Following Jesus in Everyday Life
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the June 6, 2015
Sabbath School Lesson
“A dispute also arose among them as
to which of them was considered to be greatest. Jesus said to them, “The kings
of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call
themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest
among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who
serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves?
Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” Luke 22:24-27, NIV
The early
church of the First Century was an egalitarian entity. They shared according to
need from the wealth of those who gave all when they joined the fellowship of
believers. There was no compulsion to do so other than the leading of the Holy
Spirit. However, once a promise was made, it was considered as made to God, and
failure to follow through could bring serious consequences. Ananias and
Sapphira decided to give a partial gift from their wealth and to tell the
disciples that they were giving it all.[i]
Since there was no compulsion to give anything, one wonders why they would not
be honest. Perhaps they felt they would not be taken care of, so they kept a
portion for a safety net. Maybe they sought the admiration that might be given
to those who sacrificed all. Whatever the reasons, they forfeited their lives
as the price of their deceit.
This seems a pretty strong indictment regarding trusting in our own abilities,
our own reasoning as opposed to placing our trust in God. This indictment
strikes particularly close to home in our time. Too many in the church look at
the sharing that went on in the early church[ii]
and deem it Socialism and therefore undesirable in the global Capitalist
economy. But this has implications spiritually and not simply for our attitudes
toward wealth and poverty. While it is
certainly true that Jesus and the Bible have much to say about our relationship
to these things, and we should heed that counsel, the anti-authoritarianism of
a Socialist world view argues strongly against the power structures and
principle authorities in the modern institutional church. The quandary of this
is that should one argue against such Capitalist based institutions, one is
also hypocritically condemned for failing to be the humble servant as opposed
to one who would limit these variances from early church practice.
Be that as
it may, the spiritual import of that early egalitarianism was that an
individual could have a personal vision of Jesus even while traveling
somewhere, say on the way to Damascus for instance, and he could then
evangelize for Jesus for almost two decades without the need to seek approval
of a central authority for conducting that ministry. That lack of
accountability scares people today. In the wake of the mass suicides of
Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate, many are afraid that things will get out of
control and grievous errors will lead many astray. While this may be a possible
threat, it only becomes likely in the event that we allow others to do our
thinking for us. If we choose to follow someone else’s explanation of Scripture
rather than trusting the Holy Spirit to provide the understanding we need.
That person
may have many letters after their name detailing their educational
qualifications, but the Holy Spirit does not speak more clearly to them for all
of that. They may be charismatic demagogues capable of charming the funds out
of the pockets of the wealthy to build megachurches, media empires, and
personal comforts at home or while traveling. But no matter who it might be,
they only have the power to save themselves through Jesus. Their charm or
erudition can save no one. That salvation only comes from Jesus, and it is the
purpose of the Bible to convey the grace of salvation to us as the Holy Spirit
opens an understanding for us.[iii]
If we remain
humbly repentant and continue to walk toward God, He will not forsake us and
allow us to be led astray. That will only happen if we choose to walk away from
His counsel because we desire something else. Demagogues are attuned to these
desires and are happy to tell us what we want to hear in order to build a
following. They are not interested in what the Bible says beyond what they can
use for that purpose. We should be wary of those who use the Bible in this way
and like the Bereans of old,[iv]
compare everything they say to our own searching of the Bible. Knowing that he
was preaching independently of their religious leaders, they did this with Paul
and found the light of the cross.
We live in strange times, when churches protect their “brand” through lawsuits
and a single person can rise to preside over an entire world denomination for
good or ill. These modern Pharisees would have us believe that God only works
through their organization, much as the leaders in the temple asserted in the
time of Jesus. There is not enough humble searching for truth as Nicodemus did
in his nocturnal appointment with Jesus.[v]
Even then, Jesus chided him for his reliance on his position of authority
instead of the leading of the Spirit.[vi]
If Jesus was willingly patient to direct his audience with this one individual,
why would His Holy Spirit not do the same for us?
Too often,
we see the appeal to authority and the labeling of those who do not submit to
it as rebels and apostates on the part of those who have been entrusted with singular
positions of power. There is little of the foot-washing Jesus in such
posturing. But that appeal to authority is near and dear to the hearts of those
who crave earthly power. It even results in reading into history those things
that might support such structures of power and control. For instance, when
Paul did eventually seek answers from Jerusalem regarding the contentious issue
of circumcision, many now refer to that meeting as the First Jerusalem Council.
From the simple account in the Book of Acts,[vii]
it is not clear that those present would have called it such. They simply had a
discussion to deal with a problem. It was a far cry from later councils
consisting of delegates from churches all over the Roman Empire.
Interestingly,
the early church does seem to make an abrupt change here. It seems to assume
the authority to determine orthodoxy, and James appears to be moving into a
position of primacy, if not already there. This last is interesting in that he
was not one of the Apostles, he was also one of those brothers who sought to
interrupt [viii]Jesus’
ministry previously. While the text does not indicate the brothers’ purpose in
approaching Jesus at that time, His rejection of their claim on Him seems to
indicate it was not a positive meeting they sought.
Perhaps the most curious aspect of this Jerusalem meeting was this apparent
primacy of James. We often think of Peter as being the leader of the early
church, especially in view of some of the statements made by Jesus to this
Apostle. This belief has been so strong that the Roman Catholic Church has
chosen to trace their line of papal prelates back to Peter, not James. Claiming
that Peter passed the “keys of the kingdom”[ix]
to the church through successive ordination, they have made the representations
of those keys ubiquitous as a symbol of papal authority. If this was indeed the
first of many councils extending into modern times, why was James presiding
rather than Peter?
Maybe this was more of a hereditary assertion of authority than a spiritual
one. Jesus was ascended to heaven, a leadership vacuum ensued, who more natural
to assume authority than someone from the same family? This apparently took
place not withstanding that Matthias and not James was selected by lot to
replace the betrayer, Judas, as one of the Apostles.[x]
He was not even nominated by the rest as one of the two possible candidates for
that position. How strange that he would become head of a later First Council
of Jerusalem.
Why do I
mention all of this? Simply to illustrate that early on the church began to
move from the personal experience of direct interaction with Jesus through the
leading of the Holy Spirit, promised to all at baptism,[xi]
to an authoritarian institution dictating matters of orthodoxy and heresy.
While the Holy Spirit continued to influence matters in a less direct and
personal matter as these institutions might grudgingly allow, the fundamental
changes being brought about by the exertion of such control over belief eventually
bore a bitter fruit of struggle and the unjust exercise of power to the point
of condemnation and execution of those who differed in their understanding of
matters of faith. This tended to happen whether it was the struggle through the
ages between the Roman and the Eastern Church, or the persecution and murdering
of Cathars, Waldenses, Huguenots and myriad others who advocated the right of
the individual to choose their spiritual path under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit and the Bible without coercion from an ecclesiastically constituted authority.
There may be more of the character of Christ in the humble person seeking to
follow the path the Holy Spirit lays out for him or her through the pages of
Holy Scripture, than in the dictates of orthodoxy by some pretentious potentate
who feels the burden of directing matters of faith for others. This was the
essence of Martin Luther’s testimony at the Diet of Worms. It is the reason
Luther, Tyndale and several others strove to place the Bible in the vernacular
into the hands of everyone. It is perhaps a wonder that we have so easily
surrendered ourselves to creeds, authorities and institutions on matters of
faith both personal and so very critical to our eternal salvation. These things,
though called by many euphemisms to hide their character, are created by man
and therefore have no power to save us.
