TO BE LIKE JESUS: Discipleship and Biblical Spirituality in the 21st Century

PART I

By Olaf Clausen Sabbath School, Children’s, and Personal Ministries Director

In this five-part series, we will be exploring the meaning and method of discipleship and biblical spirituality in ancient times and ask ourselves how we might live better lives as modern disciples of Jesus.

Study as Worship: Of Talmidim and Chaverim

From the time of Ezra, the priest and scribe, the Jewish people instituted synagogues as houses of assembly that were led by sages (see Nehemiah 8:1–8) in the Old Testament era and by rabbis (see John 3:2) in the New Testament era. Their purpose was a noble one: to ensure that future generations of God’s people would, through systematic and regular study, never again put the nation at risk of exile by turning to other gods out of ignorance and foolishness. Consequently, outside of worship at the Temple, synagogues were established throughout the land for the instruction of the people in holiness to God.

By Jesus’ day, Ezra’s synagogal system was well established, and there is evidence that young and old alike regularly received instruction in Hebrew letters, reading, the study of Torah (the five books of Moses), and the worship of God. Even today, in synagogues around the world, these same traditions of study and worship continue to be practiced, albeit in modified forms. The sunagoge (Greek for “assembly,” transliterated today as “synagogue”) — the forerunner of the church (from the Greek ekklesia, “congregation”) — was primarily a place of study. This is attested today by one of the modern terms for synagogue, shul, the Yiddish form of the Germanic schule, meaning “school.” Rabbinic literature tells us that the synagogue was primarily a place of study until the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Thereafter, prayer and good works were substituted for the sacrifices and offerings no longer available to the Jewish people. Simply reading the Bible became an act of worship, something that is ironically overlooked in contemporary Christianity today with the ready availability of God’s Word.

With this background, we can dispel the oft-repeated myth that Jesus’ disciples were simple, ignorant, and unlettered labourers. Most certainly they could read Scripture and had committed much of it to memory from a very young age. That this is so is attested by Jesus’ capable recitation of the haftarah (prophets’ portion) of the Sabbath reading in Nazareth found in Luke 4:16–20. In the Judaism of Jesus’ day, this preparation in the synagogue was preliminary to the hope that a child might be asked to become a disciple of a prestigious rabbi, a great honour and hardship for a family. The study of the Torah was considered to be the highest calling of a Jew, so much so that rich families would contend to marry their daughters to even the poorest of rabbis. From this we discern the great importance and value of lifelong study to preserving the faith in the Jewish community at the cost of much hardship for common families. To lose an able-bodied son to a lifetime of study was a great sacrifice for these agricultural families, and yet it was done happily to secure the community’s spiritual future.

Those young Jewish men who showed promise were invited to become talmidim (Hebrew, “students” or “disciples”) of a rabbi after completing a secondary course of study and memorization of large portions of the remainder of the Hebrew Bible (the OT). Perhaps even a great rabbi like Gamaliel would accept them as a talmid — a disciple! To be a disciple was more than simply a student. Talmidim lived with their rabbi and studied his every action, memorized his every word, and emulated his routine, character, and disposition. To be a talmid of a rabbi was to dedicate your all to him, even before your loyalty to your family. In a sense, the rabbi became like a father to these disciples. The talmidim were typically divided into chavruta (Hebrew, from chaverim, “companions”), which were groups of two-to-five disciples gathered to read, analyse, and debate passages of Scripture, much in the way we conduct Sabbath Schools today. When the talmidim had advanced to the point where they had sufficiently matured and emulated their rabbi, the rabbi would invite them to make more disciples for his school.

In this context, we can begin to see how the disciples of Jesus related to Him. They certainly perceived Him as their rabbi (see Mark 9:5; 11:21; John 1:38, 49) and eagerly sought to emulate Him and spread His teachings abroad. While the general populace viewed Jesus as a rabbi (see Mark 10:51), the rabbis themselves did not. For them, one could only become a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi and profusely quoting those rabbis who had gone before them as their authority. Rabbi Jesus was unusual in that He never quoted the rabbinic tradition as authority and was often confronted for it (see Matthew 21:23). Instead, Jesus quoted Scripture and appealed to His Father and Himself as authority (see 5:38–48), and in this way, He departed from the norm both for Himself and His talmidim, so much so that He bade His followers not to call themselves “rabbi.” How strange! However, that’s a story for the last instalment of this series

. For almost two centuries, Seventh-day Adventists have referred to themselves as the people of the Book. We have prided ourselves on our thorough knowledge of the Bible and its profound teachings for humanity. Yet, during the past several decades, studies show that attendance at Sabbath School and family devotions have been dropping precipitously. I suspect our biblical literacy is dropping as well. Today, as in Jesus’ day, study and prayer must be central to our worship if we are to remain grounded in our faith. At a time when the Word is so readily at hand and yet so often overlooked, it is critical that we do not make the same mistake as did the pre-exile Israelites. As we sense the challenges ahead for our community in these difficult times, perhaps it’s time to restore the study of the Word as the centrepiece of our worship and call on God to breathe new life into our Sabbath Schools. Perhaps it’s time to recommit our lives to emulating our great Rabbi, Jesus the Messiah.

Join me next time for Part 2 of our exploration of biblical discipleship, entitled Sin and Repentance: Broken on the Rock.

Pr. Olaf Clausen, MA is the Alberta Conference Director of SabbathSchool, Children’s, and Personal Ministries. He is a specialist inJudeo-Christianity for the SDA Church in Canada and North AmericanDivision Jewish Ministries.