When we talk of discipleship, the most obvious person to turn to appears to be German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Executed by the Nazis in 1945 for his resistance to fascism, Bonhoeffer held radical views about the obligations of a Christian to Christ. For Bonhoeffer, ‘discipleship’ is our act of confession of faith in Christ, a response of obedience in reflecting His unbounded grace and love; when Christ says, ‘follow me’, we get up and follow Him (Mark 2:14). Bonhoeffer writes, “Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ” - if our faith constitutes a cold and lifeless assent to certain intellectual propositions, rather than a true desire to follow Christ wherever He leads us, then we have no faith at all. Any exploration of the Gospels reveals to us that there can be no relationship with Christ which does not demand something of us - Jesus says to His disciples, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). The image of the cross is where we find the most striking vision of discipleship. In the cross, Christ bears final revelation of the love of God, not because He dies to satisfy some wrath in God, nor to complete a transaction which seals our forgiveness, but because He transparently reveals the mystery of divine love in what John Robinson calls “the ultimate surrender of self”. In the cross, all that can be seen is the radical solidarity of God with creation, the ultimate, unconditional love revealed not by an emperor, or a religious leader, but by the oppressed, beaten, humiliated Christ who has emptied Himself of any craving for power, any desire to be worshipped, and in doing so, lays bare the inexhaustible love of God. The cross directs us to the only way in which God can truly communicate to us, and the way in which are called to communicate with, and ultimately love, others: in powerlessness and suffering. God leads us towards the crucified of the world, and pleads with us to renounce our own will in favour of the love of God.
The Wesleyan covenant prayer expresses our obligation to Christ, stating, “I am no longer my own, but thine”. We no longer belong to our own whims, nor the expectations and hierarchies of the world, but to the love of Christ, which demands that we reflect it to others, and reveal it to the world. This is, in itself, a ‘cost’. There will always be those who wish to silence prophetic voices, quash resistance against evil, and crucify those who live in solidarity with the oppressed. During Lent, we are reminded that our love almost always requires that we give something up, just as Christ gives up any lust for power, any desire to be venerated, to suffer alongside us. We might have to give up wealth and indulgence to assist someone less fortunate, give up a vice to look after someone we love, or forgo short-term pleasure to serve a greater good. Anyone who has ever loved knows that there is no situation in which our love has no ‘cost’, and I am sympathetic to those who would argue that the command to empty ourselves of wealth, ego, and arrogance to live in Christ’s love is too much to ask. Yet, in taking upon ourselves this ‘cross’ and belonging only to Christ’s unconditional love, we are not oppressed or burdened, but liberated by the grace of God from all covetousness of power and dominance, which have caused us to turn from our neighbour, and reject the lowest and the least. We are brought out of apathy, and enlightened to the suffering of the world. We are spurred into action, to serve the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable in politics, in our communities, and across our world. We are called, unambiguously, to love. A love which does not exploit or dominate, which does not ask ‘Who is my neighbour?’, but only serves. A love which at the end of everything, will not let up, and will not die - which no darkness shall overcome. To understand this, and to reveal it to others, regardless of any consequence, is to follow Christ.
Central to our discipleship is listening to Christ, discerning His call, as individuals and as a Church. If we lean too much on our own fallible understanding, our discipleship is coloured by our own privileges, and if our Church dwells in close proximity to power, its witness will not reflect the Christ who suffers and dies in solidarity with all those who are heavy laden by suffering and oppression, but instead the tyrants who twist the message of Christ for their own ends. For Bonhoeffer, this threat was the Nazis, who hung symbols of hatred in houses of God. Today, this threat presents itself in those movements who idolise a Christian Nation, yet abhor solidarity, empathy, unconditional love, and the sacrificial cross. Christ states, “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid” (Matthew 5:14). Bonhoeffer reminds us that the Church is a witness to Christ in the world - not a passive, neutral entity, but an active force for peace, justice, and love - a love which cannot be quashed by any authority or power. We grow together in our discipleship by first and foremost humbly acknowledging that in following Christ, we are dragged out of security and into insecurity, and thrust out of privilege and apathy and into solidarity and love, at all times embraced by the unbounded love and grace of Christ. Bonhoeffer states, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”. He does not mean that all Christians are called to martyrdom, but if we are called by Christ, yet keep our riches, withhold our solidarity, and turn from our neighbour, we do not live in authentic discipleship, and instead turn away from God. There is no sense in which this calling to discipleship is extended only to a select group of spiritual athletes or monastics, but to all those who encounter God in Christ - in fact, the experiences of those who bore witness to the Divine in Christ, and the lengths to which the apostolic Church would go in order to serve Him, suggest to me that this call is irresistible to all those who truly encounter Christ.
Sometimes, Jesus’ call is an inconvenient one, which leads us to places of extreme suffering and darkness, or even personal loss. When the rich young man asked Jesus how he might inherit eternal life, he approached Him with an air of cockiness, as if looking for a moral teacher who might be able to contribute to his intellectual inquiry, and takes great pride in his ability to keep the demands of the law. When he pushes Jesus to give him an interesting answer, Christ says to him, “sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven…it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God” (Luke 18:22-25). The man walks away shocked, “sad”, and “grieving”, because he knows that what he has encountered is not merely a ‘good moral teacher’, but the ultimate reality and meaning of our world, and thus having encountered it, he has no other choice but to live within this self-sacrificial love which had been revealed to Him, and is revealed to all of us. When we are brought into His love and grace, no longer can we see the person of Jesus Christ only as a novel factor to add to a thrilling moral adventure, but as the ultimate meaning of our world, which, in honouring our God, our neighbour, and ourselves, we can do nothing else but serve.
Written by Jacob Owen, theology student.