I know I've said this before, but I think it's worth repeating. In church, we say things that you are never going to hear anyplace else. Like you're never going to be walking past Bath and Body works in the mall and you're one of their employees, ask a customer, have you been washing in the blood of a lamb? Because ain't nobody buying that soap.
And you're never going to be sitting in Cracker Bear playing a little pet game that they've got on all of their tables and hear somebody across the restaurant shout out, hallelujah, as soon as they take their first bite of meatloaf. And I don't really have a problem with the fact that we in the church and that our faith has its own unique vocabulary. But I do have a problem with the fact that we use these words without taking the time to explain them and sometimes we use these words without even understanding what they mean. This is why we've spent the last few weeks here at Melbourne Heights talking about a word that the church has been using for over 1600 years.
And that's the word, epiphany. And most of us when we hear the word epiphany, we think about someone who is experiencing an epiphany. They're having that moment of sudden realization, that light bulb moment where something just clicks and they're able to see or understand something in a way that they never could before. That's kind of what the season of epiphany is like for us in the church.
It is our light bulb moment. It is a time when we have a chance to have a deeper realization about who God is because the season of epiphany comes after Christmas. And a Christmas God reveals himself to us in a whole new way when God becomes one of us when Jesus is born. But Epiphany reminds us that Jesus isn't just a baby in a manger.
Epiphany reminds us that Jesus is the one who shows us the very nature of God. Who God is and what God values. So during the season of Epiphany as we take a look at different stories from Jesus' time on this earth, we're challenged to see God in a way that we haven't necessarily seen God before. And you may have been challenged to see God in a new way over the last couple of weeks as we've started working our way through this season together.
Because over the last two weeks we've taken a closer look at the story of the wise men coming to visit Jesus after he was born. Last week we talked about Jesus' baptism. And these two stories, even though they may be familiar to us, they reveal something deep about who God is. Through these stories we see that in God's kingdom there are no outsiders and that God moves toward people that we consider to be unclean.
But of course Epiphany is far from the only word that we use around the church that we don't really ever take the time to explain. So I want to suspend our time together today talking about another word that we use a lot around the church that might need a little extra explanation. Today I want to talk about the word disciple. And we use the word disciple a lot around the church.
And because we use the word disciple so much around the church we all kind of sort of feel like we know what it means. So somebody were to ask us what a disciple is. A lot of us would probably respond by saying something like a disciple is someone who follows Jesus. And it's absolutely correct.
But it's not the whole story of what a disciple is. Because one thing that you have to remember is that Jesus isn't the first person to ever have disciples. It was actually pretty common for rabbis to have disciples, people that would learn from them, people that would follow them long before Jesus ever walked this earth. But even though this practice was common, rabbis would have these disciples who would follow them not just anybody could become a disciple.
There were rules you had to follow, requirements you had to meet, qualifications you had to have and a whole process you had to go through in order to become someone's disciple. And if we don't understand what the process of becoming a rabbis disciple was like before Jesus' ministry began, then we miss out on something really important about Jesus' first disciples. So let's talk a little bit more about how somebody became a disciple back in the first century. And back in the first century, becoming a disciple was something that was reserved for the very best of the very best students.
So you can kind of think about becoming a disciple back in the first century as being kind of like trying to get into an Ivy League school, a place like Yale or Harvard or Princeton today. And if you decide that you want to go to a place like Yale, you can't just show up on campus and walk into a building and start going to classes. No, if you want to be a student at Yale, there are rules you have to follow, there's requirements you have to meet, there's qualifications you have to have, there's a process you have to go through in order to become a student there. And the first thing that you have to do is you have to apply to go to school there.
And then once you're as part of your application process, you're going to have to send them your transcripts so they can see what kind of student you've been. You're going to have to write an essay for them, you're going to have to share with them all the extra curricular events and activities you participated in. You're going to have to send them a few letters of reference so they get a better chance to know you. You have to write that big important essay and all that stuff is going to go to their admissions office.
And their admissions office is going to go over everything that you send in to try to figure out if you are Yale material. And even after you've gone through that whole process, the majority of people who apply to get into an Ivy League school still end up being rejected. And that's kind of what it was like to become a disciple back in the first century. You couldn't just walk up to a rabbi and start following them.
You had to apply. So you would go to a rabbi. You would listen to them, you would learn from them a little bit, try to figure out if you wanted to sit under them and learn from them. And then you would ask, Rabbi, can I become your disciple?
And then the rabbi would want to look at your resume, so to speak. The rabbi might want to try to figure out how much of the Torah, the law of Moses you had memorized. They'd want to ask you questions and probably debate with you to try to understand your interpretation about only the law, but also your understanding of faith. They might want to talk with your family or your friends to get a better understanding of the kind of person that you are.
So there were all kinds of barriers that were in place to keep someone from becoming a disciple back in the first century. And these barriers were in place for a good reason. When a rabbi agreed to take someone on as their disciple, that disciple became an extension of the rabbi himself, became a representative, a reflection of the rabbi. So the rabbi wanted to make sure that all of the disciples that they took on would be a good reflection of who they were, that they would continue the rabbis teaching that some of these disciples might someday even become rabbis themselves.
So these barriers were in place to make sure that only the best of the best would become disciples. And most everyone who applied, most everyone who went to a rabbi to ask if they could follow them, would have been rejected. And what happened when someone was rejected from becoming a rabbi's disciple? Well, it's a little different there for what it's like when you try to get into an Ivy League school today.
If you apply to an Ivy League school today and you get rejected by all of them, there are still plenty of other good colleges and universities out there that you can go to that will offer you the same types of degrees. But back in the first century, if you ask a rabbi to become their disciple and they rejected you, for the vast majority of people it was a one-shot deal. If a rabbi turns you down, you now had to go back to the family's business. So if your dad was a farmer, you became a farmer.
If your dad was a fisherman, you became a fisherman. If your dad was a carpenter, you became a carpenter. And there's definitely nothing wrong with that. There was nothing wrong with asking a rabbi if you could become their disciple and be rejected by that rabbi.
It happened all the time. That's just the way the process worked until Jesus comes along. So let's take a look at how Jesus gets his first disciples. If you've got a Bible close by your Bible, your phone, encourage you to go ahead and open it to John 1.
John 1, and as you're finding it, let me just point out that the book of John is basically a biography of Jesus. So in the book of John, you could read all about Jesus' life. You could read about Jesus' ministry, the miracles he performed. You could read about his crucifixion and his resurrection.
But today we're going to take a look at John's account of how Jesus gets his very first disciples. So let's take a look at John 1 together. We're going to start reading in verse 35. And here's what John writes.
The next day, John, that's John the Baptist, was standing again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus walking along, he said, look, the Lamb of God. The two disciples heard what he said, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he asked, what are you looking at?
They said, Rabbi, which is translated teacher. Where are you saying? He replied, come and see. So they went and saw where he was saying, and they remained with him that day.
It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the disciples, one of the two disciples who heard what John said and followed Jesus was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, we have found the Messiah which is translated Christ. He led him to Jesus.
And Jesus looked at him and said, you were Simon. Son of John, she will be called Cephas, which is translated Peter. Now I told you before we started reading this passage that these verses were and tell us about how Jesus got his first disciples. But if you're paying attention to the verses that we've just read, it doesn't sound anything like a process that someone typically had to follow in order to become a disciple back in the first century.
Because remember, when I told you, if you wanted to become a Rabbi's disciple, you had to apply. The Rabbi would then want to learn more about you to see if you were following the right rules, meeting the right requirements, having the right qualifications. You'd have to go through the process. They'd interview, they'd ask you questions, they'd debate and discuss the Scripture with you.
But that's not what happens in the story. The story begins by telling us that two of John the Baptist disciples were with him when they saw John point to Jesus and say, look, the Lamb of God. And that phrase, Lamb of God, that's another one of those things that we say around the church and we don't ever really take the time to explain what it means. But there's too much richness to that for me to fully explain it to you inside of one sermon this morning.
So let me just say that when John points at Jesus and says the Lamb of God, basically what he's telling his two disciples that see him do this is that this is someone who is greater than I am. So when John points his two disciples toward Jesus and says, look, the Lamb of God, he's telling them, Jesus isn't just another rabbi that you could follow. Jesus is the one that you need to follow. What do the two disciples do?
They leave John the Baptist and they start following Jesus. And I mean that literally. They actually start following behind Jesus. When you're reading this passage, Jesus is continuing on doing the things that he does and he looks back and he notices these two guys following him.
What does he say to them in that moment? What do he sees that they are trying to follow him? Jesus doesn't ask them if they have a resume. He doesn't want to know about their qualifications.
He doesn't even shout back to John the Baptist to see if he'll give them a good reference. Jesus asks them, what are you looking for? And these two disciples respond to him and they say, where are you staying? Which sounds like a weird question to us, but in that moment they were saying we want to spend life with you.
We need to know where you were staying so that we can follow you. And how does Jesus respond to them? Three simple words. Come and see.
Not. Are you worthy? Are you qualified? Come and see.
And then we're told that not long after this happens that one of these two, Andrew goes and he gets his brother Simon Peter. But notice how that whole process works too. Because before Andrew goes to get Simon, Simon who will become Simon Peter, he doesn't ask for Jesus' permission. He doesn't double check to make sure that Simon has the right qualifications to come and follow Jesus too.
He just goes and he gets his brother and he tells him we have found a messiah. Simon comes along with him. And when Simon comes and when Simon meets Jesus, what does Jesus say to him? How does Jesus respond?
Does Jesus double check to make sure that Simon is not going to be the same? Simon has the right qualifications and he's meeting all of the requirements and he's got the right resume. He just welcomes him with open arms. And this is something that we see Jesus do multiple times inside of the gospels.
He's calling his disciples. And Matthew chapter five and Matthew's version where he calls his first disciples. Jesus is walking along the shores of a sea of Galilee and he sees some fisherman out there. And Jesus apparently wants these fisherman to be his disciples.
But what does he do in that moment? Does Jesus call out and say, throw me your resume. Let me check your qualifications. No, Jesus says follow me.
A few chapters later in Matthew chapter nine, Jesus is walking by a text collector named Matthew. And when he passes by, Matthew's text collecting booth, Jesus wants Matthew to be his disciple. And what does he say to Matthew in that moment? Does he ask for a Matthew's resume?
Does he want references from him? No, he says, follow me. These fishermen, that tax collector, these weren't the best of the best. They weren't the cream of the crowd.
They weren't the most elite students of their time. They were fishermen. They were a tax collector. And I want to make sure that you don't miss something really important about that fact.
The fact that they were fishermen and a tax collector tells us that they were working regular jobs. They had gone back to the family business. And what that means is that all of them had either been rejected by another rabbi when they had asked that rabbi if they could be his disciple or they felt like they weren't good enough to even bother asking in the first place. But none of that matters to Jesus.
Jesus calls them anyway. So yes, they were barriers in place to keep someone from easily becoming a disciple back in the first century. You had to have the right credentials. You had to prove yourself to the rabbi.
You had to convince that rabbi that you were disciple material. But Jesus tears down the barriers to becoming a disciple. Jesus tears down all of these barriers to becoming a disciple. But what's any of this have to do with us?
I mean, yes, it's kind of interesting to learn about the difference between how most people typically would have become a disciple back in the first century compared with the way that people became one of Jesus' disciples in the first century. But what difference does any of us make to us in the 21st century? I want you to hear this. Even though Jesus tears down the barriers to becoming a disciple, we keep trying to rebuild them today.
Even though Jesus tore down the barriers to becoming a disciple, we keep trying to rebuild barriers today. So we'll tell people, you're not really following Jesus unless you go to the right kind of church. And what's the right kind of church? It's the kind of church we go to.
And we tell people, you're not really following Jesus if you don't believe the right things. And what are the right things to believe? Whatever we believe. And we tell people that you can't really follow Jesus if you're not from the right neighborhoods.
If you don't have the right background, if you're not behaving in the right ways and who gets to decide where the right neighborhood is or what the right background is or what the right way is to behave, it's us. And sadly, there is a growing movement that is happening in churches all across America today that is absolutely obsessed with determining who is in and who is out and people who are part of this movement. You'll hear them say things like, we're the real disciples. We're the ones that are really following Jesus.
We're the ones who have the right credentials. We're the ones who have the right beliefs. We are the ones who deserve to be Jesus' disciples. And if you're not part of this movement, well then they'll tell you, you have to prove yourself to us.
You have to earn your spot with us. You have to show us that you're disciple in material. And if you don't need our standards, then you aren't really following Jesus. You can't really be a disciple.
And that was what some rabbis would have done back in the first century. They would have acted like this group of people because this group of people, we're going to see them talk about their version of Christianity. We're going to see them treat people with different backgrounds like they're unworthy because this version of Christianity, this movement inside of our church today, it's going to look at people from different backgrounds and it's going to say to them, you're not one of us. It's going to look at people whose lives are messy right now and say, come back when you get your act together.
It's going to look at people who don't fit their mold for what a disciple of Jesus is supposed to look like and say, you don't. You don't belong here. I guess there would have been rabbis that did that back in the first century. There would have been rabbis back in the first century.
You wanted to make sure that people were from the right backgrounds to represent them. They wanted to make sure that people had their lives together to follow them. They wanted to make sure that anyone who was possibly going to be one of their disciples was meeting the mold, fitting and filling that mold they had for a disciple. But it's not what Jesus does.
It's not what Jesus does. Because those fishermen that he called to follow him, that tax collector he called to follow him, they weren't working prestigious jobs. But Jesus called them anyway. Even though people would have questioned the way that they were living their lives, Jesus called them anyway.
Even though other rabbis may have rejected them when they asked if they could follow those rabbis, Jesus called them anyway. And Jesus does the same thing for us. Even when you come from the wrong side of the tracks, Jesus calls you anyway. Even when you don't have the right kind of education, Jesus calls you anyway.
Even though some people may not like the way that you live your life, Jesus calls you anyway. So who are we to question who Jesus calls to follow him? Who are we to question who Jesus calls to follow him? Who are we to keep trying to rebuild these barriers about who gets to be by the cycle?
Because when we start to question who Jesus calls to follow him, we start trying to rebuild these barriers. We all forget that if we had been living back in the first century, if we had gone and applied to follow most of the rabbis out there, they would have rejected us. We forget that we're the fishermen. We're the tax collectors.
We're the outsiders that Jesus calls anyway. So if we want to follow Jesus, we have to stop trying to figure out and determine and say that we're the ones who get to decide who's in and who's out in God's kingdom. We have to stop trying to build these barriers back up that Jesus tore down. And for some of us, that starts by asking ourselves some questions.
For some of us, we need to ask ourselves, who is it that we think doesn't have to write qualifications to follow Jesus? Who has a life that's too messed up to follow Jesus? Who do we think isn't worthy of God? Maybe it's somebody whose life is really, really messy right now.
Maybe the people that we don't feel are worthy of following God are people who don't believe the same things that we believe. People who don't go to the same kind of churches that we go to. We don't worship the same way that we like to worship. People who don't vote for the same candidates that we want to vote for.
But who have you decided doesn't belong? But other people that are worshiping with us right now, there's another question that you need to ask yourself. Instead of wondering if God can actually call anyone to follow Him, to be His disciple, the question you may need to ask yourself is if you actually believe that God calls you to follow Him. If God calls you to be His disciple.
Because when you look at your life, you know you don't have the right qualifications. You know that your resume isn't perfect. You know that you don't fulfill all the requirements that you think you're supposed to fulfill to follow Jesus. Your life might be messy right now.
You may have even been rejected by the Church of the past and told, come back when you've got your life together or you just don't fit in and belong here. And when you hear these messages, you start to believe them. So if you have ever wondered, if you've ever felt like you're not qualified to follow Jesus, if you're not disciple material, I want you to hear something from me right now. Have you ever felt like you were not disciple material?
You're right. None of us are. None of us are. But Jesus calls us anyway.
Have you ever felt like you don't have the right qualifications to be a Christian? You're right. None of us do. But Jesus calls us anyway.
We're all the fishermen. We're all the tax collectors. We're all the rejects and the outsiders that Jesus calls anyway. So let's stop acting like we're the ones who get to decide who's in and who's out when it comes to the Kingdom of God.
Because Jesus has already decided. And Jesus says that everyone who wants to follow Him is welcome, no matter who you are, no matter where you're from, no matter what background you have, no matter what categories the church wants to try to put you in sometimes. Jesus calls you anyway. Let's pray together.
God has become to you in this time of prayer. You know the history and the habit that we as your people have of trying to build back barriers that Jesus tore down. Jesus came into a world where it wasn't easy for someone to become a disciple. People had to have the right qualifications and meet the right requirements, go through the right process in order to prove that they were worthy of following a rabbi.
But that's not what Jesus did. Jesus called people that no rabbi would have wanted anything to do with. He wasn't concerned with their qualifications, wasn't we? Didn't care about their resumes or their references.
He called anyone who would follow Him to follow Him anyway. So God help us to do a better job of tearing down the barriers we keep trying to build up in the church. We want to say that if people don't act like us, think like us, worship like us, believe like us, vote like us, that they can't really be following you. Instead let us greet people the way that you greeted John's disciples when they started following you, the way that you welcomed Simon Pier.
Let's welcome anyone who wants to seek after you with open arms and invite them to come and see what you are all about. We pray this all in Jesus name. Amen.