By Pr. Anders Nelson
In my work of preparing sermons, I often find myself trying to inhabit the perspective of some of the characters we read about in scripture. When preaching from the texts involving the prophets, I ponder how they might be feeling as they speak into a community in need of repentance and change. When preaching from Paul’s writings, I think about how the early church was doing its best to find a path forward in a world that was unkind to their efforts to spread the Gospel or unwilling to consider Jesus, the poor former carpenter turned prophet who died on the cross at the hands of the Roman Empire, as the Savior of the whole world. But preaching from the Gospels is where I find the most joy, attempting to “put on Christ” in my preaching through the lens of Jesus for the sake of the whole world (or more specifically, for the sake of my congregations).
But as of late, it hasn’t been through the lens of Jesus that I’ve found the most compelling work of understanding the text through a character’s eyes. In fact, it’s been Jesus’ companions that have piqued my interest as they do their best to understand and process the things Jesus is showing them and teaching them. While it’s not always the case, there are plenty of examples in the Gospels where the disciples clearly don’t understand or flat-out miss the point. For many a first read-through the Gospels, it would be enough to know that these followers try their best, but don’t quite grasp at all that Jesus is telling them. Sometimes we might want to shout into the text to say, “Guys! He’s trying to help you think about loving your neighbor!” while understanding that they won’t be able to hear our cries. However, a second reading of the disciples might invite us to see that they are more than meets the eye at a first glance, and that maybe our desire to shout corrections to them may be better shared with our own communities or ourselves.
I was reminded in a recent parish Bible study that when we are encountering the disciples in scripture, we are encountering them as they are in their first experiences of Jesus. They don’t have the same 2000 years of Christian theology and wisdom to lean on as they hear Jesus’ teachings that we have. They are meeting this former carpenter turned prophet as they slowly realize who Jesus is, most specifically that they understand that Jesus is the long-awaited messiah for whom their community and their people have been yearning.
In our own lives of faith and in our time of growing to understand Jesus’ life and teaching as a call upon our own lives, we can find comfort and encouragement in the confusion and missteps that the disciples bear. These people who were closest to Jesus were doing their best to understand even as their knowledge about the Son of God was developing in real-time. Their successes and mistakes both serve as a point of reference for us in our own lives of faith, as we grow and stretch and learn about who this incarnate God was and is and yet will be, and how the life of Christ Jesus reflects on our own lives and invites us into a life of faith and service towards both God and neighbor. If we only see the disciples as bumbling fools, we miss out on this invitation to see ourselves in their confusion as we too engage in the life-long effort to discern and grow in our connection with God.
Dear companions in this journey of faith, may we be swift to bear a compassionate lens as we read about the myriad characters in scripture, especially Jesus’ disciples, and may we find comfort and compassion for ourselves as well, as we navigate our own lives of faith and discipleship.
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