"Come...Follow Me"

What is the purpose of walking in Christ and being his disciple?” We all strive to be “good, godly people, don’t we?” I mean, we all think we are doing “okay”, right? At least we are better than the person sitting next to us (we think). So what are we really trying to be anyway? And is what we are trying to be even what we are supposed to be trying to be in the first place? Do we even know what we are called to be, if at all, or should we just be wingin’ it through life? I think the majority of us have never taken the time to really think about these questions.
To get to the chase, we are called to be Disciples of Christ, but what does that mean? What is a disciple? What is it that Christ is calling us to be? When you hear the word disciple, what thoughts come to your mind? Maybe words like followers, friends or students come to mind. Or maybe images of a few guys, covered in dirt, just hangin’ out with Jesus plays on the screen of your imagination. What should the term mean to us as believers in Christ? Isn’t that what the journey of being a “Christian” is all about, becoming a disciple of Christ? In order to really understand what the term disciple means, I think we have to forget what we know about the word, according to our loose American ideals, and relearn it in a historical, Biblical context. Let’s learn what it meant to be a disciple in the days of Christ.
As a young Jewish boy, at the ripe old age of 6, you would begin the process of memorizing the Torah (first five books of the Tanakh-Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch). This would normally take a boy around 4 to 5 yrs to complete. After completely memorizing the Torah, the child would be quizzed about his knowledge and would move on to the next stage of Jewish education. At ages 10-14 they would memorize the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Daniel, and all the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. By age 14 you were expected to be able to recite the entire Tanakh.
Keep in mind, there was no room for error. The Jewish people revered the name of God so much that they feared even making a mistake in writing His name. When the name of God was written, they wrote it omitting a letter, usually like “G*d”. So you could just imagine what the final exam was like; line for line; word for word, no mistakes! At age 14 the boy was now ready to begin learning the Talmud. The Talmud is the Jewish book of customs, ethics, and stories, which are authoritative in Jewish tradition. The Talmud is made up of two parts; the Gemara and the Mishna. The Mishna is the written records of the oral law and the oral traditions. So this memorization was everything that the Jewish culture was: encompassing laws, traditions and oral literatures. The Gemara is an indepth analysis of the Mishna. Which every topic was discussed and interpreted. In conclusion, it was a lot to memorize (loose translation).
After completing this process, the student would have to decide which rabbi they wanted to study under. There were several orders and tractates that a rabbi could belong to. Each one of these would have their own interpretations of traditions and literatures. For example, some rabbis followed a sect of Orders Zeraim, which concerned themselves with agricultural laws. Others followed a sect Order Toharot, who concerned themselves with the ritual purity laws of the Temple and sacrificial system. The student would have to know the rabbi’s interests, style of teaching, rabbinic functions and preferences. They studied the different rabbis to know what their interpretations were of the scriptures.
Then, at 14, the child had to go to the rabbi and converse with him. He would question the child and the child would answer, in minute detail. (We can see Christ going through this very process when he was in the temple, Luke 2: 43-49.) The rabbi would then make a decision as to whether he would accept the child or not. The rabbi would say to the child, "Come, take my yoke upon you” or “Come. Follow me.” If the child didn’t do well enough, the rabbi would refuse him and would tell him, “Go learn your father’s trade.” Imagine your entire life, every waking hour, every word you learned, only to be told to go pound nails! You didn’t make the grade, you didn’t measure up! That was the reality of the rabbi’s decision.
Now granted, not every one could be a rabbi, but you can bet they all wanted to be, as a child. Rabbis were the leaders of their world, the decision makers, the most powerful people in their culture; every father’s dream was for their son to be accepted by a rabbi. When you became a student of the rabbi’s teaching, you were considered to be learning his “yoke”. So you were “yoked together” with the rabbi. This meant that you now had the arduous task of learning every law, every rule, every regulation that the rabbi knows and you will have to learn his interpretation of them. There is a phrase in the Mishna that says, "May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi." The idea was that if you followed behind your rabbi on the dusty roads, you would get covered in his dust. Meaning, you were following him so closely, to be so much like him, that you are glorified to be covered with the dust he left behind. That is how close a disciple wanted to be to his rabbi.
Now you can see why there was such an extreme importance placed on the rabbi’s acceptance. Once the rabbi said, “Come. Follow me,” you went. Your family was jubilant and you left all you had behind. You left what you were doing, with no hesitation whatsoever! When we read about Jesus calling his disciples (Mt 4:19-20, Mt 19:21 Mk 2:14 and Lk 5:11) we see this very same obedience. Often times, people say, “They couldn’t have really left everything and everyone they knew behind.” Oh, but they did! Who did Christ call? He called fisherman and tax collectors. These men were already considered failures, religiously speaking, just “simple-minded men.” These men were rejected as disciples, or they wouldn’t be fishing. They didn’t make the cut! They didn’t measure up to what the religious leaders wanted…but they were exactly what Jesus wanted. They were “good enough” for what Jesus was going to teach them.
The next logical question should be, why follow Jesus? How did they know to follow him? How did they know he was a rabbi? How did they know he was the rabbi they should follow? We see that they immediately stopped what they were doing and got up and followed Jesus. Why? There was no fanfare, no large audience surrounding him to make him look important. So how did they know to follow him? From reading the scriptures, we know that they already “knew” Christ. Jesus says that his followers will know his voice. (Jn 10:3, 10:7, 10:14)
Don’t miss this point! By Jesus saying to them, “Come. Follow Me”, he was telling them so much more than just three words. When we read this, we hear, “Come. Follow Me.” But the words the disciples heard were; “I know you.” “I know what you know.” “I have listened to you and I accept you.” “You are good enough to be my disciple.” “You are able to be just like me.” Isn’t that what we have already learned, that the goal of the student was to be exactly like the teacher, in every way. And, if there is a “calling” from the teacher to the student, there must be an expectation, on the teacher’s behalf, that the student can complete what he is being asked to do, which is to eventually be exactly like the teacher, an exact replica!
The final disciple-making qualification one would have to obtain would be to receive public acknowledgement as a disciple, in their own community. But first, the disciple must have a leader that was revered in the community as being a rabbi. That is exactly what occurred. In Mk 10:51 and Jn 3:2, we see that the public and the Pharisees refer to Jesus as “Rabbi”. And in Mt 12:2 and Mk 7:5, Jesus’ followers were referred to as “disciples”.
Isn’t that what Christ is calling us to do today, to completely follow him? If we will listen, Christ is still calling for his disciples. He is still reaching out to us in the middle of our “lives”, saying, “Come. Follow Me.” “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me…for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:29-30) He doesn’t insist on us using our own abilities to memorize rules and regulations or to walk where he has not gone. Christ is calling us to become like him! He calls us to purity and to self-sacrifice. We are called to live for more than just our own pleasures. We are called to show others that Christ is real, living and that he is still calling! Remember, we are not called to be rabbis, we are called to be brothers and to help make those brothers disciples! (Mt 23:8 and Mt 28:19)