The Living Voice
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Everything I’ve ever really learned or accomplished in life was made possible by someone else. When I was in Junior High School, I had a speech class with Mrs. Pettigrew. In that class, I discovered that I really liked, and was very effective at public speaking. That year, under her watchful eye, I entered the Optimist Club speech contest. She worked with me after class for weeks, polishing, editing, carefully practicing. And I won the local contest, and did well at the state contest. I never would have discovered my gifts for communication and public speaking if it weren’t for Mrs. Pettigrew. In High School, that person was Mrs. Ellerington. She taught reading. Truth be bold, I was never much of a reader growing up, but somehow she flipped a switch in me. I learned from her that through books I could meet the greatest thinkers and dialogue with them, travel to the most exotic places and explore, I could through reading be anyone I wanted to be. Mrs. Ellerington gave me that gift. I’ve mentioned before Bob Cressler who was a small business entrepreneur and general great guy. I thought I worked for Bob, but in reality I was going to the school of Bob. Whatever I may know about organizations or working with people, I learned from Bob. I am the product of people who invested in my life. My guess is, so are you. Find your passions, find the things that define and complete you, and there are people behind those. Find the successes you’ve experienced in life, and most likely those successes happened because of people who taught and encouraged and prodded and cheered. We are the product of the people who invest in our lives.
It only makes sense that if we’re shaped and molded and changed by people, that the Christian life would include this personal, one on one kind of learning, mentoring and growth. If the mission of the church is:
To participate in what God is doing in the world by calling, nurturing and equipping, and sending out followers of Jesus
Then it only makes sense that the calling, nurturing and equipping and sending parts of that statement would involve people-to-people. When we look in the New Testament, we see people deeply involved in each other’s lives. At the center of everything is the teachings, the words of Jesus. From Matthew to Revelation, Jesus is the living Word that people gather around, that they share, that they use as a pattern, that give them life and hope. Our future must lie in the same place. People intimately connected to each other, listening to, responding do, and inviting others into the Living Voice of Jesus.
Last week, we talked about some of the people in the New Testament that we can see grow from new followers of Jesus into mature followers of Jesus. I introduced Matthew the tax collector and Timothy, the half Jewish, half gentile some of Eunice. We looked last week at how these two people became followers of Jesus. This week, I want to look at them again and ask a slightly different question: how were they nourished and equipped, how did they grow to be mature followers of Jesus? One was a contemporary of Jesus, who learned at Jesus feet. The other grew up a world away from Jesus, a generation after the events of our gospels. Different people, different places, different time. But they share a common connection to Jesus as the Living Voice.
In Matthew 9, we meet Matthew the last of the twelve disciples to be chosen by Jesus. It si possible, I think even likely, that Jesus has passed by Matthew and his tax collection office for months. One day Jesus extended an invitation.
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.
Matthew’s journey from tax collector to the author of the first Gospel happened because he followed, he heard, he experienced Jesus. Right after Matthew leaves the tax booth and becomes a follower of Jesus, he hosted a meal for Jesus and some of his friends. The religious crowd didn’t like Jesus eating with people like Matthew who didn’t meet their definition of a religious, upright person. The religious people whispered in the ear of Jesus disciples, “doesn’t he know its scandalous to eat with these kind of people.” Jesus heard their whispers and replied with a loud voice:
But when he heard this, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”
The first thing Matthew learns is that Jesus has a different idea of what God is doing in the world. Every religious voice Matthew has ever heard said that God wanted the holy people to withdraw, to stay clean, to push the sinners and the unclean away and to do religious acts like sacrifice. Because everyone said it, they just assumed it to be true. Jesus said something else: being pure wasn’t a matter of pushing away the sinners, the tax collectors and the unsure. Purity was a question of the heart, it was about what was going on in the inside, not the outside. Here, Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea:
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
He reminds those listening that God was far more interested in love than sacrifice, in showing mercy than in approaching God with pious acts.
Just because everyone thinks it or everyone agrees doesn’t mean that it is so. Often Jesus is in the business of turning our assumptions on their heard, in flipping our world upside down. Matthew has followed Jesus unsure how he would ever make the treek from tax collector to disciple. But when he hears the voice of Jesus, when he hears the Living Voice, he realizes that he too could please God, that he could show as much mercy as anyone. The Living Voice of Jesus often bring hope.
Matthew wasn’t done learning on that day. Another group stepped into the post-sinner meal conversation. These were the disciples of John the Baptist and they wanted to know why Jesus was feasting and socializing instead of the hard work of fasting. Everyone, they reasoned, fasted and certainly so should Jesus and Jesus’ students. This one was easy said Jesus:
And Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them, can they? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.
Not only did Jesus tell his disciple what God wanted in the world, but Jesus also told them where they were in God’s plan. Everyone around Jesus assumed that it was a sad time, that God had abandoned His people to the Romans. They fasted because they wanted to nudge God into doing something, anything really to change the situation. Jesus drinking and eating was quite premeditated, God was doing something spectacular if only they could see it.
Matthew is going to spend three years, not reading books about religion or people’s reflections on Jesus. For three years he watched and heard and was shaped. He lived with and alongside Jesus. And he was changed.
We get that twelve people were shaped and formed by Jesus. The question isn’t them, its us. How do WE hear Jesus Living Word, how can we be shaped by Jesus Voice about what God is doing in our world and what God want from us. That, it seems to me is the contribution that Timothy makes to us. He, like us, never saw or heard or experienced directly Jesus. But he was part of a very intentional chain of people, a series of links that go back to the Living Voice of Jesus. Look at what Paul says
You then, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus; and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well.
Paul had experienced the risen Jesus in a vision. By the time he comes across Timothy during his Second Missionary Journey, Paul has been a follower of Jesus and an apostle for twenty years. Paul will pass on to Timothy what he has seen, experienced and knows. But it doesn’t stop there. Paul to Timothy, Timothy to other faithful people.
We each are part of a chain. We each need a Paul in our lives, someone to help us hear Jesus’ words, to see the world as Jesus saw the world. We each need someone in our lives that shapes and molds and teaches and models. Paul was to Timothy as Jesus was to Matthew. Discipleship is all about experiencing the kind of transformation that Matthew experienced by seeing, hearing and experiencing Jesus. Who is your Paul, who shows you Jesus? We have a tendency to point to a pastor, a favorite teacher, a historical figure. Those are great, but that’s not the intimate one-on-one relationships that build disciples. We need what has been called a soul doctor, someone in our lives that uses the Living Voice of Jesus to change and transform us.
We each need a Timothy, someone into whom we are investing and building