2024-02-07 A Meditation on Discipleship

“30 I appeal to you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, 31 that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints, 32 so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and be refreshed in your company. 33 May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.” (Ro 15:30-33 ESV)

Casual discipleship proposes to the Christian little tasks without any wiser understanding but that they are good for the soul. To leave off endless browsing or stock market fascination. To eat at set times and learn a bit of a stoicism around just how much and how indulgent we are. Yet all these forget and fail on one point, that is, the presumption that they somehow become our means of salvation. That somehow these becomes the things we chat up our neighbor with, our deeds of helping the poor or the downtrodden included. And some zany Christian lesson is precisely in the opposite of the discipleship mania: it proposes we announce ourselves coherent and saved, on the basis simply of a free gift. On the basis of accepting what we didn’t earn. On the basis yes of making the quota, meeting par, with new friends and old friends and new environs and old environs; in these things more than conquerors yet what of that forlorn desire to disciple and be discipled?

Only this, that it spells real fight and antagonism. For we are somewhat allowed into the inner circle if only we concede to being junior grade. If only we concede to being a work in progress. If only we allow that others, claiming some wild better viewport, hum a corrective litany, a litany of works and of improvements, of things that—while we love on and patiently accommodate on this our peer—we mean by all this for them to be somewhat also excluded. From the Christian’s vocation of spelling out ideas and projects and attitudes towards those same poor or towards those same casual pewsitters. Look today at what excitement can be broadcast at large, would we only hear and do, as our neighbor hears and does, who maddeningly is joy and peace in believing.

More than that, to get down to business of a spiritual variety, these casual tasks of discipleship now no time to fuss over, rather look at how we need be heart and sobriety to someone utterly consumed by sins that no simple fast from the internet or the stock prices or the errant meals can heal. See the selfless abandon, and be first to point out its only reward is its own reality: we do not love on people, we do not go about our labors, if the task isn’t pleasing in and of itself. We must not endeavor to be discipled in hopes of earning some distant prize or out-competing a friend or colleague or enemy beside us. All this by way of announcing: here is a church in formation! Here is a modality being announced at large! Here is utter Belonging and Purpose in the spelt out limitless potential of a gracious Invite. We are invited, we are stunned, we are gladhappy, at the outstretched hand and smile on the face. What of it, what of our cynicism and sense that all people are in it for themselves? We see in that cynical outlook the reality that people are suited up, vested for the Service, in vestments and hair-raising prophetic soldiering gear; if only life were so simple as to say all are in it for themselves! All, rather, are strange bundles of illogical patterns and sometimes selfless gift but sometimes personal greed. All face these things together in unison for the hope of some peace and hope that lingers, dispelling the cynical doubts. Welcome to an amusement park ride that makes no bones about naming sin, and doing so only that we be lightened of what load we already knew of. To name what is suddenly our personal testimony, that once we were worked over by calls to discipleship, but today we are no matter, no concern, no fuss, around a better brand of Peace. Our peace. Our soldiering duty to one another. Our panic attacks or nervous fidgeting and browsing, now no matter. Not resolved in any false sense of finality, but also not a hindrance to us. Things formerly called discipleship, if they are peace and cogent, do begin to take care of themselves. We were suddenly making a mental list: if I work for God the Father, then immediately, in light of that duty and prospect, I had better see the silliness in some of my habits. No matter: I only do so because of a higher Grace, a higher Peace, a higher Calling.