Authentic Discipleship
Luke 12:1-12

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

Margery Williams penned these powerful words in her classic children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. To a child, this passage depicts the fictional progression of a stuffed rabbit becoming real, but to an adult, it poetically portrays the process of a human being embracing true authenticity. Indeed, becoming real is a slow and sometimes painful process where our exterior masks are stripped away and our soul’s inner beauty is revealed.

This is exactly what Jesus was trying to communicate his disciples! Jesus had just finished having dinner with some Pharisees, and over the course of the meal, he criticized them for their hypocrisy. By the time they made it to dessert (if they even made it that far)—they wanted to kill Jesus. As he left the meal, he had to push his way through a large crowd of people to get to his disciples. As the confrontation with the Pharisees was still fresh in his mind and as he thought about how efforts to maintain popularity can easily lead to hypocrisy, Jesus took this opportunity to stress the importance of authentic discipleship. He did not want his disciples from falling into the traps of hypocrisy, so he taught them how to become real disciples. In Luke 12:1-12, Jesus conveys two conditions of authentic discipleship.

 

1.) Authentic disciples must resist hypocrisy. (1-3)

The first condition of authentic discipleship is resisting hypocrisy. You can’t be an authentic disciple and a hypocrite at the same time. Authenticity and hypocrisy are polar opposites. Jesus introduced this concept by warning his disciples about the “leaven” of the Pharisees. Leaven is the agent in yeast that causes bread to rise. It is something that slowly and silently spreads throughout a substance. Jesus uses leaven as an object lesson for the hypocritical influence of the Pharisees, which could infect his 12 disciples and then permeate through the whole community of Christ followers.

In verses 2-3, Jesus intensifies his warning about hypocrisy by reminding his disciples that everything that is covered up will be revealed in due time. Every word whispered in private will be made public. Everything that is done in the dark will eventually be brought to light. People may be able to cover their tracks for a while, but all of their secret sins will one day be exposed—if not in this lifetime, certainly when we stand before God on Judgment Day. Hypocrisy cannot be hidden forever, and it is never hidden from God.

The story is told of an eastern ascetic holy man who covered himself with ashes as a sign of humility and regularly sat on a prominent street corner of his city. When tourists asked permission to take his picture, the mystic would rearrange his ashes to give the best image of destitution and humility.
A great deal of religion amounts to nothing more than rearranging religious “ashes” to impress the world with one’s supposed humility and devotion. The problem, of course, is that the humility is a sham, and the devotion is to self, not to God. Such religion is nothing more than a game of pretense, a game at which the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day were masters. Authentic discipleship requires resisting hypocrisy today.

            How are you doing on the scale of hypocrisy and authenticity? We would be wise to heed Jesus’ warning about secret sins being revealed. If you don’t want to take Jesus’ word for it, just ask King David, JFK, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, or…well, I better stop there! Adultery, abuse, embezzlement, misappropriation, manipulation, scam, fraud—scandals like these get revealed every day.

            Are you hiding something? Are you keeping any secrets? Are you hiding behind the mask of hypocrisy? Confess it to God; he already knows! Come clean before the person you have offended! Resist hypocrisy! Be an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ!

 

2.) Authentic disciples must fear God more than man. (4-12)

The second condition for authentic discipleship is fearing God more than man. A being who knows all of our secrets should be feared. Likewise, Jesus was preparing his disciples for persecution from the Pharisees when he said: “Do not fear those who kill the body…fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.” Who is the one who has authority to cast someone into hell? God, of course. Fearing God means to recognize and reverence him as the ultimate authority and judge. He was trying to give them an eternal perspective on life and death.

Fearing God actually brings incredible comfort. The Lord is aware of the needs of those who belong to him, just as he is aware of and cares for the sparrows that are sold for a few coins. God knows even the minute details like the number of hairs on our heads. Someone who knows us so well will certainly care for us. So, in fearing God, we have nothing to fear from anyone else—we don’t have to be afraid of rejection, failure, unemployment, poverty, ISIS or Al Qaida, disease, death, hell, or whatever scares you. For his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches over me!

Ethel Waters was a woman who feared the Lord and knew she was worth more than sparrows. She was born in Chester, Pennsylvania on October 31, 1896, as a result of her 13-year-old mother being raped at knifepoint by a man named John Waters. Ethel was raised in a violent, impoverished home in the slums of Philadelphia and she never lived in the same place for more than 15 months. She said of her difficult childhood, “I never was a child. I never was cuddled, or liked, or understood by my family.” She married at the age of 13, but soon left her abusive husband and became a maid in a Philadelphia hotel working for $4.75 per week.

            Waters eventually became a successful blues, jazz and gospel vocalist and Broadway and film actress. She was the second African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award, the first African-American woman to be nominated for an Emmy Award in 1962, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

            In the 1957, Ethel Waters became a born again Christian at a Billy Graham Crusade. She eventually joined and toured with the Crusade until her death in 1977. Do you know what song she made famous? That’s right—His Eye is On the Sparrow.

As reassuring as it is to know that God watches over us in this lifetime, it is infinitely more important for him to acknowledge us in the life to come. So, Jesus promises that he will acknowledge everyone before God in heaven who acknowledges him before men on earth. With these words, he is basically reinforcing the idea that if we fear men more than God that he will not acknowledge us before God on Judgment Day.

Verse 10 is one of the most difficult verses to interpret in the entire New Testament. When Jesus says, “And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven” he seems to be distinguishing between a specific act of rejection and a permanent rejection of the message of salvation. Therefore, the only unforgivable sin is a stubborn ongoing and final rejection of God and his gospel.

Rather than committing the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, Jesus calls his disciples to rely on the Spirit’s assistance whenever one is persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ. He tells them not to be anxious or worry about what they will say, but to simply trust the Spirit to give the right words when the moment comes.

           Throughout the history of the Christian church, there are countless stories of how the Holy Spirit provided incredible courage and words of wit and wisdom to those who were martyred for their faith in Jesus Christ. One such story is found in the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch, which took place on October 17 in the year A.D. 117. Ignatius was mentored by the Apostle John and he eventually became the pastor and bishop of the church in Antioch. He served that church for 40 years and faithfully led it through periods of intense persecution.

            Ignatius was eventually arrested, bound, and shipped to Rome under the custody of ten brutal Roman soldiers. When he arrived at Rome and refused to recant his faith in Jesus Christ, Emperor Trajan sentenced him to be publically executed by lions in the Coliseum on the last day of the gladiatorial games. As soon as he was thrown into the arena, two fierce lions were released and immediately devoured his body. Before Ignatius died, he uttered this prayer:

Father, make us more like Jesus. Help us to bear difficulty, pain, disappointment, and sorrow, knowing that in your perfect working and design you can us such bitter experiences to mold our characters and make us more like our Lord. We look with hope to the day when we will be completely like Christ, because we will see him as he is…I am God’s wheat. May I be grounded by the teeth of the wild beasts until I become the fine wheat bread that is Christ’s. My passions are crucified, there is no heat in my flesh, a stream flows murmuring inside me; deep down in me it says: Come to the Father.

Now that is what I call “Keeping it real!” When I hear stories like this, I can’t help but be inspired by the authenticity of discipleship. Oppression has a way of weeding out the phonies! Pain separates the wheat from the chaff! Persecution exposes hypocrisy! Hypocrites never allow themselves to be martyred.

Are you willing to acknowledge Christ before men? Will you be faithful to him even if it requires pain, suffering, and death? Do you trust that the Holy Spirit will give you the words that you need at the time? Authentic disciples fear God more than men!

 

            Friends, just as Jesus taught the Twelve disciples, so he teaches us that authentic disciples resist hypocrisy and fear God more than men! May the Lord help us all to become real!