May 30-June 3, 2022
Reflections on Discipleship from Matthew 28
Dis-integrated
June 3, 2022 • Stew Sheckler • Matthew 25
In Jesus’ description of the final judgment in Matthew 25 we often overlook a startling detail. Jesus said the King will judge all people by how they treated him when he was hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked, sick, and in prison. Both the righteous and the wicked, however, respond the same way: "Lord, when did we see you hungry…thirsty…a stranger…naked…sick or in prison?” And Jesus answered both groups the same way, “I say to you, as you did [or did not do] to one of the least of these you did [or did not do] it to me.” Here's the surprising and important detail: it is clear from the story that the righteous showed compassion and kindness without knowing they were serving Jesus. It wasn’t like the righteous were in on the secret and the wicked were not. The righteous did not offer food, drink, clothing, or medicine to strangers because they knew each person was Jesus incognito. That raises a critical question: Why did the righteous show kindness if they weren’t doing it to earn points on God’s final exam? The answer is that they lived integrated lives. The righteous do not compartmentalize their lives into categories of “sacred” and “ordinary;” they do not view some activities or people as important to God and others as unimportant. They do not limit their devotion to Sunday morning or the confines of a church or cathedral. Their love for God flows into all aspects of their lives, including how they see and act toward strangers. Justice marks all their relationships. There is no indication in Jesus’ story that the “goats” whom he casts away were irreligious or followers of bad theology. Their great error was that they kept their devotion to God within the neat boundaries of religious activity. Their commitment to Christ was disconnected from the other parts of their existence. Therefore, when they encountered the hungry, sick, and poor in the ordinary course of life, their faith had no role to play. The question Matthew 25 ought to provoke is this: How has your devotion to Christ and commitment to kingdom justice been integrated into every aspect of your life, or do you prefer to keep religion at church?
Escape
June 2, 2022 • Stew Sheckler
No one can deny that mobile phones have profoundly changed the way we live, and many people now consider the devices essential to their lives. Pew Research found many teenagers put their phones in the same category as air and water and would rather have a finger cut off than give up their phone. The rise of devotion to our phones has had an inverse effect on our commitment to everything else. In the past, less immediate communication meant plans had to be made and committed to well in advance. Today, plans are held loosely, can be changed on the fly with a text, or can be dropped at the last minute. Access to social media also fuels FOMO (fear of missing out), which erodes any incentive to make firm commitments. Options must be kept open in case something more exciting appears. This constant access to information and communication means our commitments now carry an implicit or explicit escape clause. “I’ll be at the dinner unless a better opportunity comes along—in which case I’ll text you.” For every commitment we make, we are turning down all the others we could have made instead. Economists refer to this as the “opportunity cost.” Consider how much easier it is to order at Chipotle, with its very limited menu, versus ordering at The Cheesecake Factory where the menu is a 21-page spiral-bound book. When we perceive there to be few opportunities, it’s easier to make commitments. But the more opportunities we have, the more difficult it becomes to choose just one. Smartphones are an infinite scroll of opportunities, an endless menu of people and experiences. It’s no wonder Millennials are suffering from prolonged adolescence. Maturing into adulthood, after all, is defined by the ability to make and keep commitments. This aversion to commitment makes Jesus’ call to discipleship that much more challenging. He tells us to “count the cost” before we make the choice to follow. Those costs including the many opportunities we will miss because we’ve chosen Jesus’ way rather than another path. And unlike the loose commitments that we expect in our culture, when we commit to Jesus there is no escape clause. There is no going back, no reverse gear, no jumping ship when something better comes along.
Growth
June 1, 2022 • Stew Sheckler • John 6
I had a “church growth” assignment in college. We were studying growing churches and we were asked to do an assignment questioning if the church we attended was growing or not. I went to the library and picked up several books, looking for help. Many of the books written for pastors were little more than business books with a spiritual veneer. To be fair, some of these books were both thoughtful and helpful to those managing a ministry’s staff, budget, and resources. Other books, however, saw the church as just another corporation. For example, one book written about church growth included a chapter titled “Bigger is Better.” The authors said, “a church should always be bigger than it was. It should be constantly growing.” And they “believe that bigger is what God intended for his church. Consider Jesus’ ministry on earth. Wherever he went, growing crowds gathered to hear what he had to say.” My jaw dropped when I read that. Had these people ever read the gospels? If they had, it was a very selective reading that fixated on the scenes of large crowds, but conveniently overlooked the many times when Jesus was rejected. They ignored the fact that Jesus’ ministry was not “growing.” And despite thousands gathering to hear him preach in Galilee, by the end of his earthly ministry only a handful of followers remained. The gospels reveal that Jesus was not interested in growing crowds; he was interested in growing disciples. Sometimes those two things were opposed to one another. For example, in John 6 huge crowds were following Jesus after he had fed them with just a few loaves and fish. They were attracted by his miracles, and they wanted more. Instead, Jesus challenged their ideas and called them follow him. By the end of the chapter, the crowds had abandoned him and only his twelve disciples remained. Apparently, Jesus hadn’t yet heard that, in ministry, bigger is always better. Scripture is clear that God wants all people to find life, but sometimes leaders can become more fixated on how many are coming rather than why they are coming. Finding life with God can become second to the church metrics of success. After all, a church can survive if people don’t find Christ, but not if people don’t give money or volunteer. Rather than lowering the bar to ensure as many people as possible joined his crowd, Jesus raised the bar and called any would-be disciples to join him.
Discipleship means "Learn to rule"?
May 31, 2022 • Stew Sheckler • Matthew 28, Genesis 1:26–28
Although we were created to rule over the earth, the evidence is overwhelming that we don’t rule the way God’s image-bearers should. Thankfully, this distortion has also been repaired by Jesus. When we come into unity with him, we are set free from the power of sin in our lives and equipped to rule as God intended us to rule. But this does not happen automatically. As the people of Christ, we are committed to an active process of learning how to rule as he intended. Historically the church has called this process discipleship. Too often, we limit discipleship to mean learning religious stuff—how to read the Bible, understand theology, or serve in church programs. Such things may function to make a person religious. These activities are good and valuable, but they will do little to help a person learn to rule in areas of life beyond religious activities. The goal of discipleship is not to make us into good churchgoers, nor is it simply to “make disciples who make disciples who make disciples,” as the popular, but myopic, saying goes. The true goal is to form us into our full, God-ordained human calling. Discipleship, therefore, must engage all of one’s life and not merely one’s religious life. For example, I have authority over my body, my money, my children, my marriage, my time, my relationships, my work, and many other things. As I live with God, I am learning to rule over all these things as his image-bearer, accurately representing him and manifesting his character in all that I do. This has significant implications for the way we think about the role of the church and ministry in our lives. If we take this vision of human purpose seriously, then the goal of any church should NOT be to extract teachers, stockbrokers, bricklayers, or artists from their existing commitments to get them involved in church activities. Nor should the goal be to see some of these people exchange their existing vocations to enter “full-time ministry.” Instead, the goal ought to be equipping them to teach, trade stocks, lay bricks, and create art as Jesus would if he were they. Making disciples means empowering people to rule over the life God has already assigned them as his representatives. How would your world (home, work, relationships, etc.) be different if you welcomed God’s way of ruling into every part of your life?
Cheap Discipleship
May 30, 2022 • Stew Sheckler • Matthew 28
If the whole point of Jesus’ life was to deliver us from evil through his substitutionary death and resurrection, why didn’t he just appear on Good Friday and fulfill his mission? Why bother with 30+ years of poverty, sacrifice, and human frailty before going to the cross? This question stands upon several bad assumptions, the biggest is that Jesus’ mission was only to die and rise again. During the years preceding the cross, Jesus demonstrated for us how to live in unending communion with the Father—including the struggles, temptations, and graces it requires. The New Testament is clear that Jesus, although fully divine, also knew the challenges of being human. Luke says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature.” The writer of Hebrews, in one of the letter’s more confusing passages, says, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered.” This fact is important. Jesus shows us that a life with God is one of development and discipline, progress, and struggle. The Christian life is not a passive calling punctuated by unexpected moments of miraculous deliverance. This carries important implications for us as we pray. While it may be appropriate to pray authoritatively for a person’s deliverance, it should not be used as a replacement for a life of disciplined obedience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer called being indifferent to sin because God has promised to forgive us “cheap grace.” Those who bypass the deliberate cultivation of obedience because they expect God to deliver them from every evil via authoritative prayer are practicing cheap discipleship. Authoritative prayer is not a magical incantation. It is not a ‘Get Out of Trouble Free’ card every Christian holds in her deck. Instead, it must be seen as just one of the resources we access in our apprenticeship to Jesus. It accompanies—but never replaces—our call to walk humbly with our God. So how will you walk humbly today? What act of obedience do you need to engage with today? How can you allow God to teach you today?