Public Discipleship

Proper 7, Year A

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Lives of us. We often think that discipleship is best formed in our personal homes behind the door, in our prayer closets, in our personal study of Scripture, and in our personal prayers. And this is right and good. We do have a private life that disciples us from God's Word. But here in our gospel lesson today, we are confronted, as Jesus teaches us, that discipleship is not just private alone. It's also public. And it is the life of a disciple to be public. But how are we to be public? You often think about two people in love. You know they're in love because of their public display of affection, right? You can just witness people holding hands or kissing and hugging. And many times you might even hear somebody beckon from a car that's passing by, get a room, right? That's what usually happens with extreme amounts of public displays of affection. Well, what I want to talk to you today, and what Jesus wants to teach you and guide you in, is not just the private life of the disciple, but also the public life of the disciple. And this is where he begins. He begins with himself. The public life of the disciple begins with its calling. That you're not just to remain at home, you're not to remain private, you're not to think of things on your own, but you are to embody and to live out discipleship following Jesus himself. You are not to become a master, you are not to become the teacher. Jesus says, it is good enough for you to be like the teacher and the master. Well, what are we supposed to be like? And as he begins to walk through this in our passage, we begin to see what public discipleship, which you are called to do, looks like, and what you are to live out. First, he immediately off the uh the first thing that he says off the cuff is he says that you are to be like me. And if you are to be like me, you are to expect some hostility. You are to be expected to be called even crazy, because that's what they said about Jesus. They called him Bezebub. And he is the head of the house. How much more when you publicly display your following after Jesus, will they also malign you, Jesus said. I don't know if you were paying attention to the readings, but a lot of the readings from Jeremiah and even our psalm reading that we said back and forth had to do with our enemies saying things that are wrong about us. But Jesus wants you to expect this. So right out of the gate, your public display of discipleship is going to look a little crazy to the world because they thought Jesus was a little crazy. And so he tells you and teaches you and guides you to embrace the crazy. Don't be confronted with it. Instead, learn to what your value is. He goes on to teach you about sparrows and how much attention, the sparrows that could be sold for a penny or a cent, how much attention that the Father gives these sparrows. And yet Jesus reveals that you are more valuable than a bunch of sparrows. So valuable that to count the number of hairs on your head, which you might think isn't that big of a deal, even that act is a big deal to the Father. And think about it this way: that if you were to lose every hair on your head because the world despises you, it is God who remembers the number and restores the number of hairs on your head. He is the one that lifts your life out of the grave. He is the one that knows you intimately and will restore you. And this is the confidence that you are to embody as you go about publicly being a disciple of Jesus Christ and following after him. But you're also, Jesus reveals and teaches us, that public discipleship is one that confesses things. You have a mouth, and he expects you to use it in the public arena of discipleship. He says, What I teach you quietly, and what I whisper in your ear, you are to declare on the housetops. You are supposed to run your mouth as a disciple in public. But not just running your mouth on any which way, but the things that Christ has revealed. It is not enough to sit here and have Christ teach you. Christ says that these are right and good things, and you are informed. Now take your information, take your revelation from the Word of God, and now go proclaim it. This is what a public life of following after Jesus, being a disciple, looks like. But what they cannot do is take from you your soul. But God the Father can kill both body and soul. He can also restore it. And so fear becomes this thing in the life of a disciple publicly that they embody, that they have this confidence, knowing that they are valued by the Father, but they also go fearing him. And so that is what fuels their very action publicly. It's like this. I remember when I was in high school, I attended this weekend retreat as a youth group, and I was always fearing man's opinion about myself. I wanted people to like me. I hated if somebody hated me. I wanted people to like me, and so often that would motivate what I often did. I would go about high school making sure I'm saying hi to all the right people because I wanted those people to like me. My actions were determined by who I feared. And then this leader at this weekend retreat taught me something invaluable. He says, the life of a Christian acts only for one. He is only motivated by the thoughts of one. He is only influenced and feared or fearing of one, and that is God. And he challenged us that weekend to not live to gain approval by man or the world. But there's only one. It's really simple. Only one, God the Father, as He watches you, as He knows you, as He sees you, you are to fear Him and then make that your motivation for what you do. So when you go and display your discipleship publicly, you are embodying this confidence, but you're also embodying the fact that it doesn't matter what they say about you, you are committed to a God who you fear and love. This is what Jesus teaches about public discipleship. That we declare truth, that we embrace the crazy, that we communicate with our mouths, that we have something to say that is revealed to us in private, that we are to publicly fear God and act for the audience of one, that we are valued by God the Father, but he also says that we are to go and separate ourselves from the world. Our public actions as disciples ought to look extremely different than the world. This is when Jesus refers to even the household, the family, on all those close relationships. What he is saying is that he did not come to make peace, but he comes bringing a sword. How are we to understand this? I thought Jesus was the Prince of Peace Peace is the result of the type of sword that Jesus wields. Think about it like this: the world, as we know, is sinful. As you confess, you have sinned. Sin is a disease, it's a sickness that needs to be remedied. And only Christ offers the remedy. But how is it that he goes about healing the world? He separates. His sword is a scalpel that seeks to cut out the sin and separate the whole person from it, so that they might live a healthy, good, and right life. This is the work of the public disciple. He continues, the scalpel wielding of Christ Himself. That when we speak into the lives of others in our area of influence, it is going to be sharp, cutting bone and marrow, out of love, because we do not want them to continue to live in their disease, but we want them to be healed and separated from it. This is why, if those, even in your household, your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your daughter, your son, if they are living in sin and are sick, you are to present to them the scalpel of Christ. They want to be healed. You have the remedy. But that remedy doesn't always taste like Mary Poppins would lead you to believe. Just a spool full of sugar helps the medicine go down. We don't do that. We don't sugarcoat anything. And to the world, the gospel may seem like poison, but it is the remedy, it's the medicine that the world needs. And that's what we need to wield. We need to get over this concept that we're not confrontational as Christians. Jesus teaches us here very plainly that just by following him by that basic standard, you're going to be confrontational. So how do you confront lovingly and intentionally? This is what public discipleship is. He prepares you to engage his life out in the world, which will confront the world with its sin. I don't know if you have ever experienced this, but have you ever tried to talk to somebody who is nothing but prideful? You cannot tell them anything. They have all the right answers. They rebuke and will push down anybody who opposes them. And that is yet what we are sent out into. We are sent out as sheep among wolves. That is what Jesus has said earlier to us. Think of that image. The tenderness, the obedience of a sheep to a shepherd in the midst of wolves that love to devour sheep. And yet Jesus says, this is public discipleship. You should expect confrontation, hostility, and yet you're still supposed to declare. You're still supposed to speak. You're still supposed to live that life that is confrontational to them, but if they would receive it, they could be healed from it. We are to be separate from the world. A point of application is how much of your life as a disciple following Christ looks more like the world or less like the world? Do we pattern our lives after everybody we claim to be in the world? This is one that's really challenging for many of us. Because what the world offers us doesn't seem necessarily wrong or bad, but does your life reflect a life of the world or Christ's life, which the world absolutely rejected, even to the point that they wanted to get rid of him and kill him? Is your life experiencing the same struggles that Jesus experienced? These are really quite good questions for us to be asking. Does our life reflect the master who owns our life? Does our life look like the teacher who is instructing our life? And how do we know that we are living the right life? Because Christ is the master. He left his father, came down, dwelt among us, and then lived among a world that is hostile to him, a world that despises him, a world that is riddled with the sickness of sin, and yet he lived perfectly among it, demonstrating and being an example for us to follow. And that is what Jesus is calling each and every one of us to display publicly. We are not given, we are given an example to live this public discipleship in Christ's own life. We know that how to love in the midst of being confrontational. We know how to love in the midst of hostility. We know how to love even to the point of death. Why? Because we literally have the life of Christ that we can read about that governs our lives. And he says, You are not Christ, I am Christ, but it is good enough for you to become like me. And just walk in my steps. Embody my life. Allow me to teach you. And don't be confused by the ways of the world, but be confirmed in what I'm teaching you through my word, how to live. Christ is our exemplar. He's the one that leads the way. He's not asking anything for you to do publicly that he didn't do publicly and fully, and even better. This is something that is profound to me. And I often say, every time it brings it brought up in the text, Christ always does first what he asks us to do when we follow him. When Christ says, take up your cross and follow me, it's because he's already taken up the cross so that you can follow him. He is not asking you anything that he hasn't done already. He leads us in the way. So you don't have to travel or endure public discipleship alone or in ignorance. Christ gives you his word and the example of his own life and just says, do that. Do exactly what I've done. And what does this all mean? To what end does public discipleship lead? That if you were to commit to the ways of Christ and following after his life and commit to both private and public discipleship, where do we find ourselves? What's the hope that we have? What's the reward? And Jesus says something very profound. He says, if you do this, if you engage in public discipleship and with your life, confess me in the world, among your family, if you endure their hostility, and if you love them with the scalpel, and if you confront them with the truth, and you confess me with your life, then I will do something for you that is something every person needs. I will confess you to my father, the one who knows you. Yeah, I'll declare that your name to my father, and you will receive an eternal reward. You will not have to worry about being separate from the Father, the one that you fear. You will get to engage with him and live with him for the rest of your life. That's the reward. Think about Jesus' own life. Isn't that the reward he got for living the way he did? He endured the cross, resurrected, and then where does he go? To his father. The same happens to us. When we follow after Christ and we walk his life out in our very own, we too will come to find that we are dying to ourselves, but then we will be raised up and we will be seated with Christ in the heavenlies next to the Father. That's our reward. That is the reward of public discipleship. That is why Jesus teaches not only to engage in the private life and unity and communion with Him, but that prepares you to go and live out publicly your discipleship. Discipleship is a full-bodied, all-encompassing life. It tells us, he teaches us what to do privately, but also publicly. Private discipleship prepares us for our public discipleship. Public discipleship results in Christ confessing our name to the Father, which reaps eternal rewards. So let us not be complacent with the private life of discipleship. God has cut us out of the world to display our full discipleship, which is both private and public. When you display and demonstrate discipleship publicly, you become like Christ, who left his Father's throne above to dwell among us and display publicly how life is in this world, how life can be lived in this world that is confrontational, that ridicules, that is hostile, that divides and is sinful. He teaches us how to live in the midst of that. It is enough for you to be like the Master, Christ, he says. So will you leave your quiet and private life, dwell in the world, and love others as Christ loved you? If you do this, it will be enough for him to confess you to his father, and you will have an eternal life as your reward. Let's pray.