JAC Online

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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