Thought for the Week: The discipleship deal
Christopher Stokes looks at discipleship and the Sermon on the Mount
I am working my way through the Sermon on the Mount. Whenever I’ve thought about my relationship with Jesus in the past I’ve always turned to the Sermon on the Mount, regarding it as the best blueprint for living that I’ve ever encountered and deciding that I should try to follow its advice. But sooner or later I’ve given up, regretting that my established patterns of behaviour have proved too hard to break.
The Sermon on the Mount is an extraordinarily tough call: abandoning anger and judgement, loving my enemies, banishing adultery as Jesus inconveniently defines it, releasing the hold that material things have on me (does this really include my iPhone?), letting go of anxiety. Surely not!
Until now I’ve thought that, if this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, it’s not the life for me. It sounds more demanding than anything I’ve ever done in my life, including being married, bringing up a family, buying a house, becoming a Quaker, running a newspaper office and everything else. Certainly, the discipleship deal was tempting, because it promised me everything that I need in this world and beyond, but the promises required of me in return were simply beyond me.
Now, I think I’m starting to realise where I’ve been going wrong. Jesus isn’t offering me advice in the Sermon on the Mount, nor does he wish me to interpret it as I please, or to discuss it as an ideal. He requires my unqualified surrender and obedience, which means getting on with it, doing it and obeying it. And he assures me that I won’t have to surrender and obey in my own strength, so my excuse that I’ve been too weak-willed in the past doesn’t cut the mustard. I’m minded to try again.
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