Zero Week: discipleship

This Week’s Reading:

Devotional Thought

Like the whole story of the Bible, discipleship begins with God’s action – God’s initiative. Light shines in the darkness, where we are found. Our first step in the discipleship journey is response–response to God’s awesome arrival, brilliant presence, and bold invitation. We reject or receive; the Light either blinds us or makes our blind eyes see. The same sun melts wax, but hardens clay. 

Jesus’ first question to the potential disciple is the core question, “What do you want?” Andrew and his companion respond, perhaps unaware of the gravity of their own words, “Where is your house,” (1:38) the place where the Glory dwells? (Ps. 26.8) Jesus cryptically invites them to “come and see,” (Jn. 1:39). Whether the invitation comes directly from the Rabbi, or from another of his followers, the invitation is always double-edged. Come and see where the Glory dwells, and what it is you really want. The journey toward the light slowly penetrates any foggy pretense. Jesus’ students accompany him from the surprise of a wedding miracle to the painful debridement of the temple (ch. 2). They hear the secret, anxious questions of Israel’s elites (ch. 3) followed by the joyous declaration of belief from Israel’s enemies (ch. 4). The Rabbi takes them (and us) on a journey they assume is about being in His Presence. Without a doubt, it is. However, he knows, perhaps more than they (and more than we) the journey is also inward, uncovering our expectations and confronting them with the light. After all, only he knows “what is in a person,” (2.25).  

And just as we are tempted to despair, Jesus reminds us that in the same way the Father loves the Son and delights to give Him life, “so the Son also gives life to whom he wants,” (5.21). Jesus doesn’t ask us to completely understand him, or even ourselves, but simply to “hear his word and believe,” (5.24). We will find that when we do so, we have already begun the double-edged journey of discipleship, and simultaneously stepped from darkness into light, from “death to life,” (5.24)