Following Jesus, Part 2: The Call to Discipleship

As we discuss discipleship, one question inevitably arises. How does one become a disciple of Jesus? A simple answer is that one needs to respond to Christ's call to discipleship as Levi did in Luke 5. The call to discipleship is gracious and rooted in Divine freedom and authority. Karl Barth says,

“Just because the command of Jesus is the form of the grace that concretely comes to a person, it is issued with all the freedom and sovereignty of grace against which there can be no legitimate objections, of which no one is worthy, for which there can be no preparation, which none can elect, and in face of which there can be no qualifications.”

The call issued by Jesus to Levi is gracious since Levi had no qualifications for becoming a follower of the Messiah. But as Jesus said, He did not come to call the righteous, i.e. those qualified to follow Him, but the sinful. The only prerequisite for discipleship is one's sinfulness. Jesus freely calls Levi and Levi simply obeys Jesus.
Unless we understand the grace of the call to discipleship, we do not understand discipleship. And unless we are amazed by grace, we do not understand grace. To really get it, we need to be surprised, embarrassed, puzzled, freaked out by grace. If I am not surprised that Jesus called me to follow Him, if, on some level, it makes sense that He called specifically me, I really have no idea what grace is. The call is gracious and thus inexplicable and mysterious. It cannot be manufactured but only experienced. Here is what Anne Lamott writes about the wonder of grace:

“It [grace] is unearned love—the love that goes before, that greets us on the way. It’s the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.”

When Jesus calls one to follow Him, there is only one legitimate response. It is obedience. Simple, spontaneous, leave everything, no looking back obedience. We respond to the call by dying to everything around us and being resurrected to the new life in Christ. We accept Jesus as a Mediator, not only between God and man, but between two people, between us and reality, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes. Jesus must be welcomed as the Negotiator between the follower and reality. He must determine our attitudes towards and relationships with all that surrounds the new follower. Barth says that the call to discipleship is a coup d'etat of God. The call forces us to make a choice to either join the Divine rebellion, thus renouncing all our foreign allegiances, or fight against the Divine take over.