Sermon Tone Analysis

discipleship is shared words, shared life

Intro me

I want to start with one result from our big annual survey last week - loads of helpful information for us in that survey and we’ll be speaking more about it in the weeks to come but there’s one question I want to focus on this morning as we begin, a question about growing in your faith.

We asked how much you agreed with the statement “I feel I have become more like Jesus this year” where 5 meant strongly agree and a 1 meant strongly disagree.

Not quite clear whether a 1 would mean I just wasn’t growing, or I felt like things were actually going backwards.

Here’s what you said: and it’s wonderful to hear, from this, that maybe half of us are at that three star level, perhaps feeling like we’ve made a little progress in becoming more like Jesus this past year.

And a third of us gave it 4-5 stars, so roughly a third of us feel like there’s some real progress.

That’s amazing and so encouraging.

But maybe you’re a little less encouraged by how you yourself have been growing - or even discouraged at a lack of progress.

Personally, I don’t feel like this last year has been a bumper year of progress for me.

But that was last year - what about the one ahead?

Say you want to grow - I want to grow this year.

How do we grow?

Girth-wise, that’s an easy question: one too many McDonalds.

But how do we grow faith-wise?

How do we grow as Christians?

The insider-term we might use when talking and thinking about this would be discipleship - and as we’ve talked about that over the last while, we’ve been understanding discipleship as meaning learning from someone with the intent to become like them.

So how is it that we learn from Jesus with the intent to become more like him?

That’s something I’ve been talking about and thinking about with the team lots lately, something we’ve thought about several times together as a church over the last few weeks as we’ve considered what the bible has to teach us - and it’s something which, as I’ve been studying our bible passage for this week, I think is brought into the foreground again.

There are some important things about growth we can learn from today’s passage.

So come with me into the story of the very first churches, recorded for us in the book of Acts in the Bible.

We’re picking things up at Chapter 20, following a guy named Paul, one of Jesus’ first followers who’s been a key player in the spread of the church in those first 25ish years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

He’s in the ancient city of Ephesus in modern Turkey and last week we were hearing about a riot there.

This week it’s time for him to move on again.

Page 1116 in these blue bibles, Acts chapter 20 - look for that big 20.

Page 1116 and Jemimah is going to read for us this morning.

Acts 20 and we’re thinking about discipleship.

Thanks Jemimah - so what do we see there about discipleship?

What do we learn about how to press on in this journey we all share of becoming more like Jesus?

Well, I think the most obvious thing in the foreground of what we’ve read today is the centrality of sharing words together - words of encouragement, words of exhortation, words of comfort.

First you’ve got Paul travelling around the region “speaking many words of encouragement” to all the churches in Macedonia before moving on into Greece, verse 2 tells us.

And just so you know, it’s probably before he sets out from Ephesus here that Paul writes the first of the letters we have in our bible to the church in Corinth, and then during these Macedonian travels here that he writes the second letter to that church which is in our bibles.

Just so you can fit those letters into the story.

It also where he reaches the limits of the eastern mission field that he’ll reflect on in Romans 15:19; this is him “completing his work” in this area, ticking it off his list, making himself ready to move on elsewhere.

We get an absolutely minimal telling of what he’s up to in these travels here, no anecdotes or details at all, but it’s worth noticing that as Paul re-visits these churches he started in Macedonia, what he’s up to is described a little differently from when he’s previously returned to churches he planted in the roman province of Asia, further East.

In Acts 14:22, 16:5 and then Acts 18:23 he’s described as strengthening the churches in the province of Asia when he revisits them- here he’s encouraging the churches in Macedonia - or that word can also mean exhorting them, or even comforting them.

The root meaning of the word is to call alongside - so Paul’s positioned as the one called alongside - and you can see how that might be “called alongside” to comfort or encourage or exhort, right?

As he comes alongside these churches, there are many words exchanged.

They are together, talking.

And that’s exactly what we see on the last stop of his travels, as he reaches Troas: many words are shared as he talks with them through the night.

While we’re here in Troas, by the way, this is one of the few times we see a bit of normal church life, rather than hearing just the stories of churches being founded or hearing about a crisis like most of Acts.

As we think about that for a moment together, remember we’re just seeing what they did, not being told what we always must do - but still there are some important things to notice.

They’re coming together on the first day of the week, which was Sunday by their reckoning - this is probably the earliest evidence for a regular Sunday gathering pattern like we still have today.

And they come together to “break bread” which although it could just mean sharing a meal, in the bible is often used to reference what we call communion: sharing bread and wine to remember Jesus’ body and blood given at the cross.

It seems like that happened as a part of a shared meal - just like the last supper Jesus shared with his disciples before his death, where the pattern for this was first established.

You can see that hinted at in v11 because you get Paul “breaking bread” and eating.

This doesn’t prove they shared communion every week.

Perhaps it was because of their special guest, or the season of the year - v6 gives us a pointer towards Easter time.

But sharing a meal seems likely to have been a normal part of church back then, and it’s quite possible they shared communion every week along with that.

It’s also an evening meeting - hence all the lamps - which makes sense since Sunday’s a work-day so they can only meet after the day is done.

And they’re gathering in an ordinary home - no church buildings at this stage.

The reference in verse 9 to the them meeting on the third floor shows us it’s an apartment (yeah, two millennia ago many of the ordinary folk in a city would have lived in a flat - something which feels thoroughly modern, right!

The rich tended would have single storey properties even in cities - so since it’s multi-storey, it’s most likely a flat, just an ordinary person’s home).

Everyone squeezed in wherever they fit.

But, I can almost feel you worrying, if this is normal church life we’re seeing, does this tells us we need to have an epic-long talk every Sunday?

I see you looking at your watches!

Should we have a talk that starts at maybe 6pm and doesn’t finish until 6am?

Yikes!

Well, no.

First, remember like I said already we’re just seeing what they did, not being told what we must do.

But also notice that Paul is leaving in the morning - this is his last chance to speak to them on this trip.

And as we’ll see next week, he thinks it might even be his last chance to speak with them ever.

This is not at all normal.

Our English translation makes this sound like it’s one epic monologue, Paul keeping on talking until midnight v7 and than talking on and on v9 and then talking until daylight v11.

Sounds like no-one else could get a word in edge-ways; he was just motor-mouthing it - which would make sense if it was your last chance to speak to them maybe ever.

I know we can go on about the details of words sometimes but this is important.

When we read about Paul talking and talking and talking, the specific verbs used in the original language are dialegomai and homileo.

Dialegomai is the word from which we get the English word dialogue - and just like with the English word, the Greek verb is explicitly not a monologue: it’s back and forth, not just one person swallowing the whole conversational pizza, but different people taking slices of it.

BDAG which is the bees’ knees of epic dictionaries of Greek defines it as “to engage in speech interchange: converse, discuss, argue”.

Homileo, from which we get the English word homily, means to be in association with someone and then to converse - again, it’s got that back-and-forth baked into it.

Remember the two disciples on the road to Emmaus after Jesus death?

This is what they are doing together as they walk along the road before the risen Jesus meets them - talking about everything that’d just happened.

This is why time for discussion and questions is so important to us in our morning gathering - and why the informal time before and after our gathering is so important.

We get you coffee and cake not just because we’re nice, but because we want you to chat: to dialogue together, to converse!

And this is why small groups are so important to us: a place to continue that discussion, a conversation with room for everyone to play a part.

This passage is well known because of poor Eutychus, the youngster in the window who, as the talking goes on, forgivably falls into a deep slumber, than fatally falls out of the window.

But here it reads like the moment there’s a resurrection, it’s time for communion and then Paul’s back into conversation again - v 11.

That’s really surprising because this is a top-drawer miracle, one that connects Paul with the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha who both saw similar things happen (1 Kings 17:21 and 2 Kings 4:34) one that connects Paul with the greatest of the New Testament apostles, Peter who saw something very similar happen with Tabitha in Acts 9:40.

Our passage really doesn’t make a big deal of it at all, though.

Something that dramatic punctuates this extended discussion but it doesn’t replace it or sideline it.

The emphasis is on shared words.

That’s the first thing we learn from today’s passage about how to become more like Jesus, about how discipleship really happens: through shared words.

We’re to be alongside one another, talking together about what we believe, why we believe that, what it means for our lives.

Encouraging, exhorting, comforting one another.

But there’s a second thing we see here too: we see that real discipleship happens through shared life.

Verse 4 that we read today could seem pretty incidental: a who’s who of Paul’s current set of travelling companions - who turn out to be a bunch of the new believers hailing from many of the churches Paul has started in the past few years - and people who, if you traced their names, you’d find many of them showing up in significant roles as time goes on.

But why is Paul travelling around with all these people?

One theory holds they are representatives from churches travelling with financial gifts for the believers in Jerusalem - minders to ensure their cash goes where it should.

This idea is based on Paul writing about a plan to bring a gift from these new churches to poor Christians in Jerusalem in his letters to the church in Corinth and in Rome (1 Cor 16:1-4 / 2 Cor 8:1-15 / Rom 15:25-28).

That’s a possibility - but Luke, the author of this book of Acts we’re looking at doesn’t make any mention of that plan at all and there’s a disconnect between the people mentioned here and the places we know Paul had ask for a gift too.

I think there’s a better explanation, one which fits better with the way Paul almost always travels with others even from the very beginning of his missionary life and all the way to the end of it: I think it’s about discipleship, about multiplication.

Choosing to share life together in order to help one another become more like Jesus.

See, travel in these days was long and slow.

Being together through it would make room not just for occasional conversation, but for huge chunks of life alongside one another.

But it’s not just travel they are sharing, it’s being on mission together: As Paul seeks to share the message of Jesus with those who don’t know him yet, and tries to strengthen and encourage those who do, this team is alongside him through all of that - the highs and the lows.

They watch how he acts, how he lives, how he cares, how he speaks in pursuit of that.

They share life and share mission so that, when the time comes, they, too, can be sent out to multiply disciples in the same way: sharing words, life and mission.

In fact, I think what we see here is Paul emulating the pattern Jesus established for discipleship.

See, when Jesus first called his disciples, Mark’s gospel gives us a twofold purpose statement for that:

Mark 3:14 (NIV)