember what he said because it was surprising, offensive to many who were present. He said there were only three things to study: ourselves (the humanities), the world (the sciences) and God (theology). He more than implied that an education at UWA was incomplete.
He was right of course, but having inhabited the world of theological education for many years I know that the universities that do include it, what was originally the study of God’s revelation, has been replaced by the study of human ideas about God, or even studying what some humans think about the thoughts others have about God, and although such studies can be very interesting such an education is worse than useless when it comes to actually knowing God. So I am not unhappy that many universities in Australia avoid it, and it is left to churches and Christian colleges to do what they can.
Having a limited education is like losing your peripheral vision; you get by, but there is a lot you don’t see. Also a lot you cant do! Unemployment in South Africa is at forty percent. A lot of people are unemployable except as gardeners and cleaners because they have never had a decent education. Here in Australia we are very privileged with the education we do have. However, it has severe limitations when it comes to the big questions of life.
The person who knows nothing of God wanders around in a world without meaning like someone lost in a forest. Tracks run everywhere, there are signs pointing this way and that, and no lack of people to tell you the way. But none of it makes any long-term sense, and there seems to be no way out of the confusion. If you are content to play around until you die, I guess you can leave God out; we can mess around with our three-score years and ten, and perhaps be sort of happy, if that is all there is … but is it? What we need is someone from the outside, someone who knows. Which brings me to the subject of Jesus, and being his disciple.
The idea of having a guide through life by being someone’s disciple originated with the Greeks. You could join yourself to a philosopher and become his mathetes (discipulus in Latin); it meant a student. Your teacher understood the world and life. Study with him and you would have eyes – so it was claimed. It is curious that the Hebrews didn’t have such a word. Possibly it was because everyone knew that the law of Moses was the way to life; there was not much speculation, and different schools of thought were a thing of the future. But by the time of Jesus it had arrived. The rabbi with his disciples was a common sight. The disciple (talmid) was like an apprentice, who lived with and served his master, and whose aim was “not to lose a drop” of the teaching and to emulate his way of life. There is a story in the Talmud of a rabbi who was asleep one night with his wife beside him and was awakened by a sound. There were two disciples under the bed, and he was not pleased. But they pleaded that their job was not just to know what he taught, but also to study how he lived, so he had to forgive them.
It was common for a rabbi to have two or three, or at the most four disciples. The Talmud describes Rabbi Johanan ben Zacchai walking into Jerusalem on one occasion with his four disciples behind him; this was more than the usual number. So Jesus and the Twelve must have been an unusual sight. When they were travelling they were also accompanied by a band of woman. What a strange thing that must have seemed, even more so when someone pointed Mary Magdalene out to you and said she was once insane, and Joanna, whose husband was Herod’s Minister of Finance. “Does Jesus include women amongst his disciples?” was a natural question. That was something no rabbis at the time would countenance.
But when it was discovered that Jesus was happy to call disciples everyone who came to listen to his teachings and went away believing it was not so strange. The only parallel to this was the Pharisees, who sometimes called themselves disciples of Moses – but surely Jesus was not putting himself on a level with Moses!
Luke is particularly interested in Jesus and his disciples, not just the Twelve, but regarding every Christian as a disciple.[1] I have been studying the Bible for fifty years, but only while I was at George Whitefield College in May teaching a course on Luke-Acts did I notice that Paul does not use this word; in all his writings he never calls a Christian a disciple. The only NT writer who refers to Jesus’ followers after the resurrection as disciples is Luke in Acts. They all agree Jesus did so before.[2] There must be something going on here.
This morning’s reading (Luke 8.1-21) gives us an insight into Jesus’ understanding of what a disciple is – and Luke’s developed understanding. It starts with the Parable of the Sower. A farmer plants his crop. He moves across the ground spreading the seed a handful at a time. Not all of it is going to grow; the seed that falls on the hard path, or the rocky ground, or amongst thorns will never mature, but some will fall on good soil and grow up to produce a crop. Some seeds will produce thirtyfold, others one hundredfold. Then Jesus cried out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
First we need to know what the parable is about, for that was not at all clear to those who heard it for the first time. The disciples asked about it afterwards and Jesus told them it was about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God would come like a farmer sowing seed. That must have surprised them, because John the Baptist had said it would be like a farmer threshing his crop, separating the wheat from the chaff, storing the wheat and burning the chaff. They could relate well to that, not so well to the idea that they would need to go back to planting all over. Jesus explained that the seed was the word of God, the gospel he was announcing, but if that were so – then how the seed is received makes all the difference. The seed falling into good soil are those that hear the word with an honest and good heart, hold it fast and bear fruit with patience. The kingdom will result from the good seed of the gospel falling on good ground and finally delivering the harvest of the kingdom. So having “ears to hear” is what it is all about. “An honest and good heart” is a translators attempt to make sense of two words which often mean the same thing, but “a good and a good heart” doesn’t make for good reading. But the first of these “goods” would be better translated “capable”, which underlines the importance of how we hear. Jesus appeals to his audience not just to listen to his stories, but to think hard about what they mean, to swallow them, as it were – digest them, and let them produce a result. The right sort of hearing is critical. So that’s twice Jesus impresses on us the importance of hearing.
In Luke 8.18 Jesus appeals to his disciples a third time: “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away.” And Luke caps off the section by telling us what happened when Jesus’ family came to fetch him. Someone announced that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him. Jesus looked around and said, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Normally in a Gospel we consider it significant when we find something repeated once. Four times in this passage it is impressed upon us that discipleship is all about listening to Jesus, and working at understanding him, and making his teachings the bedrock of our lives. That is how the kingdom will come for those who will be part of it. For the others, even what they think they have will be taken away.
This is serious stuff. Do you see yourself as a disciple of Jesus? I hope you do – or will – because this is the way to eternal life and there is no other way. Jesus warns us that the person who hears his words and does not do them is like someone who builds a house without a foundation. When the storms come, as come they will, that house will be swept away (Luke 6.47-49).
I suspect Paul may not have used this word “disciple” because it suggested a student who had enrolled in a school. It was appropriate to those who followed Jesus around, but not after the resurrection. But that may be the very reason Luke continued to use it. For Luke a Christian is like a student in the Academy of Jesus. We are not just interested in what Jesus says, but we study it and make it our own.
In Luke 10 we are shown something to drive this home. A lawyer comes to Jesus and asks what he has to do to get eternal life. He tells him to keep the law, especially the law of love, and tells the story of the Good Samaritan to make it perfectly clear what this means. But that is not all Jesus had to say on this subject. Luke goes on to tell a story of Jesus in the home of the two sisters in Bethany. Martha was busy with the meal preparations, Mary was sitting at Jesus feet listening. Martha was undrstanably cross and asked Jesus to tell her sister to help. Jesus’ answer bears thinking about, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (10.41-42)
What is going on here? What is this one thing that is needful? Surely someone needed to get the meal? Surely a dutiful, law-keeping person would be helping in the kitchen? Yes, indeed, but we need to take care that in pursuing the law we do not miss what the law is all about. And what is that? The law is about eternal life; it is there to lead us to God. But God has come into Martha’s home and her sister Mary is at his feet listening. Mary is not just curious about the way to eternal life, but is experiencing and enjoying it in the form of fellowship with the king. The apostle John tells us, “This is eternal life: to know you, the one true God, and the one whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.” (John 17.3). If I am reading Luke correctly here, the one thing that is necessary is that we sit at Jesus’ feet and hear him – really hear him; in other words, to be his disciple. Mary is the essential disciple.
When we read on into the Acts of the Apostles Luke tells us about the life of the earliest Christians. Peter has preached on the Day Pentecost and three thousand people have believed and been baptized. And then we read that “they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” (Acts 2.42) The word “devoted” shows us what Christian life meant then, and what it should mean now. They were like university students – though many students I know think they can come to lectures and enjoy what they hear, and that will get them through their exams. But it takes more that an interested ear to master an area of study and make it your own. “Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,’ says the collect for the second Sunday in Advent. Perhaps we should say, “Hear, note, learn, inwardly digest and practice.”
I am conscious that when I talk about Luke, and point out the difference between he and Paul, that I am playing into the hands of those who want to set Scripture in opposition to Scripture and reduce it to a confusion of competing voices. That is not my intention. I believe that the whole of Scripture is God’s Word. Ultimately it speaks one message with one voice: God’s revelation in God’s words. But God has chosen to speak through various prophets and apostles and through the mouth of the Lord Jesus himself. Each of those messengers had his own personality and spoke to the situation of his own time. He needs to be understood in his own terms, if the full truth of God is to come through. That is why at times we need to look at how one author will say it differently to another.
What does John tell us about discipleship and the word of God? I’m not looking at everything John has to say, just a taste. Consider John 15. Jesus is talking to his disciples at the Last Supper. He tells them that God wants them to bear fruit, and he tells them how. He likens himself to a grapevine. His Father is the gardener. The gardener gets rid of the useless branches and prunes those that are fruit-bearing, so they will bear even more fruit. Jesus tells the disciples that they need to stay attached to him; the fruitfulness of the branches flows from the main stem. Detached we are useless. We know from many places in John that the way we bond to Jesus is through faith, through believing in him and trusting him.[3] But that is not the end of it. Three things he urges on them if they are to be fruitful: the word, prayer and love. “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” And then he goes on to speak of love. (John 15.7-14) So for John it is absolutely essential that Jesus’ words come to reside in us and become the foundation of our life. There are other aspects of discipleship, as there are in Luke, but learning the word of God is the first essential. That is why Luke stresses this idea of discipleship. Other things will flow from what we learn.
What about Paul? If you read 2 Timothy you will get a feel of how urgent Paul feels about the Word being preached and taught and learned. But for now let me point us to one of Paul’s prayers. All of his prayers are worth studying. They reveal what the apostle – what God – wishes most for us all. Take the prayer in Ephesians 1.16-19 as typical.
“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe…”
Paul wants believers to know and understand in full measure the immensity of what God is doing – and will do – in us and for us. He wants God’s revelation to be ours. That is why he writes, that is what he prays for. That is why God has preserved this letter for us today; it is just as much Paul’s prayer for us now as it was for them then. So we see that in his own peculiar way Paul is teaching the same truth as Jesus and Luke and John.
So where have we come? There is much that the Bible tells us about discipleship. We are only at the beginning, but it is an important beginning. I said at the start that the knowledge of God is essential if we are not to wander lost in the world. But how are we to find that knowledge? Jesus made it clear that there is only one way, by discipling ourselves to him. You can try other methods, but they will not result in you reaching the goal of knowing God and of knowing how to serve him. That is why I am not disappointed that some of our universities avoid the subject. Their secular mindset has no place for faith, and faith is essential if we are to make anything of God. Paul describes the church as “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Timothy 3.15), and note that he is speaking here of the local church. It is churches, that God has established to hold his truth, and teach it and defend it. It is churches as communities of disciples that can do that – churches where Jesus is believed in and worshipped – churches where the teaching finds a response in prayer and love.
But there two other institutions I would also mention, institutions where the word of God can be studied and treasured and practiced, and that is the family and the Christian school. Every family of Christians can be and should be a church, where two or three gather in Christ’s name and he is in your midst. I do not know if this is true of your family, but it can be, and I hope it will be. Set aside a time each day to sit at Jesus feet, to read God’s word together, and to pray: to practice discipleship, iff not every day, then often.
And the most natural extension of family and church is of course the school. Christians care about education, and about a balanced education. We are commanded to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, not with ignorant God-haters, but with descendants who will love God and seek to rule the world for him. To carry out their mandate they will need a good knowledge of the physical world (science), an understanding of people (humanities), and above all a knowledge of God and his will. There was a time when schools were seen as the natural extension of a society that believed in God, but no longer. It is time for Christians to look afresh at what we could be doing in the area of education. Christians were pioneers in education because they wanted to promote discipleship; it is time we reclaimed it and reunited it with its original purpose.
May God help us all as we and our children seek to be the Lord’s disciples.
[1] Mark use mathetes only of the Twelve. Matthew follows his lead, but does say that Joseph of Arimathea was a disciple.
[2] Matthew records Jesus looking forward and calling on the apostles to “disciple” the nations (Matthew 28.19)
[3] For example John 6.35.