On Being Jesus’s Disciple

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost • September 12, 2021

John B. Cobb Jr. © 2021

You can view the full worship video recording at:

https://youtu.be/Dv3IZgRYs4Y

Scripture Reading: Acts 9:1-9 (The Inclusive Bible)

The texts of the readings are in the worship bulletin linked here.

I appreciate being asked to talk about discipleship. I have never written about it or spoken about it publicly before. So, I’m being given the opportunity to think. That’s a challenge, but just the kind of challenge through which I hope I can continue to grow. In the last few years, I have sometimes said that if being a Christian is believing any particular set of things that Christians have believed in the past—the creeds of the time of the ancient Roman empire or the ideas of Anselm that have really influenced the church in the wrong direction—then I’m not Christian. I don’t think that is what it means to be a Christian, but there are people who think it is. 

But I want to state positively why I think I am a Christian. I am sure at this point in my life that I want to be a disciple of Jesus. So, you are giving me an opportunity to explain what I mean by that and why I am saying it with strength of feeling and commitment. 

In order to do that, I have to set a little background. That’s a process way of doing things. We tell a story—but trying to find a place to begin is difficult because each beginning is at the end of something else. Still, each story has to have a beginning and come to a point where it explains what one wants to communicate. Let me say that in order to understand or to emphasize process, one has to follow one of the two major traditions in the West. One of those comes from Israel. The sacred scriptures of Israel are mainly about process, often in the form of stories. You could say they’re about history, but much of it is history simply in terms of individual lives—the Bible is a book of stories. 

The other great tradition that has fed into the contemporary West is philosophical. That tradition is mainly seeking to explain everything, including all processes as growing out of regular and unchanging principles that govern the movement or change of substances. Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus have influenced the thinking of the Western church away from the process thinking of the Bible. The rise of the natural sciences has intensified this influence. These have strengthened the substance thinking that has dominated Western philosophy. Stories are not the way of developing modern philosophy or science. What one wants to understand is how things always and everywhere are. 

Whereas most people are sometimes very interested in what is happening uniquely in a few moments, and how it differs from whatever happened in any other moment, science wants to explain everything as the outgrowth of laws that are the same always and everywhere. Process thought teaches that much is the same always and everywhere, but there are also differences. No two events occur in exactly the same context, and because every event is affected by its context, no two events are exactly alike. For many purposes, the differences are unimportant, but in some instances, they are very important. In other words, we have the uniqueness of everything that is happening. We also have the enormous commonality of most events with some other events. Much of the explanation of all events is by universal principles and practices. But no event is completely decided by commonality of context and universal laws. 

A few scientists and philosophers believe that as we examine the world in greater and greater detail, we discover that, after all, it is composed of events and processes rather than substances that obey universal laws with great exactness. Hence there is, at the margins of Western philosophy and the natural sciences, also a tradition of process thinking that can be related to the process thinking of the Bible. 

Now, it is obvious that science has developed out of philosophy and because Western philosophy is primarily substance thinking, the task assigned to science has been to talk about what is always true. That doesn’t mean that everything is always happening, but the basic pattern can be repeated. In science, it is very important that in the laboratory you can reproduce the same phenomena again and again. But when we remember the 9/11 catastrophe, many of us don’t think of it as a repetition of things that happened in the past and could readily happen again. We view it as an absolutely unique event. Therefore, it is not dealt with by scientists in their standard studies. The historical explanation for which it calls is a quite different matter.

Scientists tend to think that, in principle, everything that happened on 9/11 can be explained scientifically, that is, without the appeal to purposes or aims. Historians think that an historical approach is needed. In that approach, purposes and concerns play an important role. Even scientists who do not regard such explanations as real explanations tend, for practical purposes, to appeal to final causes (Whitehead’s “subjective aims”) for many practical explanations. Some scientists envision the expansion of science to include Whitehead’s “subjective aims,” and this is not impossible. The resulting science would no longer require a separate discussion of history. One form of explanation, including both efficient and final causes, would be used for everything. That would be the ultimate goal of a process science. Process thinkers would still assume that thinkers confront some patterns of events that are highly repetitive for millions of years, and some events dominated by unrepeatable features. 

This way of understanding science is not common among scientists. To explain why, we need to tell the history of science. If we know the history of science, we understand why it has focused as it has and ignored what did not fit. Historians can give us an historical explanation of why science in its present form seems so often to support deterministic and reductionistic thinking. 

During the medieval period, Aristotle was the great philosopher/scientist and everything that was discovered about the world was interpreted in Aristotelian terms. This often led to the idea that one understands something when one understands what it is for. That is called an Aristotelian final cause. When you understand the role the heart plays in keeping animals, including human ones alive, you understand the heart. Final causes played a predominant role in much of the science of the Middle Ages. In the 17th century, people like Descartes—Descartes being a very influential figure—said no, final causes don’t explain anything—what we want is to understand what makes things happen as they do. That is the efficient cause. And so, the final causes were ignored and rejected, and even denied. At first one could have said that was a methodology so that our energies would be devoted to explaining things in terms of what makes them happen not in terms of why they happened. But it got translated into saying there are no final causes, no purposes in nature. The natural world is completely lacking in purpose. 

Now, in my view, that is not science. That is philosophy, and it is a very dubious philosophy. Purposes play a large role in my life. My guess is purposes play a large role in your life, too. But when we say that and try to explain ourselves in terms of our purposes, what we’re saying is thought of as non-scientific—outside of the scientific world. In my view, this move on the part of science was a serious mistake. 

There is no question that science is the best way of learning a great many things. But because we have a tendency to idolize science and to absolutize science and to say that if something is not scientific then it is not important to pay attention to, it is important for us to understand that if we are seeking the repetitive features of reality—what happens again and again and can be reproduced again and again in a laboratory, science is the best way, and almost the only way, by definition, of getting at the deeper truth. 

Please do not take me as disparaging science. That is not at all what I mean. But damage is done if people start out worshipping science and taking it as the only source of reliable knowledge. History disappears. And the uncontrolled and unpredictable world that historians seek to understand and explain gets neglected. The reason it is important to think about this is that it is happening, now, in our universities. They are overwhelmingly focused upon science and the kind of thinking supported by substance philosophy. The social sciences are looking more like the deterministic natural sciences, since efficient causes are much preferred to final causes. This studying, and learning immense amounts about what is repetitive, tends to delay understanding when an event like 9/11 occurs. There are not many people whose university studies have prepared them to understand dramatically unique occurrences. 

I think that those of us who still think historically have a very important contribution to make. Of course, it is possible to study science and then also add historical knowledge. But if you study things historically you don’t have to add scientific knowledge, you can include scientific knowledge. The historical approach is, or could become, the more inclusive one. 

Now, of course, the historical approach is a process approach. Process thinking which focuses on events rather than fixed, stable entities, is able to include studies of fixed, stable entities. I think science has finally realized that if you analyze these stable fixed entities enough, you finally come out with events, that is, events are more fundamental. 

Energy is more fundamental than mass. There are energy events that occur that have no mass. There is no mass that cannot be understood as equivalent to energy. So, process thought is more foundational than what most scientists retain. But my broader concern for today is to say that all of us, to some extent, think historically. I wish our education were not so prejudiced against that. I think we may have a chance of influencing education to renew an interest in the unique, the organic, that which does not fit into this repetitive mechanical world. We should not belittle the power and importance of what is mechanical and repetitive, but we should set it in a larger whole. If you have only this mechanical, repetitive world there is no meaning. If there is no purpose it is hard to talk about life being meaningful. But if you start with the historical, the event, the process, you can include all of the science and find that meaningful. We can study the history of science, and by studying the science we can see what it has accomplished and also its limitations. 

Now all of this may not seem like it has anything to do with discipleship, but I want you to understand where I’m coming from. I’m coming from the view that history is of primary importance and right now we are living in what may be the end of history. Nothing could be more important than avoiding that. I wish that this could be said in the context of our leading educational institutions and be heard and understood. But, for example, it is very difficult for people who do not think historically to understand the importance of the fact that we are already living unsustainably. 

So, today I’m going to go from this very broad indication of what is for me central. Even more important for us than the scientific world now so much better known, is the world of human relations, the world in which Jesus lived, taught, and acted. Within that context, we can say the historical world, we can ask what Jesus’ role now is and why we should focus on this one particular person when we are speaking of discipleship. 

This sermon is confessional. I have found great importance in what Jesus taught about how to live in that human/historical world. Whether it will strike others as so important, I do not know, I just can tell you how I discovered it and why it became so important to me. What I say may seem relevant to you—you may have had a similar experience. But it doesn’t mean that everyone has to experience it that way. I think many people who have reflected about history seriously, and who have cared about the same things most of us care about, have come to similar but not identical conclusions as I. 

From childhood, I have thought of myself in relationship through the wider history in which I was brought up. I grew up in Japan in a society in which most of the people were ethnically and culturally different. When I came to the U.S. for the first time, at the age of 6, to the state of Georgia—I heard the ways white people talked to white people about black people, and I was absolutely appalled. I list this as historical because I think this is a matter of history. The reasons people do this and the importance for history of the consequences of this kind of racism are now well known. 

I was shocked by what adults commonly said, and I wrote in 1931, at the age of six, a little ditty that indicates that my feelings were very strong about this. I fancied myself a poet, but I have learned that I am not. All I meant by poetry was that certain words rhyme. I wanted to express my feelings about what we now call “racism.” At that time the term “intolerance” was widely used, and I used it in my little ditty. 

“Intolerance, thou art a curse than death itself, far, far worse.”

For me, that was just the way it seemed then, and I think my life was set to seek meaning in trying to understand my life historically. This decision was reinforced when we again travelled from the Japan to the United States in the fall of 1939. This time we came via Europe. Great Britain declared war on Germany while we were crossing the Atlantic in the Queen Mary.

Although the American people did not want to get into another European War, President Roosevelt thought we should support our allies. He succeeded in provoking Japan to bomb our fleet in Hawaii, thus justifying an American declaration of war soon extended to Germany. My life was clearly shaped by global events. For me the biggest issue was whether to be a pacifist or participate in fighting Japan. Much as I appreciated the Japanese people, I considered Japan’s imperialist ventures profoundly wrong and that ending them was an American responsibility.

At that time, I’m proud to say, the Methodist church was much more historically oriented than it is today. It was committed to what was called the “social gospel.” The church nationally felt the responsibility to help young men in my position to understand the issues and to decide wisely. I went to a national meeting, and we had speakers who were pacifists and speakers who thought we ought to participate in the war. Despite my positive feelings toward the Japanese people, I decided I was not a pacifist and would take part in the war. 

I am simply trying to say, the big decisions in my life were in a context of global history. I think global history plays an enormous role for all of us, but so many people don’t pay much attention to it. In my case, it would have been difficult to ignore global history.

Given the fact that history has often been the context that has set goals for what I wanted to do, I am strongly convinced of its importance in shaping my decisions. I wanted to work for peace, and for years I thought the best place would be the government foreign service. I was gradually disillusioned about being able to work for peace as an employee of the government. I gave up the idea of serving the world through the government of the United States. But if one finds meaning in involving oneself in what is historically happening, one’s knowledge of this will play a large role in one’s decisions. If the basis for understanding what one is called to be and do is one’s understanding of what is going on historically is crucial

Then the question becomes how do you make those decisions. I discovered that many Americans made them in ways that I did not think were good. It seemed that for many the selfish interest of the U.S., or segments of the population in the U.S., was more important than any type of global view. In the 1930s, Japan was the imperial power I was horrified by, but after WWII, the U.S. has taken over the primacy of that role in the world. American imperialism is something I strongly oppose, and I have to ask why. Some of my friends think that international action that is not for the U.S. is unpatriotic and one is being a traitor if one has a wider horizon than the national interest.

As I thought about what was going on in the world, the two people I admired most for their contributions were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. I admired them because of course they were embodying and fulfilling ideals that had come to seem to me the right ideas. But it was very interesting that, although one of them was a Hindu, it was from Jesus that both derived their central conviction that we all need to love our “enemies.” I realized that the message that we should love our enemy was, in terms of my values, of ultimate importance. I want the world and humanity and civilization to survive, and I believe we will not unless we love our enemies.

It might be better if we use the word opponents, but I’m going to continue using the harsher word because that is the way we are acting today. Today, the U.S. has declared China to be its number one enemy. The fact that China threatens American global domination makes it America’s number one enemy. That leads China and other nations, that know that the United States will not tolerate any threat to its control, to prepare to fight the United States if they must in order to have freedom to act in their own interest.

Viewing this situation after having learned from Gandhi and King that Jesus taught us to love our enemies, it became increasingly apparent to me that our only hope was for us all to love our enemies. That means that we would be disciples of Jesus. His followers have rather conspicuously ignored this message, but it would have saved Israel in Jesus’ day. It could lead to peace in ours. Jesus identifies this as his message that was not part of the Judaism of his day. It rarely became the actual Christianity of the church in subsequent centuries. To expect the church to really push Jesus’ wisdom on its members may indeed be unrealistic today.

But I do not see another way to move forward. I want to be a disciple of Jesus. This does not mean that I will ignore all his other teachings. Very few teachers have taught about love of friends as well as enemies with such passion and power. There is much else. Love of enemy needs to be taught in Christian churches like mine as entailing loving Trump. The failure to love our national enemies is accompanied by failure to love our political opponents. Jesus’ message overall has profound wisdom. It seems to me to specify what is truly essential. I do not know who else I might follow. 

The rather vague assumption in liberal American churches that we should love everyone, today, in liberal circles does not lead to great efforts to love Trump and his disciples. Both camps have many Christians in them but the way they talk about each other, the way they treat each other, is destructive. If we do not learn to love our enemies, history is going to end in utter disaster and catastrophe. 

So, I urge you seriously to consider being a disciple of Jesus. The church is no longer a major factor in the American scene, but it still has a voice that could be influential. As more and more people recognize how precarious is the future of humanity, more may also sense that they are called to spend their lives in discipleship of Jesus. Maybe others will follow the call to listen.

John B. Cobb Jr. is an American theologian, philosopher, and environmentalist. Cobb is often regarded as the preeminent scholar in the field of process philosophy and process theology, the school of thought associated with the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. He is the author of more than fifty books, and founder of many organizations, including the Center for Process Studies, the Cobb Institute, the Institute for Ecological Civilization, and the Living Earth Movement. At 98 years old, he is still actively writing, speaking, and organizing.