OK, you are going to have to bear with me for a while and learn what I learned this past weekend at an amazing conference with an amazing author.
Any of you that have been following me for any period of time, know that I think very highly of Jen Hatmaker. She has taught me a lot about reading the Bible and getting something out of it. She is hilarious and insightful and, best of all, very real. She doesn't sugar coat it, she doesn't pretend to have it all together and she doesn't add a bunch of flowery jibber jabber. Just great stories and her hear for God.
That being said, I was giddy like a school girl over Justin Bieber when I got to meet her this past weekend and hear her speak. Her speaking is every bit as good as her writing, and she is every bit as real in person as she writes in her books.
So, enough of my drooling over Jen Hatmaker...on to what I learned.
The first of the three sessions she presented to us was on discipleship. Talk about learning something.
She started at the story of Mary and Martha, read the first line and left the story for the rest of the session until the last 5 minutes. Anyway, she fixed on Mary sitting at Jesus' feet and then moved on to Jewish education. Like she said, stick with me...
So, Jewish children would enter into 'school' at the age of 6 and attend until about the age of 10. The sole purpose of these years of education was to memorize the Torah. That is the 1st five books of the Bible, people. Memorized. Word for word. Yikes. After this session, (which had some fancy Jewish name, but I couldn't spell it or pronounce it, so I don't remember what it was), the best of the male students would be asked to stay for the next level. The girls and those not 'worthy' would go home to learn their family trade.
Those who were smart enough to continue on to the next level of education (also with another Jewish name with the same fate as the first one) were lucky enough to learn more about what the Torah was saying rather than just what it said. Then, once again, the cream-of-the-crop was invited to stay for the 3rd level.
I got this level. It was called Discipleship. If you were bright enough to stay until this level you were 'the bomb'. She said that for about every 100 kids that entered the first stage only about 2 made it to the 3rd level. Each disciple would choose a Jewish Rabbi they wanted to follow. They would pick their Rabbi and approach them to see if they could be their disciple. The Rabbi would grill them with absolutely ridiculous questions and, if pleased by the answers and the young man, would accept him has his disciple. It was then the disciples job to become a carbon copy of that Rabbi. To follow all the same rules, teach the same laws, interpret the Torah the exact same way. Heck, she said they went so far as to follow them into the bathroom so that they could do that the same too! They were to become so much like the Rabbi they chose that other Jewish followers could easily tell which Rabbi they 'belonged' to by the way they walked, talked, worshipped and lived life.
So, obviously, as a Jewish child, Jesus went through this whole process. And, obviously, since the guy was God in the flesh, he blew through these classes with a breeze and was chosen for each successive level. Thus, he was referred to as Rabbi later in life. (Although, I wonder who Jesus would have chosen as his Rabbi to follow, or if He just skipped that step?) So, this being said, it is now easier to understand why James and John were so eager to leave their fishing boat and follow a Rabbi. They had clearly been rejected as 'bright' during some point of their Jewish schooling and went back to learn their father's trade, fishing. So, when a Rabbi came seeking them (unheard of in the Jewish religion) they were all too eager to be given a second chance to become disciples, a revered position in the community. It also makes it easier to understand why their father was not upset by their abandoning him. He probably ran home telling everyone that his boys had just become disciples.
Don't you just LOVE learning things like this? Things that answer the little questions you've always wondered about the stories you know so well from the Bible. So great.
OK, back to Mary and Martha. So, along the lines of Rabbi's and Disciples, a very common saying back in this day was "May your house be a meeting place for the Rabbi's and my you cover yourself in teh dust of their feet and drink in their words thirstily." (Something along those lines anyway, I couldn't write fast enough to get it all down.) So, here are Mary and Martha, rejected from the Jewish schooling scene by the age of ten solely due to their gender. Also, not seen as worthly to sit with Rabbi's to learn of the things of the Torah even as full grown adults, because they were women. They are in their home and just happened to be graced with the presence of Jesus, a well-known Rabbi and He wants to teach them. Mary takes the old saying literally and sits at Jesus' feet to be covered in His dirt and drinks in His words. Even as a woman, Jesus was taking time to teach her and she wasn't going to miss this opportunity. Poor Martha is always the butt of this story, but she was just doing what she knew. She was so often rejected from this learning opportunity that she didn't even regonize it when it was there.
Now that I have typed on forever, I'll get to the main point.... Jesus called us to be His disciples. It is our job to sit at Jesus' feet and drink in His words the only way we can, by getting in His Word. We are to get to know Him so well that we can't help but live like Him and talk like Him so much so that others can easily tell who it is that we follow. How can we immitate Him if we do not know His word? Discipleship is not just a Bible study. It is a lifestyle.
LOVE IT!!!! (all of this was taken from my notes Jen Hatmaker's session on discipleship at the conference, I can't claim any of it as my own knowledge prior to that)
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