Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

So the call to discipleship is inseparable from the coming of the reign of God and Jesus’ eschatological gathering of Israel. The great work now at hand requires many laborers. This is evident also in the scene in Mark in which the first disciples are called. The meaning of the call to discipleship is explicitly formulated there: “Jesus called to him: ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people’” (Mark 1:17). Jesus refers to the “calling” of those he summons. He has no hesitation in speaking of “fishing for people,” even though the expression “fish for people” or “catch people” is used in a negative way throughout the Bible.¹³ We can see here again that it is part of Jesus’ way of speaking to use expressions that are unusual, exciting, demanding, or even inflammatory or provocative. In any case, the saying about fishing for people makes it clear that the calling of Peter and Andrew and all the other disciples means that they will work with Jesus in gathering people for the reign of God. Obviously, this is about the gathering of Israel.

Chapter 6

The Many Faces of Being Called

Jesus called people from Israel to follow him. He gathered disciples around him. The call to these disciples to follow after him and to place everything, without reserve, in the service of the reign of God must have accompanied his preaching from the very beginning. But does that mean he wanted to call all Israel to discipleship? Was it his goal that gradually everyone in Israel would become a disciple?

A Nation of Disciples?

There are indications in the text of the New Testament that point in just that direction. The Acts of the Apostles often speaks simply of “the disciples.” The series of these references begins in Acts 6:1-2: “Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists [the Greek-speaking Jews in the community] complained against the Hebrews [the Aramaic-speaking Jews] because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples.”

“The disciples” here refers to the whole community. This unique usage, which may go back to the time of the earliest Jerusalem community, appears elsewhere in Acts as well. In that book “disciple” can simply mean “Christian” or “member of the community,” and “the disciples” often means nothing but the community in Jerusalem or in some other place.¹

Add to this that the gospels, which refer constantly to Jesus’ disciples, are not only looking back to the past but also making the time of Jesus transparent to the later time of the church. When the evangelists speak of Jesus and his disciples, they are also speaking of their own ecclesial present. Therefore it seems altogether likely that we should see discipleship as a comprehensive and essential characteristic of the church.² Favoring this is also the command to mission at the end of Matthew’s gospel: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations!” (Matt 28:19).

We could set up an equation: church = discipleship. But is that right? If we read the New Testament more closely, things look different. The language of the gospels and Acts does show unmistakably that without discipleship there can be no New Testament-style church. But that usage remains unique within the New Testament. The epistolary literature avoids the word “disciple.” The usage in Acts and corresponding redactional layers in the gospels may ultimately stem from the breakthrough situation of the young post-Easter church. At that early period distinctions were not yet necessary. Those came later, but the foundations were already laid in the gospel tradition.

For according to the gospels one can only become a disciple by being chosen by Jesus—usually with the cry, “Come, follow me!” or “Follow me!”³ And Jesus does not call everyone to follow him. According to Mark 1:15 the proclamation of the reign of God culminates in the call, “repent and believe in the good news!” but not, “follow me and become my disciple!” There is no text in which Jesus calls all Israel to discipleship or to following him. But above all, he nowhere makes being a disciple a requirement for participation in the reign of God.

So we have to suppose that life toward the reign of God—in sociological terms, participation in the Jesus movement—allowed for some very different ways of life. This chapter is about those various ways of living. It is significant that they did not arise out of the needs of the later great church but are grounded already in the gospels, even in the pre-Easter reign-of-God praxis of Jesus. In what follows I will go through these various ways of life in the order in which they appear in the gospels themselves. But I will rely primarily on the Gospel of Mark.

The Disciples