Jesus asks us to follow him, and in following him, he sends us out to serve. We are to heal, cleanse and proclaim the good news. We are apostles of Jesus. Jesus sends us too!
When we limit our understanding of what it means to be a disciple or an apostle to membership in a group of 12 men who lived 2,000 years ago, we can easily forget to heed Jesus’ call to us to follow and serve him today. We limit the power of Jesus’ call to use our gifts to serve the neighbor if we somehow think we can’t be like Peter, James, Mary Magdalene or Martha. The disciples were more like us than we realize. They were ordinary, working class people. Some had children, parents and spouses who counted on them. Most importantly, the disciples were not perfect. Yet God worked through all these imperfect followers of Jesus to proclaim the good news and serve a world in need.
This message is excerpted from “Everyday disciples” by Rebecca Sheridan in the May 2019 Gather magazine.
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