Discipleship at Messiah

Happy are those who are persecuted because of righteousness. Matthew 5:10

If you are a Christian what effect does this have on what happens to you?  What kind of reaction can you expect from the world?

We have been talking about the character traits of one who is a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven, a disciple of Jesus, a Christian.  It is a person who is aware of her need, cares for others, doesn’t have to be in control, desires God and right, is merciful and forgiving, single-minded in devotion to God, and is engaged in the job of bringing people to God and each other.

What a wonderful person!

As Billy Graham says we would expect to hear everyone sing, “For he’s a jolly good fellow.”

But in the last beatitude, the only one on which He elaborates, Jesus throws cold water on that notion—Happiness is to suffer for Jesus.

Most Christians have not squarely faced this statement.  There are those who clearly reject it.  They contend it is only of historical interest, or special circumstances or for our own sins.  However, persecution for the sake of Christ is a reality in 2010.  Does that mean it applies only to certain groups who are in circumstances where it is a reality.  Or does it have something to do with the nature of discipleship and its relation to society in any time and place.  I confess that I do not fully know what to do with it.

One thing is sure.  The Bible is very much concerned with persecution, opposition, suffering for those who follow Jesus.  Here are a few examples:

• All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. II Timothy 3:12
• In the world you will have tribulation. John 16:33
• In Matthew 10 Jesus promises not peace but division.

Friction with the world is the normal expectancy for Jesus’ band.  Christians are a minority.  Jesus never left any doubt as to the consequences of following Him.  They would be strangers, pilgrims, peculiar people, misfits, odd, abnormal, wet-blankets and disloyal.  If you follow Jesus you’re in for trouble.  Someone once said, “Jesus promised His disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.”

If you would walk the road with Jesus be prepared to walk a lonely road.  Trouble, persecution is not a sign of unfaithfulness.  In fact the ultimate judgment of the world on a person who perfectly reflected the Beatitudes was a cross—Jesus.

The return however is happiness.  Happiness Is—not about the things which make you happy, but kind of person who will be happy under any circumstances.  It is the person reborn by God’s grace through trust in Jesus.  To that person happiness is a miraculous gift from God.  Read all 8.

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Happy are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. -Matthew 5:9

The NT says that the natural state for human beings is hostility—hostility to God, our self, others.  I don’t mean that natural state is hatred, as ordinarily understood, but rather division.  We don’t think like God, act like God, or see like God.  The more we come to know our selves the more we discover a division, a tension within us: For I do not do what I want. (Romans7:15).  The closer we get to another person, the more we discover our differences.

We are all infected to one degree or another with the “everyone for herself/himself” syndrome—the isolation of human kind from one another.  This produces a basic insecurity which we seek to alleviate by position or power or wealth.  It may be camouflaged for a while but someone has said, “If you and I are on an island and you have the loaf of bread, you will never sleep.  We will never have peace as long as we are afraid that others want what we have—our vested interests, power, possessions, prestige.

But if the natural state is hostility, God’s goal, objective in the gospel is peace.  Making peace is the essence of God’s work.  God is the great peacemaker, and those who are engaged in that work are his children.
The basic hostility is between you/me and God.  Until that is settled, there is no hope of bringing the world together.  God in Christ has acted: broken down the wall. (Ephesians 2:14  )  You might say, “I don’t feel hostile to God—enmity as the Bible puts it.  But unless surrendered to Him we are rebels, undermining his kingly rule and plan.

We also must make peace with ourselves (peace is indivisible).  Many personal conflicts are the result of inner conflicts—guilt, insecurity, low self-esteem—all kinds of unresolved personal conflicts distort our relationships.

When we peace with God and ourselves, we are ready to make peace with others.  We are talking about sweeping differences under the rug for the sake of a false absence of conflict.  Nor are we talking about a truce—uneasy and fragile, broken at least provocation.

The Bible, Jesus are clear.  If you are not part of God’s peace movement, you are not a follower/disciple of Jesus.

Peace is God’s gift to us, but it is also a work.  We must live it out.  Basic to it is the sharing of the good news about Jesus so to bring God and men and women, boys and girls together.  Once people are right with God, most conflicts can be solved.

It is important that we build structures that promote community (fellowship).  At its foundation is the realization of other importance (all are precious in the eyes of God).  Personal worth is affirmed when we respond to needs, don’t take each other for granted, confront/correct and encourage each other.

I heard Maxie Dunnam tell this story.   Richard Nixon is remembered as the President who resigned in disgrace.  When Nixon first returned to Washington after his resignation for Hubert Humphries’s funeral, he was shunned and avoided.  Jimmy Carter, then President came into the room where Nixon was off in a corner.  He walked over to him and Nixon stuck out his hand–Carter surprised everyone by embracing him and said, “Welcome home, Mr. President.  Welcome home again.”  Read all 8.

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Happy are the pure in heart for they shall see God. –Matthew 5:8

            We come now to the climax of Jesus’ description of the citizen of the Kingdom, the greatest of the beatitudes, the heart of Christian character, the distinctive teaching of the Gospel.  George Butterick called it the “most inaccessible of the beatitudes.”  He wrote, “We hardly know which is more beyond us, the condition or the promise—purity of heart or seeing God.”  One skeptic, who once wrote to John Wesley, expressed a common reaction to Bible statements like this when he said:

“I think the Bible is the finest book I ever read in my life; yet I have an insuperable objection to it:  It is too good.  It lays down such a plan of life, such a scheme of doctrine and practice, as is far too excellent for weak silly men to aim at, or attempt to copy after.”¹

            Few would deny that this is the ideal, the goal for which we should strive, but it is just that, an ideal, an unattainable goal.  If a pure heart is what is required, we are in trouble.  One can hardly conceive of a more depressing and discouraging idea.  Even the Bible asserts that our heart is the problem.  It is the source of all our trouble:
For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. –Matthew 15:19
The human condition is heart trouble.
            However, there is gospel (good news).  God is the great cardiologist, heart doctor and has provided the remedy—Jesus.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit he will cleanse our heart.
 God, who knows the heart,… purified their hearts by faith. –Acts 15:8,9
            If a pure heart is the highest trait of Christian character, the reward—see God, is what J.N. Davies calls “Heaven’s richest reward.”  To see God is the thread running through the history of human ambition, the one unquenched thirst, unsatisfied hunger.  As one has said, “So there come times in everyman’s experience when he wishes he could be as sure of the existence of God as he is of the chair he is sitting on or the table at his side.”²
Our oldest daughter, then about four years old, asked, “How can God see us, if we can’t see Him?”
            Tennyson was giving expression to this longing, when he gave instructions for his poem, “Crossing the Bar” to always be included at the end of his published works.  The final words were: “I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crossed the Bar.”
            Seeing God is fundamental to the Biblical message.  Adam and Eve’s sin caused them to be banished from God’s presence.  It is affirmed clearly, in different places, that the ultimate promise is to see God, to be in God’s presence.  The final perfection of the Christian’s character in Christ likeness is connected to seeing Him.  “We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”  Read all 8.

¹The Works of John Wesley, VII, 298
²Stamm, Seeing the Multitudes, 75

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Happy are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. –Matthew 5:7

            In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy says, “I guess I won’t be seeing you until Monday, Charlie Brown….So have a happy week-end.”
            Charlie Brown replies, “Thank you.”  And with a blank stare, he asks, “Incidentally, what is happiness?”
            As much as we want it and seek it, it becomes increasingly clear that one of the problems of attaining happiness is that we are not sure where to look or even what it is.
            Every single thing which the world pursues in the name of happiness can be proved to fail.  We see wealthy who are miserable, powerful who admit their unhappiness, popular who commit suicide, livers of the “good life” who admit to being empty and depressed.
            Why don’t we listen to Jesus? (One of the symptoms of our sin, the disease which afflicts us is our difficulty of seeing clearly or judging reality.)  Even when we try to listen, we sometimes confuse the issue and when Jesus says, “Happiness is…” we tend to say “be poor, be caring, be meek, seek righteousness, be merciful and God will reward you with happiness.”  Instead Jesus is telling us the things which make for happiness and the kind of person who is happy is produced when His spirit is free to work in our lives.
                HAPPINESS IS—TO BE MERCIFUL.  At first glance this seems the simplest of the beatitudes to understand. No special insight required to understand—no difficult explanations of the meaning—we know what it means to have mercy.  William Barclay describes it as “The ability to get right inside the other person’s skin until we can see things with his eyes, think things with his mind, and feel things with his feeling.”
            It is the most descriptive of God’s dealings with us.  If we had to choose one word to describe God’s acting toward human kind, it would be mercy. The Bible insists over and over that we are deserving of God’s wrath, but instead have received mercy.  The mercy which all have received is to be forgiven, respond to Christ’s love and receive a second chance.
                        There is a close connection between receiving forgiveness and giving it.  The same spirit is necessary for both.  Robert Schuller tells the story of Schug, who he described as the California grandmother for his children.  She ate with them and stayed with them:

“One day she came to him: ‘Bob, I was reading in the church bulletin today that you are having a guest speaker next Sunday.  I see you’re having a Kamikaze pilot as your guest.’  Her son had been killed by a Kamikaze pilot and she said that she probably wouldn’t be in church Sunday.
            The next Sunday the Japanese pilot shared his story.  His love and gratitude for Jesus shone from his black eyes.  You could feel the love and release he had found.
            People were moved by his testimony.  And when the service was over, my associate pastor walked with him back down the aisle to the rear of the church.
            Suddenly as they approached the last pew, an older woman stepped out.  She stood firmly in from of the Kamikaze pilot and blocked his exit.  She looked at him squarely and said, ‘My son was killed in the war by a Kamikaze!’
            It was Schug. We all held our breath as she continued, ‘God has forgiven you for your sins, and tonight He has forgiven me of mine.’
            She threw her arms around this little Japanese pilot and hugged him and cried and cried as she released all the bitterness and anger that had been harbored for so many years.”

            It was John Meier who said, “To limitless debt there can be no solution except limitless compassion….A Christian cannot win God’s forgiveness; but he can loose it by refusing to extend it to a brother.”¹
            God says,  “I desire mercy and not sacrifice” (Hosea 6:6).   Jesus quoted this verse twice when rules, ways of doing things, personal ease get in the way of touching others.  The mean spirit of some who call themselves Christians clearly contradicts what Jesus is saying here.
            May the mercy we have received be expressed to others.

“The quality of mercy is not strain’d.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘Tis mighest in the mightest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown!”
                                                William Shakespeare

Read all 8.

¹(John Meier quoted in Crosby, SOTB, 142)

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Happy are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.-Matthew 5:6

Dr. Joyce Brothers, the psychologist once observed, “I see that people who are good are happy.  People who are happy are people who are good.”¹

            A necessity for health is a healthy and normal appetite.  Though this is a recognized fact, few of us really appreciate this until we experience the loss of our appetite.  That is truly one of the most pathetic situations in which a person can be.  I remember a woman that I once visited in a hospital who seemed to literally starving to death because she had no appetite for food.  It made her sick to look at it.  Each time I visited it became more and more obvious that they were fighting a loosing battle.  Unless she could regain her appetite, it was just a matter of time.
            As vital as an appetite is in the physical realm, so also it is in the spiritual.  Jesus said it is one of the traits of the character of the citizen of His kingdom.
            We might say a good appetite, an appetite for good is necessary for spiritual health.
            The psalmist put it this way: As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. (Psalm 42:1-2a).  Jesus affirmed it when He said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” (John 4:34)
            The problem is that we have lost our appetite for good, for God.  The old preacher, Clovis Chappell told about a man on his way to a baseball game.  He got on the wrong street car with a group on the way to a revival meeting.  He was next to two old saints who were talking about what the Lord had done for them.  He got off as quickly as possible.  Later he said, “I found myself between two old prayer meeting saints, and I was certainly in one hell of a fix.”  Chappell said, “There you have it.  What was heaven to the saints was hell to him.  He had no taste for such things.”²
            God can restore that hunger and thirst.  Q- [Jesus] is not describing a mere vague preference for “doing the right thing.”  He is not uttering a pious platitude, “Blessed are they who want to be good.  He is depicting a longing which means the difference between life and death.”  A drowning man desires air above all else.  So should Christians desire goodness, God.
            Nothing greater can be imagined than a cool drink to a thirst parched person, or food to a starving person or God to one whose desire is for him.  Read all 8.

¹quoted by Robert Schuller
²Clovis Chappell, Sermon On the Mount, 55

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 Happy are the meek for they shall inherit the earth -Matthew 5:5

             One day Peppermint Patty is talking to Linus and Snoopy, as he so often is, is laying on his doghouse listening.  She says to Linus, “It’s the big kids who get everything. They push you out of line at the show.  They grab all the cake and ice cream at the parties.”
            Linus says, “I guess that’s the way life is.”
            Snoopy thinks to himself, “In the animal kingdom we call it the survival of   the fattest.”
            Now whether it’s the survival of the fattest, according to Snoopy, or survival of the fittest it is the same system which the world believes to be at the root of things–in politics, in economics, or in biology.  In society it is the man or woman or group which has power that gets what they want.  Indeed, some would say who survives.
            Sad to say, the  church at times has displayed that philosophy.  Let’s use our power to get certain laws passed.   Let’s join together to present a powerful front  to get our way.  And this whole spirit infects our society.  It becomes clear as Jesus talks about the happy person, the traits he holds up are not those consistent with what the world believes important.
            The word which we are to talk about is translated several ways in the NT.  There is simply no single English equivalent for this term.  The best we can do is try to form a composite of several different words.  In Galations 5,  where Paul lists this as one of the traits of the Fruit of The Spirit, it is translated “meekness,” “gentleness” and “humility.”  It is a word very central to the whole Biblical message.  If you will survey the Bible you will discover that almost all the great characters express the kind of character (disposition) suggested by this term—Abraham, Lot, Moses, (who according to the NT, is the man who most displayed it most), and David (in his relation to Saul).  In the story of Stephen, Paul talks about it repeatedly and Jesus says, “I am meek and lowly of heart.”
             There are two basic sources for this word.  One is the Hebrew, the other Greek.  In the Hebrew the root of the word has the idea of “being molded”, “shaped”, “formed”.  In the Greek, it is the word used in relation to the taming of wild animals—for instance a horse, a wild horse that has been tamed and is now obedient to the bit and bridle.  Being shaped, molded, formed, taming of a wild animal.   In that context then, let’s think about it.
            The one thing it is not is natural.  It is not produced by striving or effort, or achievement.  It is a characteristic of the work, the presence of the Holy Spirit in our life.  It is not a human personality trait which some have some don’t—i.e. a natural disposition.  It is not weakness, niceness, easygoingness.  It is not the   person who never seems disturbed or whose feathers are never ruffled.  Sometimes, that natural inclination can be mistaken for the Biblical idea of meekness.  Neither is it simply a compromising spirit, peace-at-any-price attitude.  The person who will do anything to avoid a confrontation, or anything to avoid causing someone to become upset, or to avoid tension is not described by this term (it may even conflict with those ideas).
            The element of humility is part of it.  But it is the positive side, not simply the absence of pride.  It is clear that Bible affirms pride as the root of human sin.  Meekness is the opposite of that spirit.  It is the person who is not sensitive about her/his own prerogatives, rights.  It is “one who does not seek his own,” (I Cor. 13), who does not say, “I’m going to get what belongs to me.”
            At its center is submission to God.  It is submission to Him to be molded and shaped, CONTROLLED by Him (the clay in the potter’s hands).  It has the idea of harnessing the power of a waterfall.  It is not the absence of power, weakness, timid, shy, retiring–Casper-milk -toast person without backbone.  It is power harnessed to do something constructive and worthwhile.  It is as Barclay says, “strength with steel in it.”  When we tame a horse, we don’t want to take out the spirit or its power.  We want to take advantage of it by harnessing it controlling it.  We want to use it.  So it is to be yielded and submitted to God in such a way that we can be molded and shaped, harnessed so that he can use us.
            Finally it is forbearance.  (Eph. 4:2- I beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.  With all lowliness and meekness, with patience, forbearing one another in love.)  The person who is meek is willing to put up with things and people that are hard to put up with.
            Now, the more you think of this idea, the more you must realize that the meek person has no guarantee that he will not be trampled by the world and its opposite philosophy.  Stephen and Jesus are two examples.  Stephen was being stoned and was at the point of death:  “But he, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” and prayed that God would forgive those who were stoning him–his murderers. (Acts 7:55-60)
            J.T. Seamands, former missionary to India and my professor of missions at Asbury Theological Seminary, told the story about a farmer in South India who was won to Christ by a YMCA Secretary.  He was baptized and joined the church.  When he did so, his friends and village turned against him.  They burned his crops, chopped off one of his hands.  They did everything possible to make life miserable for this poor farmer.  Some other residents of the village began to feel ashamed, sorry for him, and to feel the injustice of it.  They collected funds to hire a lawyer to take legal action against the people who wronged the farmer.  They gave the money to the YMCA secretary.  He brought it to the farmer and told him what the money was for.  The farmer refused to take it.  He said,

“Sir, I   am a lowly villager.  You are a learned man.  When you were instructing me in the Christian faith, you taught me that Jesus prayed on the cross for his enemies:  ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’  If I am to follow Christ, I must also forgive my enemies.”

            As a result of that man’s testimony, the whole village was shaken and some became Christians.
            It is this spirit about which Jesus speaks.  It is a disposition, an attitude of life and toward God producing actions toward others characterized by humility, submission, and forbearance.
            So the happy person  is considerate, teachable (can be molded and shaped), yet is strong because submitted to God, a balanced personality (Wesley).  As Aristotle said: It is one who can be angry at the right time but not angry at the wrong time.
            We do not call people like that farmer weak–No!  He was strong!  He had character.  It is power molded and shaped and under the control of God.  And it is happiness.  Read all 8.

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Happy are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.  Matthew 5:4

It has been said, “Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy and in constant trouble.” (F.R. Maltby)
In the beatitudes, Jesus says things really hard to believe, none more difficult than this: “Happiness is a broken heart.”  That is what this statement really means.  The strongest word for mourning is used.  It was used for Jacob’s grief when he thought his son Joseph had been killed by wild animals (Gen. 37:34).  When David heard his son Absalom was dead this word is used (II Samuel 19:1).
Many of those who heard these difficult words of Jesus rejected him. Others misunderstood.  The world says, “enjoy,” Jesus says, “grieve.”  Someone said, “Sorrow is the ‘key to the Kingdom of God.’”  The prophet Isaiah described Jesus as “a man of sorrows.”  So, according to Paul, suffering is the gift Jesus gives those who follow Him (Philippians, 1:29).
Tough words but more is to come.  Bonhoeffer wrote, “With each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people.”
There are three causes for mourning.  First, there is the sorrow that comes from the tragedies of circumstances.  Robert Shuller tells this story:

Andre Thornton with his wife and two children were driving to Pennsylvania for her wedding.  As they travel through the mountains, it is raining and snowing.  A strong wind caught the van.  It spun, turned over and hit a guardrail.  He woke up in a hospital and a sobbing nurse told him that his wife and little girl were dead.  He said, “It was a gut-wrenching time.  I felt as though the insides of my body were being torn out.”  But Thornton found what others have found—strength.  He said, “But even at that moment we can count on the Lord’s Word.  The Lord said in His Word, ‘I will never fail you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

The story of John Wesley’s transforming experience at Aldersgate is a huge part of Methodist history.  Prior to it he writes of much heaviness, describes himself as “sick of soul and spirit.”  His biographer, Robert Telford chronicles the events:

May 24, 1738—“At five that morning he opened his Testament on the words, ‘There are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.’  In the afternoon someone asked him to go to St. Paul’s.  The anthem was, “out of the deep have I called unto Thee, O Lord….O Israel, trust in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is plenteous redemption.  And He shall redeem Israel from all his sins.”
That evening he went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate Street where someone was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  “About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”  He was much tempted when he returned home, but when he prayed the temptations fled.  He soon found how different they were from his former struggles.  Then he was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now he was always conqueror.”

This describes being broken-hearted for our sin and unworthiness.
The first word of Jesus’ first recorded message is “repent.”  William Barclay said, “We have not begun on the Christian way until we take sin with such seriousness that our sorrow is like the mourning of one who mourns for the dead.”  This does not, however, mean “morose,” “miserable,” “sullen.”  As Billy Graham wrote, “Some people’s religion is like the man with a headache—he can’t afford to give up his head, but it hurts him to keep it.”
The comfort here is forgiveness and peace.
The third cause is illustrated from the life of St. Augustine.  He credits his conversion to Monica, “Thy faithful one, weeping, to thee for me, more than mothers weep the bodily deaths of their children….her tears streaming down, they watered the ground” (Confessions, 42).
Lord Shaftsbury, the great social reformer, as a boy, met a pauper’s funeral.  The coffin was shoddy, ill-made box, on a hand barrow.  It was carried by four drunken men, singing ribald songs, joking, laughing.  The coffin fell off and burst open.  The laughed at a good “joke” and turned away in disgust.  He said, “When I grow up, I’m going to give my life to see things like that don’t happen” (Barclay, 94).
This was called, by old-timers, “carrying a burden.”  It is to voluntarily share a neighbor’s pain, visit the sick, sorrowing, those in nursing homes and jails.  It was Art Linkletter who said, “Every person’s life touches some other life that needs love today.”  And it was Abraham Lincoln who stated, “I am sorry for the man who can’t feel the whip when it is laid on the other man’s back.”  John Knox, the great preacher, prayed, “Give me Scotland or I die.”
Comfort here comes from knowing that God is working His plan.
There it is—Happiness is a broken heart.  It is not a promise of relief but the comfort of strength, forgiveness and hope.

[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain…. (Revelation 21:4)

“O the bliss of the one whose heart is broken for the world’s suffering and for his own sin, for out of his own sorrow he will find the joy of God! (William Barclay’s translation of Matthew 5:4)  Read all 8.

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One day one of Charlie Brown’s friends asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up Charlie Brown?”  He replied, “Outrageously happy!”  And we would say, “Right on, Charlie Brown”.

Ralph Sockman once called our age a cult of “happiness seekers.”  A past President of Harvard put it this way–“The world is searching for a creed to believe and a song to sing.”

Yet nothing seems more illusive.  Just when one thinks she/he has achieved everything thought to make one happy, the inner ache is prone to return.  Those who seem to have the most seem most conscious of their inability to produce happiness.

During his later years, Cecil Rhodes, the great empire builder of South Africa granted an interview.  He was congratulated on his success with the comment, “You must be very happy.”  “Happy.  Good Lord no!”  “Then he went on to say that he had spent all his life amassing a fortune only to find that now he had to spend it all, half on doctors to keep him out of the grave and the other half on lawyers to keep him out of jail.

Some have seemed to suggest that the Christian is to oppose this quest.  How strange, since the foundation of Jesus’ greatest sermon (the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:3-12) includes what we call the Beatitudes.  This series of eight character traits begins with a word literally translated “happy.”  Robert Schuller has called them “The be Happy Attitudes.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Matthew 5:3

           The beatitudes begin with what most translate “poor in spirit”—Happy are the poor in spirit.  What does that mean?
            First, it is not about wealth or poverty.  It is not saying, “poor now, rich later.”  In fact, it is against pre-occupation with wealth, it is a certain detachment from things.
         Neither is it a natural trait of personality as is sometimes suggested.  It is not about bashful, lack of self-confidence, self-contempt, or one who excuses herself from every responsibility by pleading “I can’t” (I don’t have the ability).
            It describes one reduced to the level of dependence, awareness of need.  It is a Declaration of Dependence.  That is the exact opposite of what world thinks—self-confidence, mastery of life, “believe in yourself.”  Gideon, Moses, Isaiah, Saul are all Biblical examples who recognized they needed help to do what God had asked.  The missionary, E. Stanley Jones when introducing someone to Jesus would ask, “What is your need?”
            To admit one’s need is the fundamental trait needed to begin the Christian journey and to know true happiness.  Being ready to start at the beginning, from scratch and learn life anew is the condition of receiving from Jesus.  Perhaps Charles Spurgeon said it best, “Empty buckets are fittest for the well of grace.”
             One paraphrase of this verse goes “Happy is the person who is conscious of desperate need, and…is …certain that in God alone, that need can be supplied.” (William Barclay)
            The song writer, Joseph Hart (1759), echos the good news of the Christian message with these words:

“Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;
all the fitness he requireth is to feel your need of him.”

He stands ready to meet your need today.  Read all 8.

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the love of Christ leaves us no choice. (one translation of II Cor. 5:14a)      

“Introducing Others to Jesus is Standard Equipment For The Church”

          Have you been into a new car showroom lately and looked at the sticker prices on new vehicles.  Perhaps you have seen an ad which says prices on a particular model start at $18999.  And sure enough there it is—at the top of the sticker.  Then there is a long list of options to add which easily run the total to over $30,000.  The starting price includes standard equipment—you know, 4 wheels, a steering wheel, motor, seats and doors.  The final price has a lot of options added.
          In some sense, the Church comes with standard equipment but may include a lot of options.   Evangelism, making of Disciples is part of the standard equipment for the Church.  A Church which does not make disciples is, in some sense, not really a church.  But it is clear some seem to think it optional.  Some time ago, a National Council of Churches poll of mainline clergy found that less than 40% believed the basic evangelistic mission of the church was to make disciples.  Lyle Schaller, who probably has more first hand knowledge of more congregations and has done more research and thinking about such things than any person in our time, was asked by Bishop Emerson Colaw why the United Methodist Church was in decline: “If you want a blunt answer, it is because we…don’t care.  We have the resources, and we know how to grow, but it is not a priority.”
          It is clear from history, however, that is a betrayal of the spirit and commitment of Methodism.  It is certainly a betrayal of the mission to which Jesus called us and which Paul affirmed in our text with those powerful words—“the love of Christ leaves us no choice.”  It is not optional!  As a church, we have affirmed that our mission is “to make disciples.” But it is one thing to say it and another to do it.  If we are going to be faithful to what we have said, it has great implications and will be costly in ways most of us have never considered.
          Behind Jesus’ commission are two important facts.
          First, we are recipients of God’s grace.  So we have something to share.  The theologian Paul Tillich wrote, “We only want to show you something we have seen and tell you something we have heard.”  Missionary statesman, D.T. Niles said, “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”
          Second, people are lost.  Many don’t believe it and this emasculates any evangelistic motivation.  Even when a church accepts Jesus’ command, it can so cloud the issue as to virtually nullify it.  I read this in one United Methodist church’s newsletter:  After a discussion in Staff Parish Relations Committee about God’s will for _______ UM Church, they affirmed it was stated in Matthew 28:19 [make disciples].  Then said—“Our mandate, then is to be a positive influence in our community and in the world, sensitive to and administering to the needs of all people.”
          God help us! That sounds like what the local Rotary would say!  Jesus is pointed and direct.  In same context as the great gospel text (John 3:16) we read:         

“The man who puts his faith in him does not come under judgment; but the unbeliever has already been judged in that he has not given his allegiance to God’s only Son….He who puts his faith in the Son has hold of eternal life, but he who disobeys the Son shall not see that life; God’s wrath rests upon him.”  (John 3:18, 36)

          What can you do?  Pledge yourself to be a part in some way of your church’s discipleship making attempts.  Pray, invite a friend, a family member, co-worker to church.  Tell someone what Jesus has done for you.

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