What Does Discipleship Mean For Unitarian Universalists?

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Rev. Gretchen Woods

SERMON

What Does Discipleship Mean To Unitarian Universalists?

When my children were little, I watched the Rev. Bob Marshall give a “One Foot Sermon” for the children in the Birmingham Unitarian Church. He had heard that a minister ought to be able to explain one’s religion while standing on one foot. So he stood on one foot and said, “Unitarian Universalists study life, serve life, and celebrate life.” You probably have guessed that my trinity of “respect, responsibility, and relish” is a descendent of that sermon. I think Bob was on to something, that his sermon applies for adults as well as children.

Today, our children and youth are exploring the stories of Jesus and his disciples. It might be worthwhile for us to consider what it means to be a disciple: how we might find worth in that concept. First, we need to deepen our linguistic understanding of “disciple” and other related words. Then, we ought to consider the major religious questions related to discipleship. Finally, we examine the implications of being a disciple as Unitarian Universalists.

Let us begin with distinctions among words that have come to us from the Gospels of Jesus. First, “disciple” comes from the Latin, discere, to learn, akin to teach, to train. Closely related words are discipline, disciplinarian, and disciplinary. (Eric Partridge, Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English. P. 158.) A disciple is a person who has decided to focus on learning – and living - certain values and ways of being in the world.

It follows that disciples have teachers. Jesus was the teacher of the 12 disciples who followed him. For this reason , he was often called “rabbi” or “teacher.” We, as Unitarian Universalists, have many teachers from whom we draw: “prophetic women and men (who) challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love.” They are our second Source.

“Disciple” is different “apostle,” which derives from the Greek apostolos, meaning one who is sent away, especially (in the New Testament) forth into the world to preach. That has a different feel from disciple, doesn’t it? A disciple learns and emulates a teacher. An apostle proselytizes. To proselytize is to try to convert another from one religion to that of the apostle.

Then there is the word, “gospel, which “takes it name from the Old English godspell (“good discourse”), a translation of the Latin evangelium and ultimately the Greek euangelion (“good news”) (Norman Perrin, The New Testament: an Introduction, 2^nd edition. p. 40.). Norman Perrin notes, “The apostle Paul’s frequent use of it indicates that it was already well accepted in early Christianity as a term for oral preaching of good news about the meaning of Jesus Christ for salvation.” (Ibid.)

So what was Jesus’s good news that caused people to be both disciples and apostles? According to Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar, Jesus had two main messages: trust the process and celebrate. What a far cry from the message of the gospels as written by the authors of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John! Mark focuses upon Jesus as a “secret Messiah.” Matthew is trying to convince people that Jesus is a Jewish Messiah. Luke shows Jesus reflecting the Greek concept of “divine man.” John is the most Gnostic of the gospels, though he actually precedes full-blown Gnosticism, which asserts special (especially spiritual) knowledge that frees one from the constraints of the world. John is the latest and the most symbolic and mystical of the writers. Critics argue whether his different sequence of the life of Jesus is more or less factual, but he does no follow the lead of Mark, Matthew and Luke. No one has enough non-testamental material to be sure of the facts in any case.

You may have noticed that Jesus’s simple message got lost in the struggle to make the man the message. We are asked to “believe in Jesus,” instead of paying attention to the simple lessons he offers about how to live one’s life.

Which leads me to the next point: Jesus has had such impact on the world because there was something about his presence that helped people of the time answer their own questions about identity, both individually and collectively. Jesus and his disciples empowered people. Their followers were not necessarily the cream of society, but they felt valuable after their “Jesus experience.”

Jesus helped people of all stripes to feel valuable and understand that their lives had meaning. He did not single himself out as the “only son of god.” He called all people “heirs and joint heirs” with him. He raised women in stature in the movement, so that they were leaders among his “house churches.” He talked with and ate with tax collectors, women of ill repute, beggars, and fishermen. He was very interested in the questions “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” His greatest sermon was all about the value of people who at first glimpse appear to be useless and/or powerless: the meek, the pure of heart, etc.

Yet, the power of his presence and his message: “Go, and sin no more. The Kingdom of God is at hand,” told people that they could make their own decisions and that they could better their lives through their own efforts. Paul and Martin Luther did their best to suppress that message under the notion of faith as requisite for salvation. Still, Unitarians and Universalists as heretics (i.e., people who choose), have followed Jesus’s simple approach to life through millennia. When we live as if our choices and our actions matter, we are true disciples of Jesus.

Of course, such choices lead to being active in our world. If we emulate Jesus or any of our other inspirations, like William Ellery Channing or Olympia Brown, we cannot absent ourselves from the problems in the world around us. We advocate for our political views, be they Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, “Green,” or any of many flavors of political perspective that exist in our congregations. We know we benefit from hearing the views of those who have different perspectives. That need not paralyze us from taking action to improve our world as we understand it to need improvement. This is how this congregation can be at the core of the Corvallis Adopt-a-Minefield Project, even though we have those among us who are not sure that the war in Afghanistan wasn’t necessary.

Each of us, as we study life, come to some conclusions that call us to serve life. It is no accident that this congregation overwhelmingly asserted that caring for the environment is a high priority, when we surveyed ourselves to see what matters to us relating to the religious education of our children, youth, and adults. It occurs to me that we need once again to put forward to the UUA the Environmental resolution that Bill Ferrell and Jim Spain proposed two years ago, and bring that back to the UU General Assembly in Long Beach this year. That would be one way in which our study and our discipleship could lead out into our world for the greater good of all.

Each of us needs to be a disciple. Each of us needs to study life: our life and those aspects of life that are most important to us; then determine how to take our discoveries out into the world in a positive way. Our discipleship need not lead to proselytizing, or shoving our self-righteousness down the throats of other. It can lead to respectful positive action for a better world. That makes us disciples of life and for our values as UUs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once called Unitarianism a “feather bed for fallen Christians.” He railed against the inaction and frozen affect of New England Unitarians who felt no passion for the world, no need to bring comfort and empowerment to those hurting. So he left his pulpit and took up writing and speaking to encourage others to do and be more in our world. We remember him as a teacher of many valuable disciples, like Henry David Thoreau and Theodore Parker, certainly more than the inert leaders of the Unitarianism of his time.

Our UU Purposes and Principles provide a focus for our study and values from which to discern what is important to us. We need to study to be prepared for resistance we shall experience from those who fear change and/or loss of power. Ultimately, by being intentional disciples, we demonstrate to our selves and to others how to become better people, to become more fully who we are at our very best.

To be a disciple is to study and to serve. What would our congregation be like if each of us truly took it upon ourselves to study, to serve, and to celebrate the UU Principles? How would we live our commitment to this faith movement if we knew more about the people who lived and died for it: Michael Servetus, Joseph Priestley, Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Blackwell. Why do we have only have 289 members, while 618 people are in our directory? Why, as the second largest church in Oregon, is our average pledge far lower – almost half of that of all of the congregations that attended the Growth Transition workshop in LaConner, Washington. I wonder if we have studied and served enough to feel truly celebratory and gratefully willing to share our blessings with others. Perhaps we could be more disciplined disciples?

Discipline need not be a dirty word, if it is associated , as it truly should be, with studying and learning. We are eager to do this. Why? Because the passion for study, for learning, is driven, not simply by dry need to know, but by wonder, the wonder of which we spoke a few weeks ago. As Mary Oliver tells us in her poem, “ The Ponds”:

Every year

the lilies

are so perfect

I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding

the black,

mid-summer ponds.

Nobody could count all of them–

The muskrats swimming

among the pads and the grasses

can reach out

their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that

rife and wild.

But what in this world

is perfect?

I bend closer and see

how this one is clearly lopsided—

and that one wears an orange blight –

and this one is a glossy cheek

half-nibbled away—

and that one is a slumped purse

full of its own

unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life

Is to be willing

To be dazzled---

To cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even

to float a little

above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing---

that the light is everything---that it is more than the sum

of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

Ultimately, an honest disciple lets our wonder, our sense of light, lead our study, our learning, so that we may be filled by something more than facts. Without facts, we lose the wholeness of life. With wondering study of life, our discipleship takes us to a level of loving life that sustains us through all the sadness and ugliness that life can also bring. Disciples know there is a Source beyond the lowest common denominator. Disciples live with respect, responsibility, and relish for the process that they both trust and celebrate.

So be It! Blessed Be!