discipleship

To one man, Jesus said, “You cannot see or enter the kingdom of God without being born again.”

To another he said the way to inherit eternal life is to keep the commandments, and in order to do that, you need to sell all that you have and give to the poor.

Written by Andrew Suderman

As a young Christian man actively involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, Mpho Putu knew that some of the protest songs that included themes of revenge killing posed challenges to what it means to be a faithful disciple of Jesus.

Bill Bryson has written a new book entitled At Home: A Short History of Private Life. In it he has a section on the importance of vitamins and minerals for the human body, telling how, in recent history, scientists discovered them and their crucial role in our well-being. Of all the minerals, he tells us, salt is the most vital. This is quite strange given the fact that salt is sodium chloride, and that both of these are on their own quite dangerous. But whereas pepper and other spices enhance the food we eat, salt is essential for life.

You may be surprised to know that the Bible aside, the book that has been translated into more African languages than any other is John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church describes Bunyan’s book as having an “unrivalled place in the world’s religious literature.” Bunyan was a shoemaker and Baptist preacher in England in the late 17th century, and he wrote Pilgrim’s Progress while in prison for his faith.

While leading a discipleship class for an aspiring Mennonite congregation whose members come from Pentecostal backgrounds, I have revisited in recent weeks the parables of Jesus. Each Wednesday evening, we study one story Jesus told and glean from it one characteristic of a disciple, a person who has decided to “take up the cross and follow Jesus” (Mk. 8:34). This week our text was Luke 10:25-37, the so-called parable of “the Good Samaritan”, set in its narrative context, and our characteristic was compassion.

I recall being surprised one day towards the end of my tenure at the University of Cape Town when I was told by some bureaucrat in the administration that one of my proposals for the Graduate School in Humanities did not fit the UCT brand! That was the first time I had heard the word used at UCT. But evidently according to the PRO people at the university there was a new policy that required everything that was done should reflect its image or brand.

There was a city and there was a mountain. The Jews worshipped at the city. The Samaritans worshipped on the mountain. Jesus met a certain lady by the well of Jacob, between the mountain and the city. She was a Samaritan. She recognised Jesus as a prophet and asked which was the right place to worship—at the place of her ancestors or of his. Jesus told her that the time was coming when true worshippers would worship neither in Jerusalem nor on the mountain but would worship the Father “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23).

“I have come that you might have life.”
John 10:1-10

“Jesus Christ is life itself.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer
DBWE 6:250

Written by Tom Smith