Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45
Followers of Christ
“Faith in Christ is not first of all a matter of having felt something, or having had an experience. It is, rather, the simple willingness to stumble along behind Jesus – a willingness to be behind - - Christ. The Faith is in the following.
You may remember that the earliest name for followers of Jesus, according to the Acts of the Apostles, was: “the People of the Way.” The point is, the imitation of our apprenticeship – the way we got on the journey with Jesus – is not the most crucial matter. The crucial matter is that we are “on the way.”
To be on the way means to be, as a disciple, imitating the moves of the Master, Jesus, in all we do. Wherever you are, whatever you do, you are a disciple of Jesus. Following Jesus is not a matter of learning to do a few religious things – on top of the other things we do, but rather, a matter of doing all that we do, not for ourselves, but for Jesus. That makes for a seismic shift, a change in living, doesn’t it!
That’s surely why Jesus parables are stories about real life, and his teaching is about matters like anger, forgiveness, ordinary injustice, disappointment – the “stuff” of real life. Surely Jesus meant for us to follow him now, in this life, not just some other, far away time and place. And the world is right in judging Jesus, based on the sort of lives he produces. The only proof we have, the acid test for the validity of the gospel, is whether or not it is capable of changing lives, producing lives that are a credit to Jesus, the Master, to whom we are apprenticed.”
Peace,
Fr. Bob +
No comments:
Post a Comment