Ryan Hale

This scene is from a video series that was recently released called The Chosen. It is a dramatization that pulls together the writer’s ideas about certain Biblical characters and gives extra, non-Biblical storyline in an attempt to provide context for the time that Jesus begins his ministry. If you’re interested in seeing more, I recommend checking out the series, either on their website or on their YouTube channel.

This last Sunday was Easter Sunday, and here in Italy, we have been in quarantine during the coronavirus lockdown. That has meant that we have been worshiping together as a family, reading and discussing them together.

On Saturday night, the night before, we watched the first couple of episodes of The Chosen, and I was struck by how Jesus, in this scene, called Mary Magdalene by name and how similar that seemed to the time when Jesus called her by name on Easter morning outside of the tomb.

In the dramatization (and keep in mind, this is fictional), Mary is called Lilith, who, as I understand, was a demonic figure in Jewish folklore. But this does align with our understanding of Mary Magdalene from the Bible because we know that Jesus healed her by casting out seven demons.

In this scene, we see Jesus call Mary by her real name and then he quotes a passage to her from Isaiah 43:

But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

Isaiah 43:1

This becomes a dramatized scene, therefore, of the time that Jesus healed Mary and sent out the demons. This is the time that Jesus redeemed Mary.

But what does this mean, to be redeemed? When the prophet Isaiah speaks for God and says, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you”, what is this saying?

This idea of redemption comes from the idea that, if someone were to sell themselves into slavery, they could be brought out of that slavery by a redeemer, someone who would pay the price for the person to be brought out of that slavery. Here are a couple examples of how this worked in ancient Israel:

“‘If a foreigner residing among you becomes rich and any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to the foreigner or to a member of the foreigner’s clan, they retain the right of redemption after they have sold themselves. One of their relatives may redeem them: An uncle or a cousin or any blood relative in their clan may redeem them. Or if they prosper, they may redeem themselves.

Leviticus 25:47-49

Meanwhile Boaz went up to the town gate and sat down there just as the guardian-redeemer he had mentioned came along. Boaz said, “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” So he went over and sat down.

Boaz took ten of the elders of the town and said, “Sit here,” and they did so. Then he said to the guardian-redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from Moab, is selling the piece of land that belonged to our relative Elimelek. I thought I should bring the matter to your attention and suggest that you buy it in the presence of these seated here and in the presence of the elders of my people. If you will redeem it, do so. But if you will not, tell me, so I will know. For no one has the right to do it except you, and I am next in line.”

“I will redeem it,” he said.

Then Boaz said, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.”

At this, the guardian-redeemer said, “Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate. You redeem it yourself. I cannot do it.”

(Now in earlier times in Israel, for the redemption and transfer of property to become final, one party took off his sandal and gave it to the other. This was the method of legalizing transactions in Israel.)

So the guardian-redeemer said to Boaz, “Buy it yourself.” And he removed his sandal.

Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, “Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his hometown. Today you are witnesses! ”

Then the elders and all the people at the gate said, “We are witnesses. May the Lord make the woman who is coming into your home like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the family of Israel. May you have standing in Ephrathah and be famous in Bethlehem. Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.”

Ruth 4:1-12

I love how Jesus called Mary by name, both in this dramatized scene as well as in the resurrection story. This directly aligns with the action of the redeemer that we read in Isaiah 43. The redeemer calls them out, purchasing them from their slavery, and setting them free.

This redemption happened for Mary, and is also the freedom that Jesus wants to give to all of us. Whether we realize it or not, we have been in slavery to our sin and Jesus gave himself to redeem us and to set us free. Through his death we have a sacrifice as a payment for the sins, but through his resurrection, we have life that sets us free. Like Mary, Jesus calls us by name, so we no longer need to be afraid of anything, but instead can be free because we are his.

As I was growing up, I was a competitive swimmer. From the time that I was 10 until 18, I swam as part of several clubs and school teams.

At Eastern High School, the school that I went to from my earliest days, there was a poster that hung on the wall. It was a picture of Greg Louganis, a competitive diver who was making a name for himself for several reasons around that time. His greatest platform was that he was simply a great diver, winning gold medals at two Olympics, in 1984 and 1988, in multiple events.

The poster on the wall, while I can’t remember exactly what it said, essentially talked about Greg’s “Overnight Success”. It went something like:

After 20 years, they called him an overnight success.

The point of the poster was that, if you think that you will have success quickly, in whatever you do, think again. If you want to have the kind of success that Greg has had, it will take long-term commitment. It will take work to improve yourself and your techniques. Work that must be sustained for years and decades. And then success may come your way.

I thought of that poster this week when I read this article by Elliot Clark on the Gospel Coalition’s website. The article is actually a critique of the type of work that we do. He speaks of some who are placing expectations on others to grow rapidly in their discipleship work, creating “overnight success” in their missional work. In response, I had three thoughts I wanted to share.

First, I wanted to say that I generally agree. As you hopefully see from my thoughts above, I don’t really believe much in overnight success. Not because it is terrible if it would happen, but instead that it just typically doesn’t work that way. Like the example of Greg Louganis, the norm is that you work for a long time, doing the right things over a sustained period, and then you might see success. There are no guarantees in life, but generally speaking, if your goals are worth working for, they are worth working a long time to achieve.

Second, I do believe that quick, exponential growth is certainly possible in our line of work, but it would come as a result of having multiple people doing the work. In disciple-making, a multiplying effect would come if there are people who are multiplying the work. It only makes sense that if you have 1 person who makes another disciple, you now only have 2 disciples. Even though you’ve grown by 100%, it still doesn’t look like much to others looking in from the outside.

But after that, you have 2 that will make 4, and 4 that make 8, and 8 that make 16, and so on. And after some time, you see the multiplying effect that you’re looking for. If you were to just start to know these people after they hit this stride of the multiplying effect, and if you weren’t careful to think deeply about the history of how the group arrived at this place where you have now found them, you might start telling a story of an “overnight success” with rapid growth, one who should be formulaically copied because of the speed of their success, meanwhile having forgotten all of the time and effort required from the beginning.

Third, I think it would be much more helpful if Elliot were to speak more specifically. Instead of throwing a blanket over an entire group of people and their work, thus making it sound like everyone who does this kind of work thinks this way, I believe it would be better to call people out directly. Anyone can write a criticism that sweeps across multiple people, but it takes someone who actually cares more deeply to dive into the issue with individuals and effect change.

In my opinion, throwing blanket criticisms can have some pretty divisive effects. Even if it is not Elliot’s intention, the results can be – and I can experientially confirm this to be the case – that people will believe that anyone who is working to do disciple-making work and using similar terminology to what he is criticizing, believe just as he suggests.

So, because I have personally heard these types of criticisms before where it has been suggested that I advocate speed of evangelism and conversion with a superficial layer of learning instead of a depth of discipleship, I’d like to be clarify how I see this issue:

1. We must sow the Gospel broadly across multiple people.
2. Those that respond, we must teach to follow Christ. This takes study, experience, time, correction, repentance, and many other steps.
3. Part of following Christ is teaching these followers to teach others. I see no need to wait a long time for someone to share and teach others what they have learned, but instead, as a disciple receives something from God, they should pass it along to another.
4. This will likely go on in small numbers for quite some time. However, after a while, you will have multiple people who are doing this together – walking in Christ together, making disciples together – and this will begin to produce a multiplying effect.
5. As a result, you will likely initially go slow, working closely with smaller numbers of people at first, but after a while, looking at the group as a whole, you will see that a group will become much larger and it will appear to be growing quickly. This will be due to the fact that there are multiple people going through this discipleship process at the same time, not because the process itself necessarily suggests that you must move quickly.