Following Jesus into Small Things

When Nijay Gupta sent me a copy of Living the King Jesus Gospel: Discipleship and Ministry Then and Now I was so pleased to see that an old friend, Nancy Ortberg, wrote a chapter. She was the first pastor with whom I had a long conversation at Willow Creek. I was a bit nervous. She wasn’t! Ha. The chp sounds exactly the way Nancy preaches and teaches. I love the clear prose of someone whose writings is the way the person speaks. There’s an authenticity to that prose.

Photo by Jason Tuinstra on Unsplash

Nancy Ortberg’s chapter is about following Jesus and it was a blessing to read.

Following Jesus is relational.  He didn’t give the disciples a syllabus; it was about being with him and everything was “on a need-to-know basis” and full of power of surprises to teach us about discipleship. Peter followed Jesus and when he wrote those two letters we see a changed – totally changed man.

Following Jesus means recalibrating our lives to who he is. Not who they want him to be; not the one just like us; no, to follow means listening and looking at the one who challenges to follow who he really is.

Following Jesus means paying attention to who Jesus pays attention to, and this is a stunning section in her chapter. “What does it say about my internal soul when externally I take time to deeply engage with those who cannot necessarily do anything for me?” Users like people who can enhance their brand; Jesus followers stop their walking to attend to those who are marginalized.  She has an entire section of “He stopped” for this one and that one and here’s another and there’s someone else. “Jesus rejected that as religion and restored at the center of religion those very people who had been pushed to the margins.”  (She’s got a great story about a beetle on the Galapagos Islands.)

Following Jesus means learning his language because language shapes our identity and imagination and forms us into followers of Jesus. His language involved lots of little things: salt and yeast and seeds. Think about it, how often do you give honor to a cook for how tasty the salt was or the yeast? Or how small a mustard seed is. That’s the language game Jesus played, and it magnified the marginalized. With Jesus “there is a disproportionate impact from small things.” So very true.

Following Jesus means suffering. Instead of the American Dream Jesus taught us to follow the kingdom of God. In that sentence we hear the sum of it. And that kingdom entails lament. I have never heard this: “It’s interesting that the Hebrew word psalm means “praise,” but there are more psalms of lament than there are psalms of praise” – and that teaches us that one way to learn praise is through lament. His enemies were worried about their numbers instead of the woman Jesus raised from the dead in John 11.

Small things have reshaped us and reformed us.

What are the small things that reshaped your life?