Start with your Feet

I have just re-read, after a very long gap, John Vincent’s Radical Jesus. In many ways it was just as I remembered it, a great read, really challenging us to think about how we relate to Jesus and how we engage in the task of following him.

“Jesus the radical walks my streets, creates my communities, freaks out my neighbours, judges my friends, calls my enemies, offends my fellow ministers, heals my sick neighbours, breaks into my world views, exposes it my betrayals, just as he does it in the Gospel story.”

I just feel that, if that is not how it is, it is how it ought to be!

I particularly like – because it challenges me – his chapter about Jesus as the ‘man of roots’. The roots he identifies are levelling, sonship and wilderness. Jesus makes things level. It is like that bit from Isaiah about the valleys being brought up and the mountains being brought down. Jesus makes everyone level. “Excesses are reduced, inadequacies are made good.” Then Jesus is identified as God’s Son at the moment of his baptism. We, too, are God’s children. Jesus also spent that time in the wilderness. Those moments are needed. We might want to avoid the wilderness, but we will miss out if that’s what we do.

Vincent’s emphasis is very much on discipleship, and meaningful discipleship at that. “Discipleship to Jesus provides ‘strait jackets’ whereby people could not do anything else but behave differently.” He sees discipleship as something to which we are surely compelled.

He offers a list of five things that will get us to a good place on the discipleship road.

First, we should start with our feet. Following is key.

Second, we should share meals. Parties are a big element in God’s Kingdom.

Third, we should leave some things behind. That can be challenging, but it’s important.

Fourth, we should have things in common. Community (and sharing) are important.

Fifth, we need to learn to share a common destiny. Our discipleship is about the way of the Cross.