Disciples Discipling Disciples

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
September 20, 2009


Disciples Discipling Disciples
John 7:14-18

We start another year of Sunday School today.
Another year of teaching and learning,
together, all of us, from the youngest to the oldest.

Sunday School: it’s not a very good term, is it?
Especially in the minds of our children and young people.
They spend Monday through Friday in school;
The idea of spending more time in the classroom
on a Sunday morning sounds terribly uninviting,
almost like punishment.

Think back to your years in Sunday School.
What was your experience?
I know most of mine was dull at its best;
sleep-inducing at its worst,
especially when the lights went out
so we could watch film-strips about Jesus and his disciples.
Do you remember films-strips back in the pre-video days?

The term Christian Education isn’t much better
than “Sunday School”.
That term to me suggests that we have compartments,
boxes, into which we separate our learning,
like students as they go through the day at school:
go to one room to learn Algebra;
another room to learn American History,
yet another to learn French or Spanish;
Then come here on Sunday morning
go to an assigned room at 9:40,
and by 10:40 you are done with your Christian Education,
ready for other things.

What is it that we are teaching our children?
What is it that we are learning together?
What is it that we want our children to learn?
What is it that we are helping our children to learn?

We want them to learn about God, of course,
and about the love God gives us all through
Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
We want them to learn about the Bible,
and we’d also like them to learn about what it means
to live in faith as a Presbyterian.

But it seems to me that what we are really teaching our children,
what we are called by God to teach our children,
is how to live life,
a truly rich life,
an abundant life,
a joy-filled life.

In one hour on Sunday morning
we teach our children how to live
on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday and Saturday;
At school, at home, at play with friends,
on the field playing sports,
on stage making music,
hanging out at the Mall,
talking, texting, and Twittering.

We are teaching them that our lives as Christians,
our lives as followers of Jesus Christ,
isn’t limited to a couple of hours on Sunday.

We do this by teaching them about Jesus.
But we are called to teach them so much more
than just the historical and biographical
features of Jesus’ life.
We are teaching them Jesus:
the life Jesus calls us all to.
We are teaching them that they are called,
as we are all called,
to learn Jesus,
learn his life so they can model their lives,
we can model our lives, on his life,
as we follow him,
striving to be more Christ-like each day.

Jesus was and is our Master Teacher.
For all his preaching,
all his healing,
he spent most of his time teaching.
It is why he is called “rabbi”
which is Hebrew for “teacher”.

And what was he teaching?
Strict obedience to the law?
Mind the rules, conform?
Listen to the leaders at the temple?
No. Of course not.

He was teaching about God’s grace, God’s love,
God’s goodness, God’s mercy.
All those things Moses was trying to teach the
children of Israel through his final words to them
captured in Deuteronomy,
those words we talked about two weeks ago,
words Moses summed up with,
“The eternal God is your refuge,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Jesus and Moses were teaching much the same thing:
That God was not some irritable deity
who needed regular sacrifices,
a mean-spirited God, as one cartoonist captured him,
with his finger hovering
just above the “smite” button on his computer.
They wanted the Israelites to know what they knew:
that God was and is a loving God,
a merciful God,
an ever-present God,
with them in good times and bad.
And we teach the same thing as Jesus and Moses.

We teach our children that they have a choice,
a choice between having a relationship with God
or turning from God and having a relationship with idols:
things, stuff, money, popularity, clothes, coolness.

All our teachers teach the same basic lesson,
but of course every teacher
goes about teaching in his or her own way.
What is essential is that our teaching is authentic.
It is honest; grounded in humility,
for humility is one of our Lord’s most important teachings.
“Blessed are the meek” is the Beatitude we remember,
but a better translation is,
“Blessed are the humble.”

We should not be hesitant to acknowledge the weaknesses
that are inherent in the church.
We are the body of Christ,
all of us imperfect men and women,
so the church by definition can never be perfect;
no denomination will ever be perfect.
No one possesses the truth,
even as we seek the truth.

In our humility we should not be hesitant
to teach that Christian history
has been marked by much goodness,
but also by much that has been truly horrifying.
The Crusades, the Inquisition,
three-hundred years of violence
between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland
to name just a few examples
of inexcusable violence committed in
the name of the Prince of Peace.

Just within the past century-and-a-half
Presbyterians have waved their Bibles
in angry support of the scandal of slavery;
to maintain the second-class status of women;
and to slam shut the door to men and women
because of their sexual orientation.

We should not be hesitant to acknowledge that we are
too quick to divide ourselves into camps,
to take sides on issues,
one against the other:
denomination against denomination,
church against church,
parishioner against parishioner.
Conservatives arguing
they truly represent the values of Jesus Christ,
Liberals arguing
they truly represent the values of Jesus Christ.
Neither side in the right,
both sides judgmental and arrogant,
both sides forgetting that
our Lord was both conservative,
conservative in the sense that
he was calling the children of Israel
back into the covenant relationship
God had first established with them
more than thousand years before,
and liberal,
liberal in the very definition of the word:
tolerant, accepting,
not rigid in ideology or dogma,
extending the gospel to any and all.

Jesus provides us the yardstick for how we are to teach
so that we don’t fall into camps.
In our gospel lesson he said,
“My teaching is not mine
but his who sent me.”
Even our Lord, our Master Teacher,
knew who his teacher was!

We are called to teach in the same way,
teach what God calls us to teach,
to teach God’s word to our children.
In the process we reinforce the word for ourselves
remembering that even as we teach,
we learn.
Everyone of us is a learner.
That’s the definition of the word “disciple”:
“one who learns”.
We are disciples teaching disciples,
disciples learning with disciples
disciples discipling disciples.

If we remember that we are learning even as we teach,
our teaching will be authentic,
for it will be grounded in humility,
not certainty, doctrine, dogma;
it will be grounded in acceptance and openness,
love and grace.

Jesus reminds us that
“Anyone who resolves to do the will of God
will know whether the teaching is from God…”
Even the youngest child is remarkably perceptive.
They may not remember names, dates, and places,
but they will know what is the authentic word of the Lord,
and what is not.

Studies done among the youngest generation show they think
a great deal of the teaching
coming out of Christian churches today
is not authentic,
that it is far removed from the will of God,
that it is grounded more in the will of the teachers,
the will of lay leaders,
the will of clergy.

This kind of teaching is actively turning them off,
causing them to turn away from the church,
any church.
They hear teaching that is rigid,
grounded in anger,
teaching that is judgmental,
and deeply hypocritical.

Our challenge to engage our children and young people,
engage them,
to help them know the love of God that is theirs
through Jesus Christ.
We do this in classrooms,
but we all do it, every one of us,
even if we are not teaching in the classroom,
for we each set our young people an example:
every one of us:
we are the ones who exemplify the Christian life.
It is so easy to talk the talk;
but it is much harder to walk the walk,
and our young people know it and pick up on it
lightning fast: who’s walking the walk,
and who is all talk.

Jesus says “I am the life”
and he calls us to new life.
We model that new life –
or at least that is what we are called to do.
We can do it well,
or we can do it poorly.
Our children and young people will be watching us,
and taking their cues from us.

We want our children to know this life,
this life to which they have been called,
just as each of us has been called;
this life that is rich,
rich not in material possessions,
but in grace and love and peace.

We want them to know this life
because it will fill them with confidence,
confidence to handle anything that life throws at them.
We want them to know this life
because it will give them hope,
hope even in the most difficult times.
We want them to know this life
because it will ground them in faith,
faith that they can move mountains
and change the world.

We do this, teach them, help them to know this life,
each of us, by walking the talk,
modeling the life that Jesus calls us to,
by living our own lives authentically and faithfully,
not just on Sunday, but every day.

The starting point for all of us
is to remember that we are all disciples,
learning, all of us together,
learning each of us,
at the feet of our Teacher,
our Lord, Jesus the Christ.
AMEN