Matthew 5:33-48
Fulfilling Our Purpose
James Sledge February
19, 2017
What
are some of the groups or organizations you belong to? I’ve never been a big
“joiner,” but over the years I’ve been a member in good standing with a number
of groups. I once was a member of the AWSA or American Water Ski Association.
I’m a member of alumni associations at two universities and one seminary, and the
AARP has sent me multiple invitations to become a member, but I always throw
them away.
What
does it mean to be a member of a group or organization? Why join the AARP or
Water Ski Association or Chamber of Commerce or a club at school? Why are you a
member of the groups you belong to?
Reasons
for joining groups and organizations vary. I had to join the AWSA in order to
enter waterski tournaments. I didn’t really ask to join the alumni
associations, and the AARP promises me discounts on products and services along
with various other benefits.
I’m
not a member of the Smithsonian, though I could become one for $26.00. But I
did recently have the chance to visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
African American History and Culture. You can’t really see it all in a day, but
it is a remarkable experience.
The
history portion is designed so that you start at the very bottom floor, well
below ground, moving through dark exhibits about slave ships and the early
slave trade. As you continue you, you move up through the Civil War,
Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow and segregation, the Civil Rights
movement, ending at the inauguration of our first African American president.
As
I worked my way through sections focused on the Civil Rights movement with
exhibits on the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Riders, and the March on
Washington, the term “member” was largely absent. There were certainly
organizations that one could join that supported the movement, the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) or the Congress for Racial Equality
(CORE), but the big moments of the Civil Rights Movement weren’t about
membership. They were about active participation.
I’m
not sure how it was that the Church came to use the term “member” to speak of
the participants in a local community of faith. After all, we already had a
perfectly good word: “disciple.” It’s the word used for the first followers of
Jesus and the word Jesus uses when he commands those disciples to begin
building the Church. “Go therefore and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”
The
Church’s job, according to Jesus, is to make disciples, something that happens
by baptism and by obedience, by learning to obey the commands Jesus gives us.
And the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus’ first big discipleship lesson.