Sunday, January 15th to February 12th - Series on Discipleship

This Call's for You, 1 -- Prophets and Deliverers

While the pairing of the Old Testament and gospel readings for the last two weeks has allowed for a primary focus on either one; for this week and the next two weeks, the gospel is front and center, and the Old Testament is "color commentary."

We begin here a shift in the gospel readings from Jesus calling disciples to Jesus giving his disciples "on-the-job training." Our readings from Mark's gospel starting today and for the next two weeks portray Jesus performing miracle after miracle in the presence of his disciples. Being discipled by a master, after all, means learning to say and do what the master says and does so that the disciple becomes like the master. It does not mean simply oohing and aahing at how amazing your master is!

This marks a distinct difference between the role of the promised prophet in our reading from Deuteronomy and the role of Jesus as prophet (in this text) with his disciples. In Deuteronomy, the people wanted a prophet like Moses precisely so they would not have to encounter the voice of God themselves (see verse 16). And God was willing to accommodate their request, noting they were not ready for such a direct encounter themselves (verse 17). But as disciples of Jesus, we expect nothing less than to encounter directly and learn how to call upon the presence, power, and voice of God ourselves. The people in Deuteronomy wanted someone else, someone special, to be a prophet for them. Disciples of Jesus expect to be made special by becoming like their master in "all his offices" -- including, as we see this week, his office as prophet.

By the first century, those who were considered prophets were often more in the mold of Elisha and Elijah than Jeremiah. They were wandering teachers who not only proclaimed truth to power in an authoritative way, but also demonstrated mighty acts of power as they did so. Among these was exorcism.

This is to be noted: What was remarkable in this story was not that Jesus cast out a demon, or even that he talked to the demon. There were plenty of other exorcists in his day. What was remarkable was the authority with which he did so. He did not call upon any other authority in the spirit world to act. Jesus spoke the word, "Shut up, and come out of him!" The demon immediately complied.

What do we as disciples learn from a master who teaches, prophesies, and casts out demons "as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22)? What does it mean for us, as individual disciples and as the body of Christ, to do the same, here and now?

Remember that Jesus spent several years with his disciples, training them in the ways of the kingdom of God. They were certainly not expected to see this happen once, and immediately do the same thing. Indeed, Mark's gospel, more than any other, shows just how poorly the disciples were "getting it" at nearly every turn.

But eventually they did. And so may we, if we continue to follow Jesus as they did.

So perhaps the better question to discuss, is how might worship today, designed around these texts, help us who seek to be disciples of Jesus realize that Jesus intends to equip us to be prophets with such authority?.

When it comes to the kinds of things Jesus is training his disciples (and us) this week and in the next two weeks, probably all of us can think of examples of people who are charlatans. Probably all of us, and rightly so, reject the sort of "word-faith, name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel" we can find on television every hour of every day if we had the stomach for it. Probably all of us know people who have been taken in and had their hopes dashed and perhaps their bank accounts emptied by the false hopes raised by some of these "evangelists." Good. This means we know what counterfeit spiritual authority looks like.

But that doesn't mean Jesus wasn't training his disciples or won't train us to exercise the real thing in his name. Rather, they have been made special because they have learned from the Master; they have been disciples of Jesus. And to be his disciple means that we learn, and fail, and learn, and fail, and keep learning to be faithful prophets in his way..

Taken from the Lectionary Planning Helps, General Board of Discipleship, UMC