Century Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ)

1301 Tamarack Road, Owensboro, KY 42301, (270) 684-0286, Pastor:  Rev. Jim Westmoreland

A Second Proof of Discipleship
John 14:23-29
by Jim Westmoreland

Hearing a southern accent, Ann Weems was reminded of the time she was in Wisconsin leading a worship service at an Interim Ministers' Conference. Before supper that first night, a man with a southern accent came up to her and asked, "Where are you from?" When she responded, "Nashville," he smiled and said he had known it.

"Who are your people?" he asked.

Ann recalls the surge of memories which swept over her. She saw faces and names and even smelled some of the sweet aromas associated with home. She had answered the question before: when she went to college in Memphis and when she had married and her name changed.

"I knew what it meant: To whom do you belong?" Ann writes. "It is an ancient question. It's a means of identification, a claiming of ties." It can instantly open doors or shut them in your face.

"My father is Tom Barr," Ann replied.

His face lit up with a look of recognition. He told the people with him, "She's one of us! She's Tom Barr's daughter." They gathered around and led her to their table, talking about people they knew twenty-five years ago in Nashville.

"We dashed back in time and it felt right," Ann recalled. "I belonged. I was accepted. I know who my people are."⁽¹⁾

As followers and disciples of Jesus Christ, do we know who our people are? John tells us in the fourteenth chapter that it is those who keep Jesus' commandments, keep His words. We frequently read from the fourteenth chapter of John at funerals. The opening verses quote Jesus saying, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And, if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also."

Then, Jesus says in verse 15, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." He restates this same idea in our reading this morning in verses 23-24, "Those who love me will keep my words, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words."

In the context of preparing His disciples for His leaving, Jesus assures them of His love, that they will be with Him, and that He is preparing a place for them. Jesus also has expectations for those who would be His disciples. He calls for the disciples to be obedient by loving him and keeping his word (vv. 23-24). It is perhaps with a sense of urgency that Jesus makes this known while he is still with the disciples (v. 25).

Moreover, the seriousness of the disciples' remaining obedient in Jesus' absence is underscored by the promised sending of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, (v. 26) and Jesus' assurance that the disciples will receive peace from Him, peace intended to address their anxiety and fear at the prospect of Jesus leaving them (v. 27). Jesus knows that obedience is not automatic, but it is an endeavor that requires spiritual strength from divine sources.

And so, Jesus then admonishes the disciples to rejoice that He is returning to the Father, particularly because this is crucial to the process of Jesus going away and then coming to them in the future (v. 28). This section concludes with Jesus reminding the disciples that He has taught all these things at the present time so that they will recognize the activity of God and believe when it occurs in the future (v. 29).

Obedience is a word that is almost considered archaic, old-fashioned and irrelevant in our day? Is it really? With this in mind, it is worth noting how themes in this passage carry through the whole of chapter 14.

Jesus:

• Prepares the disciples for his absence
• Calls the disciples to obedience
• Encourages the disciples to carry on after he is gone
• Promises the disciples that they will not be abandoned by God as they   carry on
• Focuses on the importance of Jesus "telling things now" so that the disciples will be equipped to "believe later."

The theme of obedience runs through these, specifically in terms of the accountability Jesus expects of the disciples in their response to the trustworthiness of God's ongoing presence. Not only that, but such obedience is flowing, graceful and interconnected to being known as a Christian. This is highlighted in a number of ways.

Obedience is not simply a matter of Jesus commanding the disciples. As part of preparing the disciples for his departure, Jesus provides them the wherewithal to be obedient. Essentially, the disciples' capacity to be accountable to the trustworthiness of God's ongoing presence flows from the grace of the Father sending the Advocate/Holy Spirit to them in Jesus' name.⁽²⁾

We have experienced some terrible corporate scandals in recent years. I suspect they are symptomatic of the moral and spiritual vacuum that exists in many people's lives today. The whole concept of obedience to a higher law and accountability to God is something to be laughed at, and so we have excesses like "Enron Capitalism." One satirist explained the different approaches to economic development this way:

With Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

With Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

With Communism: You have two cows. You must take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

With Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

With Enron Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt-equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred through an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The Enron annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more!

I believe that Jesus calls us to be His disciples to experience the fullness of His life and to live the life that He calls us to by marching to the sound of His drumbeat, not all the self-seeking, greed-based, "I don't answer to anybody" drumbeats that we hear everyday in the world in which we live.

I believe that young people are faced with daily decisions of what it means to be a Christian and that adults also decide daily how to honor commitments to family, to marital vows, to being a faithful and honorable worker and laborer for another, to deciding how to use our gifts and abilities for others.

Former Giants pitcher Dave Dravecky had a speaking engagement one night at a church, but he really didn't feel like going through with it. He was still struggling over the loss of his pitching arm to cancer. "I felt lousy that night," he recalled. But he went anyway. "I felt so unworthy to be standing there in front of all those people who looked up to me," he wrote. "If they just knew what I was really like, what thoughts went through my head, what words came out of my mouth, they'd get up and walk out the door," he wrote.

Much to Dave's surprise, not one person walked out that night. In fact, one man came forward. He was a 34-year-old welder whose life was a mess. He wanted to change his life but wasn't sure where to start. This welder had been having an affair with another woman but was in the process of trying to put his marriage back together. There was something in Dave's message that night that spoke to this man. He wanted Christ to come into his heart and change his life.

Faith stirred in that man as he went home to his wife. In the weeks that followed, everyone around him noticed the change -- people in the neighborhood, people he worked with. No one noticed more than his wife.

Five weeks later, that man went to get a tool from the toolbox on his flatbed truck when another truck backed into him, crushing his chest. He died instantly.

A few months later, Dave Dravecky was speaking on a nationally broadcast radio program. During the call-in segment of the show, this man's wife called in. She said those five weeks were the best days of their marriage. "Choking back the tears," Dave writes, "she thanked me."

And to think he didn't want to go. And to think he almost didn't go.⁽³⁾ Dave Dravecky understood that receiving God's love involved an obligation to share God's love. Do you feel the Peace of Christ coming through in this story? Do you sense the work of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who leads us, nudges us and is with us when we commit ourselves to obeying God's commands, sometimes with fear and trembling?

Jesus said that the way the world will know that you are my disciples is that you love one another. He also gave us a second proof of discipleship as He said, "those who love me will keep my words." Amen.

Century Christian Church, May 13, 2007 - Sermon by Jim Westmoreland
www.centurychristian.org

1. Ann Weems, Family Faith Stories, (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 18-19.

2. "Cursive Obedience," Homiletics, May 16, 2004.