Following Jesus’ Way
Jesus summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” —Mark 8:34–35
Richard Rohr shares how Jesus’ message and way is intended to change our lives with its counter-intuitive wisdom and call:
A blatant contradiction between message and action is holding us back in every part of the world. Christians too often preach a self-absorbed gospel of piety and religiosity, rather than a “lifestyle gospel.” The gospel is so radical that if we truly believed its message, it would call into question all the assumptions we currently hold about the way we live, how we use our time, whom we relate to, how we marry, and how much money we have. Everything we think and do would be called into question and viewed in a new way. [1]
I believe that we rather totally missed Jesus’ major point when we made a religion out of him instead of realizing he was giving us a message of simple humanity, vulnerability, and nonviolence that was necessary for the reform of all religions—and for the survival of humanity. We need to dedicate our lives to building bridges and paying the price in our bodies for this ministry of reconciliation (Ephesians 2:13–18). The price is that we will always, like all bridges, be walked on from both sides. Reconcilers are normally “crucified,” and the “whole world hates them,” because they are neither on one side nor the other. They build the vulnerable bridge in between, which always looks like an abdication of ground to the supposedly “true believer.”
Jesus is a person and, at the same time, a process. Jesus is the Son of God, but at the same time he is “the Way.” Jesus is the goal, but he’s also the means, and the means is always the way of the cross.
For all authentic spiritual teachers, their message is the same as their life; their life is their message. For some reason, we want the “person” of Jesus as our “God totem,” but we really do not want his path and message of “descent” except as a functional theology of atonement: this is what Jesus needed to do to “save us.” We do not want to see the cross as the pattern of life and a path for our own liberation. We prefer heavenly transactions to our own transformation.
The way of the cross looks like failure. In fact, we could say that Christianity is about how to win by losing, how to let go creatively, how the only real ascent is descent. We need to be more concerned with following Jesus, which he told us to do numerous times, and less with worshipping Jesus—which he never once told us to do. [2]
Keep Changing
In this excerpt from his 1980s talk The Four Gospels, Father Richard reflects on what it means to follow Jesus:
Immediately after the temptation in the desert, Jesus goes out to Galilee and there he begins to preach. His initial preaching is summed up in the verse, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand” (Matthew 3:2; Mark 1:15).
It is a theologically packed statement. What does the word “repent” mean? First of all, it doesn’t mean to beat ourselves up or to feel bad about ourselves. “Repent” (or metanoia in Greek) means to turn around, to change. The first word that comes out of Jesus’ mouth is change—be willing to change.
People who are not willing to change are not willing to turn away from themselves. What we’re in love with usually is not God. We’re in love with our way of thinking, our way of explaining, our way of doing. One of the greatest ways to protect ourselves from God, and to protect ourselves from truth and grace, is simply to buy into some kind of cheap conventionalism and call it tradition.
But the great traditions always call people on a journey of faith to keep changing. There’s no other way this human personality can open up to all that God is asking of us. There’s no way we can open up to all we have to learn, all we have to experience, unless we’re willing to let go of the idols of yesterday and the idols of today. The best protection from the next word of God is the last word of God. We take what we heard from God last year and we build a whole system around it, and then we sit there for the rest of our lives.
Immediately after he begins his preaching, Jesus calls his first four disciples. The way I see people transformed today sure doesn’t happen this quickly. Jesus just says, “Follow me” and immediately they left their nets and followed him (Matthew 4:20). Now, maybe it happened that way; I don’t want to say it didn’t. But what I do want to say is that a true disciple will have that kind of readiness. I’d be more likely to think that this was maybe a process of some conversations over a few weeks. And Jesus said, “Hey, I’m into something. Do you want to be a part of it? Let’s go.”
I hope we realize that we’re all called to discipleship the same way. We hope that the point comes when we’re ready to let go of our nets. What are our nets? Our security systems. Fishing is Simon and Andrew’s economic livelihood, and Jesus says to let go of it. He says, “I’m going to teach you how to fish in a new way, to fish for people” (Matthew 4:19). What he means is that he’s going to give them a new vocation. What is God asking us to do? Where is God asking us to go?
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