Reflecting on discipleship

In my sermon on March 8th, I posed the question: What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? I depicted discipleship as a continual process of learning and growth. While there may be certain fundamentals to be a disciple – love of neighbor for example - how they are manifested depends on community and individual identity, historical context, geographic location, etc. Thus, although I put forth a specific definition of discipleship – to stand in solidarity with the suffering– we at CWM must question this definition and determine if it is appropriate given our community identity, historical context, experiences, etc. Perhaps as a queer community, this definition of discipleship is not helpful for CWM, since most of our congregation is oppressed and does experience suffering. How else might we defined discipleship? In Buddhism, there is an understanding that everyone suffers – this is part of the human experience. So perhaps, in understanding discipleship, it may be more helpful to think of our own experiences of suffering, and how that understanding and experience may help us reach out to others who also suffer. Perhaps this alternative depiction is helpful to you, perhaps not. I invite you to think about and share how you would define what it means to be a disciple of Jesus given the context of your lives and your experiences at CWM.

‘Discipleship is a continual process of wrestling with hard questions, but it is in the processing of asking questions that we discover who we are‘ (quote from my sermon).