discipleship

This is post 10 of 12 in the series “Hebrews”

I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.

I will be their God,
and they will be my people.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.

For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.
Hebrews 8

As I’ve continued this series of posts through the book of Hebrews, I knew I wanted to write something on this passage, but it’s so rich it’s hard to know where to start.

So much of the big story in the bible is about the deep commitment in the relationship between God and God’s people – the covenant. There was the covenant with Abraham to make his descendants a great nation, and then the covenant with those descendants shared in the law of Moses. And then in the writings of another Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, acknowledges both the failings of that covenant, but also the deep love and commitment:

This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife.
Jeremiah 31

And then Jeremiah describes a new covenant God is making. And the few sentences he writes are elevated by the author of Hebrews to be a key to understanding Jesus’ work as high priest and his purpose here on earth.

So as I’ve been thinking about what to write, the challenge for me was to not jump at the first thing to write, but to meditate on it deeply. Memorise these couple of sentences. And let them do a deep internal work.

What’s happening for me here has been another instance of what I quoted in the first post in this series:

A memorized work (like a lover, a friend, a spouse, a child) has entered into the fabric of its possessor’s intellectual and emotional life in a way that makes deep claims upon that life, claims that can only be ignored with effort and deliberation.’ … A memorized text has a peculiarly character-forming effect on the memorizer. The text becomes part of his character; he lives in it and lives it out.
Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading

There’s so many things I could write about… but mostly I’d encourage you to meditate on the words of this new covenant and let what you learn about God’s heart go deep, to be placed in your mind and written in your heart.

Following over believing

I’ve started participating in a local church again lately, after a few years away.

In that time away my beliefs have continued to evolve (there’s never really been a period in my life where they haven’t), and now I find myself standing in a gathering of people signing songs whose lyrics often make me cringe, and bring on a sense of cognitive dissonance for me – there’s parts of this I do believe are true, parts of this I want to believe are true (but probably don’t, if I’m honest) and parts that I think are downright unhealthy, regardless of their truth.

So what am I doing here?

Well, I want community. And being part of a regular weekly gathering is a way of building friendships that I know works, and that I’m comfortable with. Even if there’s a little dissonance.

I also want a spiritual practice – I’ve never stopped believing in God (if you’ll let me define “believing” and “God” on my own terms at least!) and have wanted to maintain a connection with the spiritual reality that permeates everything. And while I’ve experienced this same connection in music festivals and yoga classes, something I’ve appreciated about the church I grew up in is the absolute insistence that this divine spiritual reality isn’t an impersonal energy, but is a person, and is a person who can be known, and a person who wants to be known. I want that.

But probably the biggest thing is that for all my questions about the meaning of Jesus’ life, I still find his example and his teaching incredibly compelling, and to this day haven’t found anything else that I’d want to have as a foundation for building my own life on, a story to orient myself towards, a starting point for choosing the way I want to live.

I guess that’s what I think of as discipleship. Following the way of the teacher. Regardless of what I intellectually reason to be truth, I can still listen to teachings, learning from the example, and choose to live that way.

This morning at the church gathering, there was a song I felt no awkwardness singing, so I sang it loud:

I have decided to follow Jesus
No turning back
No turning back
A hymn by Sadhu Sundar Singh