Eastern Shore Episcopalian - Pre-Convention 2020

In the Christian context a disciple is a person who has
decided to commit to be a lifelong follower of Jesus Christ,
and whose life and actions are to be shaped by Jesus’
teachings and values. Discipleship may also be summarized
as Christian life and living, Christian formation or Christian
Spirituality – the effect of faith on head, mind and heart of a
follower of Jesus Monday to Sunday.
Every baptized Christian immersed in the life
of Jesus is instantaneously through baptism a
disciple of our Lord and Savior and lives in what
St. Paul describes in his Epistle to the Romans
a life embodied in the reality of his suffering,
death, resurrection and new life (6: 1-4). This
characterization applies to baptized infants as
well as mature adults.
I wish to offer a very famous quotation from
the 20th century German martyr Dietrich
Bonhoeffer which is found in his famous book:
The Cost of Discipleship. It goes like this:
“Christianity without discipleship is Christianity
without Christ.” He bemoaned the fact that
while people are ready to claim that they trust
in God, they still fail to follow Jesus. Bonhoeffer
also waxed eloquent on the dangers of what he
called “cheap grace”. He said: “Cheap grace is the
mortal enemy of the church.”
There is no question in my mind that the
primacy of discipleship in the Christian religion
is critical for the unity of the Church, and for the
embodiment of the high priestly prayer of Jesus
that we may all be one.
The ecumenism of discipleship in following
Jesus is far more important than the ecumenism
of churches and religious groupings. It has been
rightly said that while churches are looking for
decisions, Jesus is looking for disciples.
Others have said that if a church’s strategy is
not rooted and grounded in making disciples,
the church has abandoned the mission that was
given to it by Jesus. We need to respond more
fervently to the invitation of Jesus to follow Him
way beyond the regular habit of repeating the
Lord’s Prayer. Let me explore briefly what this
matter of discipleship is all about.
Love defined as agape, in the Greek, is the virtue
Jesus advocated by living it out or incarnating it
in the very essence of his life on earth. Christ’s
disciples, therefore, are themselves called to
embody the love Jesus modeled.
Discipleship is a way of life that spells out one’s
structure of allegiance, whether it is political,
ideological, spiritual, ethical, intellectual, or
otherwise. It essentially requires a relentless
willingness to learn, to embrace, to follow, and to
represent that which is most meaningful in one’s
life. It generates varying levels of responsiveness
both from those within its range as well as those
without. Accordingly, it is possible to say that
discipleship has the power to ascend to, and
assume, the highest levels of human life, and
conduct, and dignity, and devotion; while, at
the same time, it can plunge into an inexorable
descent to the lowest levels of human despair,
destruction, and decay. Discipleship can be just
as much the engine of terrorism as it can be
the energy for spiritual vitality, moral purity, or
human ascendancy. A disciple is an avid learner,
Photo: Christ Church Stevensville - host of DIocesan Convention 2020.
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