Discipleship

For a blog that at times resembles a Walter Brueggemann appreciation page, it's been far too long since I quoted one of the most prolific and provocative scholars of our time. I'll make up for that with an extended quotation from an article he wrote on Evangelism and Discipleship:

Discipleship is no easy church program. It is a summons away from our characteristic safety nets of social support. It entails a resolve to follow a leader who himself has costly habits, in order to engage in disciplines that disentangle us from ways in which we are schooled and stupefied and that introduce us to new habits that break old vicious cycles among us, drawing us into intimacy with this calling God. Discipleship requires a whole new conversation in a church that has been too long accommodating, at ease in the dominant values of culture that fly in the face of the purposes of God.
    It is right to conclude, in my judgement, that the God who calls is the God of discipleship, the one who calls people to follow, to obey, to participate in his passion and mission. Such disciplines – in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, and now – intend and permit a drastic reorienting of one’s life, an embrace of new practices and, most particularly, a departure from other loyalties that have seemed both legitimate and convenient.

As I've mulled over discipleship for an essay this semester, I've come to realise that discipleship of Jesus doesn't occur in a vacuum. It is not a case of people either being discipled or not being discipled. Discipleship is a competitive sport, with discipleship of Jesus challenging the "technological-therapeutic-military consumerism" school of thought that is constantly discipling anyone who breathes. That is why Brueggemann can write that "discipleship is no easy church program". 

We do not add discipleship to a list of local church ministries. Rather, every act a church engages in ought to be permeated by a "summons away" and a "resolve to follow". If a church lacks discipleship of Jesus, we do not say that it needs to add a discipleship program; instead, we may legitimately say that we are not sure whether the church is in fact a church in any meaningful sense of the word.

Gift

The celebration of a day of rest was, then, the announcement of trust in this God who is confident enough to rest. It was then and is now an assertion that life does not depend on our feverish activity of self-securing, but that there can be a pause in which life is given to us simply as a gift.

- Walter Brueggemann

Tense Hope

There is a tension to Christian hope. On the one side, we have the hope of new creation. The material world is a gift from God, and though at present it is experiencing labour pains, the hope of the world is similar to the hope of a pregnant woman: after the pains emerges an inexplicable gift that is cherished beyond all previous experiences.

What's more, it is humanity's hope of resurrection bodies that paves the way for the rest of creation to be redeemed. We are not waiting to cast off our physical bodies and join a non-physical reality of pure bliss. Rather, we are awaiting the redemption of our bodies, which -- along with the resurrection of Jesus -- is the definitive "Yes" to creation.

In short, there is a joyous material dimension to Christian hope that must not be overlooked.

But this material hope is counterbalanced -- even superseded -- by another hope: the hope not of new creation, but of the Creator. Ultimately, it is the Giver of material gifts that Christians put their hope in; it is His presence that is longed for more than anything else. Yes we earnestly desire the gifts, but the greatest gift is the Giver himself, and our hope is that he will one day make his dwelling place with human beings in such a way that deep, intimate knowledge of him will not only be possible, but inescapable -- "the whole earth will be filled with the knowledge of God, as the waters cover the sea". To quote Brueggemann for the umpteenth time, our hope is that "the human person may appear in the presence of YHWH naked, defenseless, unashamed, and unafraid." What a hope -- to walk unafraid with YHWH. The good doctor goes on to write that,

The promise of presence and communion is important because it tells powerfully against the commoditization of contemporary culture, as expressed in market ideology and as it invades the ecclesial community as well. If the promise concerns only God's gifts, then God becomes only instrumental to human hope, and the hoper lives in a world of commodities, which in the end give neither joy nor safety. Thus it is affirmed that YHWH is the true heart's desire of human persons, the true joy of human life, and the sure possibility of life lived in hope.

Now, let me tell you about a little thing I like to call a "God-shaped hole"...

Breathing the Same Air

There are few places I'd rather be this Friday at 3:15pm than Wheaton, Illinois. In the Edman Chapel at Wheaton College, N.T. Wright and Richard Hays will be clearing their throats and testing their microphones as they prepare to take part in a panel discussion including audience Q & A. I don't know what they will be discussing. It could be the subtle differences between Lidl and Aldi for all I care. When those two are breathing the same air, that's worth checking out if you have ears to hear.

I have three favourite Christian scholars/authors. The above make up two of those three, with Walter Brueggemann being the third. I like to think each bring something important to the table which complements the other two, but with all three sharing much the same vision for the faith and its scholarship. Brueggemann is an Old Testament scholar, whose writing is simultaneously rooted in age-old faith but also capable of stirring up radical newness. Wright is Mr New Testament. He can say more in a sentence than most can in a book. The church is blessed to have him among us, though I think future generations of Christians will be more blessed by Wright than we are. We are too close, too stuck in the tired, old ways of thinking that Wright strives to root up. Hays, then, completes the trinity. He is like a mixture of the other two, with much of his work bridging the gap between old and new testaments. He is also a remarkable reader of texts, capable of the kind of imaginative reading (and writing) that brings words to life. Moreso than the other two, I can read Hays simply for pleasure.

I don't have a set theology. I don't have a view on baptism, I don't subscribe to either side of the predestination debate, and I haven't even begun to plumb the depths of a theology of the cross. To be honest, I don't have much time for systematic theology, with all my doctrinal i's dotted and all my doctrinal t's crossed. Perhaps this is naive of me, but at the moment I'm happy not to be one of those people with a long list of beliefs that must be defended at all costs. In other words, I'm happy not to be reformed. (Zing!)

Credit (or indeed blame) for this lack of a rigid theology must go to the above three authors, along with biblical scholar Arden Autry. They have taught me a way to read the Bible that avoids using it merely as a source for doctrine, and instead uses it as a means for knowing and engaging with the living God. Doctrines have their place, but even demons have doctrines (note to self: a good title for a future book). What they don't have is God as Father and fellowship with his sons and daughters, and all the possibilities these relationships entail. Brueggemann, Wright and Hays always bring such possibilities to light. They are able to spark a conversion of the imagination by bringing it into contact with an unsettling God, leaving one ever surprised by hope.

Sermons

Sermons must not give closure. Sermons must leave the congregation poised for more gifts to be given that may threaten us out of our socks....Because...what we know is that God's good future will not be a re-iteration of what we have known in the past; it will be new.

- Walter Brueggeman

Down With That Sort Of Thing

...real criticism begins in the capacity to grieve because that is the most visceral announcement that things are not right. Only in the empire are we pressed and urged and invited to pretend that things are all right....And as long as the empire can keep the pretense alive that things are all right, there will be no real grieving and no serious criticism.

But think what happens if the Exodus is the primal scream that permits the beginning of history.

- Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

Christianity has been the single most creative cultural, ethical, aesthetic, social, political, or spiritual force in the history of the West, to be sure; but it has also been a profoundly destructive force; and one should perhaps praise it as much for the latter attribute as for the former, for there are many things worthy of destruction.

- David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions

Criticism, destruction, grieving - not words you'd associate with Western Christianity today. Perhaps not even words we would want to be associated with.