Pianomasters

My name is Larry Ritterbeck and in case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m not Jimmy Davis. Jimmy asked me to preach today because he is out of town. I am working towards being a pastor one day. I am currently working an internship with Brian Daniels over at Warren First Church of the Nazarene. I grew up in Akron, just 45 minutes west of Warren. I am the oldest of 4 siblings. I have three younger sisters and one younger brother. I love my family and my dog. Probably the coolest trait about me is that I have a motorcycle and it’s really cool. I am 20 years old and I am going into my senior year at MVNU. Like I said, I hope to be a pastor one day, so I am grateful for this opportunity that Jimmy has given me to come speak. This is actually my 8th sermon I have ever preached and I’m excited to share what God has placed on my heart for this morning.

One instrument that I’ve always been interested in learning how to play is the piano. It seems that learning how to play the piano would just be an extremely useful skill to have. I mean, pianos are used for all kinds of church worship and for years it seemed like all worship songs were voices, piano, and possibly an organ. I would say that probably piano and acoustic guitar are the two most versatile instruments to know because they are used for almost every worship song. You can also play basically anything on the piano because of how high and low the scale goes. Not to mention, the inside of the piano looked so cool. There were actually little hammers hitting some tightly strung strings to make the notes. I’ve never learned the piano, but I grew up playing the trumpet in high school. Guess what, trumpet is super awesome, but it’s kind of a useless skill to have for the most part. When will I ever need to play the trumpet again? It’s definitely not like that for the piano. If I could play the piano, I could play so many different genres of music and I’m pretty sure that I could impress some girls too.

Playing the piano is easy though. Almost everyone over the age of 2 can strike a key. I remember sneaking up to the piano in our church sanctuary and hitting a couple keys before my mom could yell at me. As a little kid, it was cool to be able to pretend to play piano really well, but sound really bad at it. I would go up and down the keys like they do in some movies, all the while oblivious to how bad it sounded because I didn’t know how to play it well.

My point is that to play the piano is easy. Anyone can do it. But to master playing the piano, that’s a different story. I’ve never learned how to play, but I know that you eventually have to use both hands and all your fingers. I can’t even type with more than like 4 fingers, so how could I ever get to the point where I can learn to play the piano with all of my fingers? Add to that that you actually have to make chords for the music to sound good, and you’ve got quite the time learning to play the piano. To be honest, if you really want to learn how to play the piano, you have to spend years learning how to do it. But once you know how to play it, you need no other instruments, no other orchestra, to have a complete, full sounding melody. You can reach all the way to the depths of the deepest note and you can stretch up to the heights of the highest note. And you can use all the flats and the sharps to make a beautiful, moving piece of music. It is amazing to me how beautiful it sounds when someone really good plays the piano. I sit there listening, and I just get lost in the thoughts of my own imagination. Good piano music makes me dream, whereas bad piano music makes me cringe. Beautiful music can bring you to the edge of your seat, it can make you feel angry, timid, restless, upset, and possibly even make you cry. It is hard to describe just what beautiful piano music sounds like, but when you hear it, you know without a doubt that this is what great music sounds like.

I bring all this up because it mirrors for us what our discipleship journey with Jesus looks like. Like learning to master to piano, discipleship takes time. But before we go any further with talking about discipleship, let’s look at Scripture to see what the Gospel of Luke says to us about discipleship. If you have you Bibles and would like to turn with me, turn to Luke 9:51-62. Here we see two narratives where Jesus reveals to his disciples what it really means to be a disciple of him. So starting in Luke 9:51 in the New International Version, the text reads,

51 As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; 53 but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem. 54 When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” 55 But Jesus turned and rebuked them. 56 Then he and his disciples went to another village.

57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” 58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

59 He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

61 Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.” 62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

So in the first narrative, we see Jesus go to a Samaritan Village, where he asks them if he can pass through on his way to Jerusalem and possibly stay for a few days. But we read that because Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, they rejected him. All they had to do was accept his invitation to their village. I can almost hear the eagerness in Jesus’ voice as he sends those messengers to prepare the way for him, “I’m going to Jerusalem and I want to come stay with your village on the way. Can I stay with you, please?” It’s something as simple as allowing Jesus to come and be a part of their lives. They don’t have to beg Jesus or seek him out, they just have to allow him into their village. Yet we hear that the Samaritans reject Jesus because they heard that he was headed to Jerusalem. At the time, the Jews and the Samaritans were bitter enemies. Samaria and Judea were right next to each other, yet the Samaritans were essentially considered half-breeds. They were Jewish, but their blood got tainted by outsiders. They were seen as not truly Jewish, but not truly Gentile either. The Samaritans did not accept Jesus and his disciples because they were Jews. It was normal at the time for them to not associate with Jews like Jesus.

And I also think that it’s pretty funny to see how James and John react to this. They ask Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” They were basically asking, “Lord, do you want us to NUKE them?” We might look at this and chuckle a little bit because it seems to be an extreme reaction to the Samaritans not accepting Jesus. But James and John were referring something that happened in the Old Testament, to Elijah in 2 Kings chapter 1 where he calls down fire from heaven on the king of Israel’s men. Elijah tells the king that he’s gonna die because he didn’t honor the Lord. Well, the king isn’t a big fan of this, so sends 50 men to go tell Elijah to come down, but Elijah fireball from heavens them. Then the king sends 50 more men up and tells Elijah to come down NOW, but Elijah fireballs them again! Then the king sends 50 more men and they beg Elijah to come down and please not fireball them. So, Elijah comes down and tells the king what he already told him before: that he’s gonna die. The he died. So, James and John probably grew up hearing this awesome story about Elijah and the fireballs from heaven and thought that they should do the same. Oh some people aren’t for us, Jesus? Let’s fireball them!

And then we see that Jesus reaction to them is not to fireball them from heaven, but to simply find another town that would accept him. Jesus shows us here how radically different his way is. Jesus didn’t want to destroy those people. He offered them himself, and they rejected him, but he shows them compassion still. We read in John 3:16 about how God loved us so much that he gives us the chance to be with him if we believe in his son. But we can’t forget John 3:17 right after that, which reads that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. Jesus is not so much into the fireball, destruction business as he is into the rescuing, life-saving business. Even though the Samaritans rejected Jesus, they could have easily accepted him. He was right there, knocking on the doors of their village.

And then we get down to the second passage. As much as the first passage shows how easy it is to accept Jesus, this passage shows how hard it is to really follow Jesus. Let’s recap real quick what is going on here. We see Jesus have three dialogues with three different people who are would-be followers of Jesus. I call them would-be followers because it is pretty clear that they decided to go their own way afterward. I think that many of us can relate to what the first man says to Jesus, I will follow you wherever you go. I know that I have certainly prayed that prayer before. Yet Jesus tells the man that the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. Wow. Essentially, Jesus is telling the man that he’s homeless. Jesus can’t find security in someplace he can come back to every night. Rather, he shows that he has to place his security in God. And then the second man comes, but before he follows Jesus, he asks to go and bury his father. Why couldn’t Jesus wait for the man to bury his father? Or with the third man, why couldn’t Jesus wait for him to say goodbye to his family? I feel for these two guys because they seem to have good reasons to wait a minute before following Jesus.

But Jesus urges these men to come with him immediately because of how pressing the matter is. It was SO important for them to follow Jesus that it was an issue that needed immediate attention. So often for us, we talk about how ONE DAY we will be this perfect Christian or how ONE DAY we will get past some secret sin or how ONE DAY we can follow Jesus wholeheartedly. But following Jesus is so important that the decision has to be made now!

I think that sometimes we lose the idea that following Jesus is costly. For us, it has become as though following Jesus is just something we do sometimes, instead of fundamentally being about who we are. Whenever we think of the word disciple, we think of the word student. And that’s a good synonym for the word disciple. But being a student of Jesus is not about sitting in class, taking notes, studying for quizzes, and taking a final exam so that you can pass the class. No to be a disciple of Jesus is more than just being a student of Jesus, but also being a follower of Jesus. It mean to go where Jesus goes and to walk like Jesus walks. And this is costly. It will cost you everything to be a disciple of Jesus because to be a disciple of Jesus, he has to come first before everything in your life. It means that everything else in your life takes a backseat to your calling to be a disciple of Jesus. It means that daily, you have to take up your cross and follow him. It takes a massive priority shift from living for yourself and doing what you want to do and toward living for Jesus and doing what he wants you to do. And that means that even the best ‘excuses’ to wait are insignificant compared to the call to follow Jesus. The man could go and bury his father, but he would be missing out on the greatest thing that could ever happen to him: Jesus. Same with the other man, he could go back and say goodbye to his family, but he would miss out on one he was really looking for: Jesus. To be a disciple of Jesus, a true follower, you have to come to this point where nothing else and no one else matters as much as Jesus.

In both of these passages, we only see people reject Jesus and his way. The Samaritan village rejects Jesus invitation and the three men reject the call to true discipleship. I think that what these passages really highlight for us is that it is easy to accept Jesus but hard to follow Jesus, and people reject Jesus all along the way. Some people refuse to have anything to do with Jesus, thinking of him as just some guy who didn’t save the world or just some old, dead wise guy. And some people just can’t accept that it’s going to cost them everything to follow Jesus. But there are other people who see Jesus knocking and accept him. They understand that being a follower of Jesus will cost them everything, but that it’s totally worth it. Peter recognized this when he told Jesus in Luke 18, “We have given everything to follow you!” and Jesus says, I know. And you will receive so much more than you gave up in this age, and you’ll receive eternal life when it’s all been said and done. People like this don’t reject Jesus, but really truly become disciples, students, followers of Jesus. This is us!

I told you earlier that learning the piano is like becoming a disciple of Jesus. Jesus is like the greatest piano player of all time, better than Mozart or Beethoven. And guess what? He’s inviting us to take piano lessons from him. What? The greatest piano player ever is asking US if we’d like to learn how to be great at playing the piano? Some people think it’s a scam and some people don’t trust this piano guy named Jesus. But some people take Jesus up on his offer, hoping that they can learn the piano like he does. Oh, but there’s one problem. It takes YEARS to master the piano. Some people think to themselves that that just costs too much time to spend years learning. But some other people keep learning. Each one of us started out as a little baby Christian, just knowing how to press a few keys. We couldn’t really make music yet, but we could play some notes. Then Jesus the piano master started to teach us some simple songs, like maybe twinkle twinkle little star or happy birthday. And then Jesus started teaching us how to play with both our hands. Then he started to teach us to play with all our fingers. Then he started to teach us how to leverage how loud or quiet the music is and how fast or slow it is. And guess what? There’s still more to learn. We’re always going to be able to learn from piano master Jesus because he’s the best. That is what true discipleship looks like

So today, each one of you are at a different spot. Some of you haven’t accepted Jesus yet for any number of reasons. Maybe you aren’t sure on who he is or if this whole Christian thing is really worth it. Some others of you might not be giving Jesus the first priority in your life. There might be something in the way, keeping you from giving all of yourself to him. And some of you might have given all of yourself to Jesus and are a true follower of him. But there’s still more to learn from him. So wherever you’re at today, I want to encourage you to accept Jesus’ call to true discipleship.

Jesus wants us all to become great piano players, playing that beautiful piano music I talked about earlier. It takes time to get to that point where you can make music that moves people so deeply. But we have the greatest piano master ever, Jesus, to teach us how. Jesus wants us to be people who play great piano music so that people who don’t know how to play the piano stop and listen. They wonder how someone could make music so awesome, so moving, so beautiful, that they can’t help but wonder, “Who taught them to play the piano? Maybe I should see about learning how to do that?” Likewise, people should see our lives and wonder, What happened to them to make them live like that? Let’s leave here today knowing that people are going to reject Jesus. It’s also hard and costly to follow Jesus. But it is totally, completely worth it to follow in the footsteps of our savior who gave everything for us. Let’s pray.

Gracious God, I thank you today for this opportunity I have to bring your word to your people. Thank you that we get to gather here today and hear our word that we may live better lives for you. Open our hearts today to receive this message, that we would learn the true meaning of discipleship. Discipleship is costly, God, and we need help accepting the call to truly be your followers. Help us today to know just how valuable and privileged we are that we can call ourselves your disciples. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.