Micah 6:6-8, Matthew
28:16-20
“Disciples in Action”
When Dave & I were in
until the present building was completed in 1837. It is the
oldest church in
The building itself is quite
interesting - it is a
sitting right there in the middle of a tropical island.
The church walls are made of
black lava rock, mortared together with a mixture of lime, sand and water.
Inside the church, the posts
and beams the pulpit, the pews, a nd
railings are all constructed from a dark native Hawaiian wood.
The design of the building
was fascinating enough, but the history of the church was even more so.
Inside were several displays
which told the story of this first church in
At the top of one of the
fliers I picked up, was printed this familiar verse which we just heard
today.
“Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit, and teaching to obey everything I have commanded you.
And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.”
This verse, called the great
commission, was the inspiration 1819 for a small group of 17 adults and 5
children
to leave an established Congregational church in
and set sail on the Brig Thaddeus. There was a model of this boat in the church
and it looked like a big wooden sailboat - except they spent 163 days sailing
to the
When they arrived, they began
work almost immediately.
They translated the Bible
from the Greek and Hebrew into the first written Hawaiian language.
They built churches and
conducted Sunday worship. They started
schools and taught children adults to read.
They endured sickness,
loneliness, and the loss of a familiar culture to go out and make disciples of
all nations.
From the time the church was
born at Pentecost, the great commission has been the inspiration for sharing
the gospel around the world. The
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
has a mission statement which places a great deal of
emphasis on this going out to make disciples.
As a church, a denomination,
our mission is “to be and to share the good news of Jesus Christ,
witnessing, loving and serving from our doorsteps to the ends of
the earth.”
In the early days of our
denomination, one of our founders Alexander Campbell served as the first
president of the American Christian Missionary Society, organized in 1849. There were many, many such groups that were
born and grew up in the 19th century - I was reading an article
about some of them and it’s really an alphabet soup of mission
organizations. The
ABCFM, CWBM, FCMS, and more.
Over the centuries Disciples
mission work also has changed.
But the way this is done now
is more ecumenical, and more through service evangelism.
Dr. Anil Henry, a Disciples
missionary who spoke with us last fall
demonstrates this new kind of missionary. He is a medical doctor
serving the poorest in central
The witness they see is a
hospital staff that starts each day with prayer
and shares Christ’s love with everyone they meet.
All of the mission efforts of
the past 2000 years have been inspired by the
Great Commission - we are to
go out and make disciples. But like our
skit pointed out at the beginning of worship, this great commission is not just
for pastors only, or for missionaries only.
This is a job description for
all Christians. And this is no desk
job. This disciple making takes
action.
In these verses, Jesus lays
out the job description for disciple-making: “Go” he says. Take action.
Don’t just sit there, and wait for somebody to wander in your church and
admit they long for a different kind of life, a life
driven by spirit power, a life ruled by God’s love. Go to them.
“Make disciples of all
nations.” This was a clear calling to
this little group of first disciples
that their mission was going to be world-wide.
The good news was for Jews
and Gentiles alike.
To contemporize this, since
we don’t deal much in Jews and Gentiles anymore,
we are to reach out to those persons who we think are
like us and those who are not.
And this is strong action verb: we translate it “make disciples” but it’s
more like “Disciple everyone you meet.”
“Baptizing
them.” But baptizing isn’t the
goal of Christian discipleship.
Baptizing isn’t the end of the journey.
It’s part of the journey and
continues with a lifetime of teaching.
“And teaching them to obey
everything I have commanded you.”
Teaching for Jesus is not just the hearing of the word but the doing of
the word. Implicit in this Great
Commission, is the challenge to do concrete deeds --
just like Jesus did -- deeds of justice, mercy and love. In Jesus’ own
lifetime, he lived out the challenge from the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you but to do
justice, love mercy,
and walk humbly with our God?”
“And remember, I am with you
always even to the end of the age.”
This scripture reminds us we
are not on our own. We are not disciples
in action alone.
We follow Jesus. We are students, apprentices, learning
behaviors, practicing new skills.
As disciples of Jesus we
practice “what would Jesus do.”
In order to make disciples,
we have to be disciples - and this is a walk, not a talk.
It just so happens that the
Bible study I am teaching on Tuesdays here
with 12 of your friends has been working on Matthew’s
gospel for the last 2 weeks
and we have been discussing discipleship.
But the study calls it
radical discipleship because that’s what discipleship really is. Being a true disciple of Jesus Christ is
counter to our culture. Several years
ago, when I was teaching this same class at my previous church,
one of the class members said this: “If we really did everything that Jesus
commanded us, we would look like a cult.”
I think there is a lot of truth to that statement. Being a disciple of Jesus is radical.
Let me tell you about some
radical disciples who are going out and making disciples.
This summer when I was in
I met a man named Darrell who
was a member of Independence Boulevard Christian Church in
A dozen or so of us got
together for dinner at a restaurant one evening
and I sat next to Darrell. While we were eating, he told me all about
the ministry in his church called the Micah Ministry.
He was serving as the
executive chef for a Monday night dinner that was held each week for neighbors
in need -
homeless men and women, disabled persons, people on the
streets.
“Executive
chef.” Huh, I thought to myself. That’s a mighty fancy name for a soup
kitchen.
But I found out that this
feeding ministry is different than most, because the guests are seated at
tables with tablecloths. There are flowers in vases on the tables.
Guests are served in their
seats rather than standing in line cafeteria style.
While they dine on excellent
homemade meals and desserts,
they listen to pleasant dinner music in the
background. And volunteers run the
entire program.
I went on the church’s
website this week and read all about the Micah ministry.
It extends way beyond Monday
night dinners. There is mom-to-mom mentoring
for single moms and their children.
There is a clothes closet, a food pantry.
There is pastoral counseling
offered free to residents of the area.
Every Sunday morning and
Monday evening, church members provide transportation to women and children
living in a nearby shelter for battered women. This church is going out and making disciples
by not only feeding the hungry, but by being
with the poor in ways that say “you are a child of God.”
There is another radical
disciple that we remember this weekend with a holiday.
During his
lifetime, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
was accused of being all sorts of things, including a
radical.
But what Dr. King
demonstrated was a lifetime of concern
about issues of justice and mercy that should be part of
all our disciple-making
In one of his writings, which
he wrote from a jail in
while serving a sentence for participating in civil rights
demonstrations,
he addressed a group of white clergymen in
who had written an editorial urging him to let the courts
handle the battle for integration.
Discipleship was at the heart
of the civil rights struggles.
In part of this letter he
compared the early Christians
who went out to make disciples with the contemporary
church.
“There was a time when the
church was very powerful -
in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being
deemed worthy
to suffer for what they believed.
In those days, the church was
not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular
opinion; it was a thermostat the transformed the mores of society.
Whenever the early Christians
entered a town,
the people in power became disturbed and immediately
sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and
outside agitators.
But the Christians pressed
on, in the conviction that they were a “colony of heaven,” called to obey God
rather than man.
Small in number, they were
big in commitment.
There were too
God-intoxicated to be intimidated.
“Things are different
now.
So often the contemporary
church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender
of the status quo.
But the judgment of God is
upon the church as never before.
If today’s church does not
recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church,
it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of
millions,
and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no
meaning for the 20th century.”
What Dr. King recognized was
that the
most effective disciple-making has always been grounded
in God’s own concerns for justice and mercy.
We don’t go out and make
disciples so we can bring them
into a comfortable club we call church.
We’ve got to be
God-intoxicated enough to recognize
that when we go out and make disciples we are transforming
people’s lives.
It’s not just for pastors and
missionaries.
It’s for doctors in
The Great Commission
challenges us to
“go
out and make disciples, baptizing and teaching everything that Jesus commanded
us.”
It’s radical
discipleship. It’s not just talk. It’s
a walk.