Lessons From Would-Be Disciples

Let's face it. Jesus doesn't want everybody as a disciple. Now I know that goes against the grain of the ideal image of Jesus as a nice guy that we hold in our postmodern minds. But then why would we expect Jesus not to explode our conceptions of him. If the ancient world in which he was born didn't understand him then what makes us think we will do any better? Do we think that we have an advantage because we have two thousand years of Christian history behind us? As if the church has never been wrong about important spiritual things before. Anyway, if you can at least entertain the thought that our popular notions about Jesus could be wrong then consider the following.

In Luke 9.57-62 Jesus actually said some discouraging (I might even say cruel but I know that might really explode your conception of the master! so I won't!) things to a few men that wanted to follow him. At least they said they wanted to follow him and for most people in the leadership business that is good enough. I mean, it's not easy to even get people to want to follow. As one leadership guru used to put it, "If you are leading but no one is following, you're just taking a walk!" So Jesus is really doing something to just stimulate the desire of other people to follow him. And yet this passage in Luke has him making unreasonable demands of those that want to follow him. Listen in on these three conversations:

First conversation:
“Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

Second conversation:
Jesus said to another, “Follow Me.”But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”

Third conversation:
And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Note four things. 1.) Two of the men that want to follow Jesus have other things they want to do first. These are not bad things. In fact, they are actually very good things, honorable things that they wish to do out of a sense of duty and responsibility. But the good is the enemy of the great. And good things can especially get in the way of God-things! Sometimes even doing our duty can take us far from the will of God. Just think of the pilot of the Enola Gay just doing his duty and dropping the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. And for the soldiers that crucified Jesus it was just another day in the imperial office!

2.) For two of the men that wanted to follow Jesus the focus was on "my house" and "my father." Don't miss this. The patriarchal family was the source of the greatest threat to the mission of Jesus and the kingdom of God. Family is good but it's not the ultimate good or the absolute good. Do we allow our lives to be shaped by family values in such a way that we miss the faith venture of following Jesus?

3.) What does a man that doesn't even have a "place" of his own have to offer those of us that are essentially defined by what we have? Is it possible for consumers like us to follow Jesus?

4.) These three conversations take place at the point in Luke's story where Jesus makes his crucial move toward Jerusalem. Jesus simply didn't have time to coddle disciples that weren't ready for the heat that was quickly coming. That may be tough but then Jesus was no cupcake!

If we're looking for soft and cushy we probably won't want to fill out the application to follow Jesus. We wouldn't make the cut anyway. And that would be a shame because we would miss out on the adventure that is known as the kingdom of God!

© Paul Fisher