Discipleship Is Everything.

I have long been of the opinion that discipleship is everything.

Sometimes people ask me if they should read this book, follow this leader, adopt this philosophy, do this practice.  My response to such questions is almost always to ask, “Is it a way to follow Jesus?  Does it help you follow Jesus?  If so, go for it.”

For Christianity is about following Jesus.  It is not about talking, or thinking, or hearing about Jesus.  It is not about adopting this or that creed.  It is not about pinning a label — “Christian” — on yourself, or wearing a cross, or reading a Bible, or even praying regularly.  Those can all be very good things… if they help us actually follow Jesus.    

Following Jesus, though, is a particular path.  It involves specific, identifiable behaviors and actions.  

We follow Jesus by living a life that reflects and expresses the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, as these are attested in the Scriptures, especially the New Testament, mainly the gospels.

We find several places in the gospels where Jesus describes what he is about.  The Beatitudes and the whole rest of the Sermon on the Mount give us remarkably explicit instructions about what it means to follow him.  He sets out his agenda in several places, like the words from Isaiah he quotes in his home town of Nazareth.  In Matthew 11 he points out a list of healing activities that characterize his ministry and validate his Messiahship.   

Jesus’ life and teachings may be summarized as the expression of God’s love.  He demonstrates compassion, forgiveness, healing, welcoming, equality, and justice.  He enacts generosity, wonder, simplicity, reversal, gentleness, and community.  

Jesus is invariably on the side of the poor, the sick, the outcast, the lost, sinners, and losers.  He is also reliably critical of the rich, the powerful, the leaders, and the “religious,” whom he calls hypocrites.

Furthermore, Jesus is very demanding.  He says his disciples have to “lose their life” and “take up a cross.”  Following him means letting go of our ego-centric, self-serving motivations and illusions, in order to realize our oneness with all creation.  He demands courage and trust in him; he would have us be free of fear, anger, and shame.  He requires that those who follow him live not for themselves, but for others.

In the end he gives his own life for us when he is executed by the Romans for blasphemy and sedition… and at the same time he gives his life to us in the resurrection and the ways he gives us to participate together in his new life: the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist.

But the point is always discipleship: which is giving up our own lives and having his life emerge in us.  We surrender our greed, envy, anger, pride, gluttony, lust, and other self-centered behaviors, and we take on his expansive, loving, goodness.  We move from our little darkness into God’s great light.

Discipleship is the touchstone of Christian faith.  We find clear evidence that we believe in Jesus in the quality of our discipleship.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way: “Only the one who is obedient believes; only the one who believes is obedient.”  Following Jesus and trusting Jesus are the same thing.  They cannot be separated.  

In other words, just calling ourselves Christians is meaningless.  It is discipleship, not semantics, that is everything.

Today — as in every age, unfortunately — we encounter people who call themselves Christians, but whose lives show scant evidence in their behavior that they actually follow Jesus.  Now, no one follows Jesus perfectly in this existence.  We may follow him better sometimes and in some circumstances.  I get that.  But on the whole our lives bend towards Jesus, or they don’t.  And discipleship means always striving to bring our entire life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

But there is no room in discipleship for attitudes and actions that move aggressively counter to the life and teachings of Jesus.  There is no room for murder, stealing, cheating, or lying.  There is no place, in following the One who welcomed and accepted all kinds of people, for nationalism, racism, sexism, or homophobia.  There is no room for paranoid conspiracy theories, in following the Truth.  Can we claim to follow Jesus if we hate Muslims, Gays, immigrants, or atheists?  No.  Can we claim to follow Jesus if our prior allegiance is to a deliberately divisive leader or a political movement that intentionally stokes our fear, our rage, and invokes a toxic nostalgia?

No.  Jesus was crucified by such people, people who wanted to uphold “traditional moral standards,” and maintain their religion and nation.  Some things are simply not compatible with discipleship.  

The problem for Christianity is that a long time ago we managed to make following Jesus optional.  Well, it became so optional that Christianity got identified with many things that Jesus himself rejected.  The Church got domesticated.

Discipleship means the undomestication of the Church.  Which is to say its re-wilding.  Discipleship is a feral Church, a Church that looks only to Jesus Christ and his Way of peace, love, and justice.  A Church that rejects all other “events, powers, figures, and truths” that we posit as expressions of Christianity.  A Church that really does strive first for the Kingdom of God.

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