Being Disciples

During Lent this year, I’ve been reading The Journey by John Pritchard. Written imaginatively from the perspective of John, you travel with Jesus and the disciples as they journey throughout Galilee, and of course they will eventually make their way towards Jerusalem where the story will take its horrifying turn which distresses and saddens us even though we know the ending. 

Every day you pick up the book, you are simply walking with the disciples. It’s not offering profound and deep insights or detailed commentary on Luke’s gospel, it’s just waking up morning after morning and seeing what happens on the journey with Jesus. The conversations, the stories, the people, the miracles, the debates, the emotions, all while we are walking. We go here today, we eat with these people this evening and we lie down to sleep in this place tonight.

I’ve heard the word ‘discipleship’ used quite a lot recently. It seems there are various understandings of the term and much time can be devoted to discussing it but here in the pages of this book and in the story of the gospels, you’re a disciple simply because you follow the dusty feet of Jesus, committing to walk to the same places as this rabbi who knows the scriptures better than anyone else you’ve ever met, who speaks with more assurance and authority than anyone else you’ve ever heard, who does things you’ve never even dreamt of seeing happen, who doesn’t just push the boundaries but obliterates them and redefines life itself. You believe in him and so you walk.

As you walk beside John and the others, you watch in amazement as Jesus, a Torah observant Jew, deliberately walks up to a group of lepers, talks to them, touches them and heals them. You arrive on the scene one day only to find him talking to a Samaritan woman. You cringe with embarrassment and annoyance when Simon the Pharisee neglects to extend the most basic hospitality after inviting him for dinner and then witness with shock as a woman lets down her hair in front of everyone in the room and bathes his feet with her own tears! Time after time, you see the reactions of people as they are given back their sight, or cured of long term illness, or they are reunited with loved ones who had died. You see sins forgiven and lives changed just as yours has been too. 

Every day you live and walk with Jesus and the other disciples, you are learning how to love and live in the Kingdom of God. You see that love means inclusion, not exclusion, it means acceptance, not rejection, it means listening, not dismissing, it means respect, not disdain, and it means embracing, not avoiding. All of this being lived out daily in your travelling group of men and women who have all committed themselves to Jesus but who are so different in so many ways. No doubt it was a struggle for each person there to work out their feelings towards one another, to live beyond the usual social and cultural boundaries but Jesus told them that if the world was to know that they really were his disciples, they were to love one another.

Discipleship means that I’ll commit to following Jesus, listening to him, and learning from him. I’ll do that right alongside you and all the others who are following him too. I’ll commit to showing up and being present. I’ll commit to living and walking with you, with Jesus in the lead and as we go we’ll have to work stuff out between us. We’ll have to keep making the hard choice to love even when we don’t feel it because look at Jesus, look at how he loves people!

'By this everyone will know you are my disciples,

if you love one another.'

John 13:35