Going
Out With Jesus
by Commissioner Wesley
Harris
Prominent features in the early history of the Army were
occasions for eating together, singing together and “going
out”. It
was the same for Jesus and his disciples.
In Mark's account of the last supper we read, “When
they had sung a hymn, they went out...”
Jesus might often have expressed his faith in singing
and joined his disciples in his 'male voice disciple choir.'
which may have had a distinctive northern accent. How we would
treasure a recording of their singing if one existed!
What did they sing at the last supper? It may well have been
from the Hallel or “praise psalms”
(113-118)
Then they 'went out'. They may well have preferred to have
stayed in rather than go out through the dark and narrow
streets of old Jerusalem where `hired assassins could lurk.
The disciples failed Jesus later in the Garden of Gethsemane
but at least they showed willing and went out with him despite
there being a price on his head and danger for his life -and
theirs.. (I once joined in a silent pilgrimage through those
dark Jerusalem streets and think that I may have entered into
some of the feelings of the disciples on that occasion!)
Early day Salvationists also had the courage to go out with
Jesus. They were
not soldiers confined to barracks but, as Pope John Paul was
reported to have described us, “soldiers of the pavement” -
not merely part of “the Church invisible” but ready to go out
into the workaday world with its challenges..
The upper room – possibly in the home of the mother of John
Mark – might have seemed like a comfort zone for the
disciples, relatively cosy and secure.
The precincts of church or corps buildings may seem
like that for Christians today but the challenge is to be out
and about with Jesus in the world of industry or commerce or
politics, where Jesus needs the support of wide awake
disciples.
The chorus of an Army song of an earlier period of our
movement is a challenge for today:
Out there, out there
Where the darkness reigns out there;
Torchbearers are needed... out there.
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