listening to the question–the skilled question by which any teacher awakens knowledge.
A Christian is essentially a disciple of Jesus. And he is their guru. Good disciples do not feel their guru is in competition with other gurus.
Tolerance, dialogue and collaboration are the challenges facing Christian disciples today. For the first time since the fourth century institutional Christianity is not bolstered up by a secular power that supports religious exclusivism. Christians are being invited to see themselves as disciples of Jesus in a new relationship to the disciples of masters in other traditions. Realising that Jesus is their personal guru is decisive for freeing Christians from engrained attitudes of imperialism and historical intolerance. They are then freed for dialogue and spiritual partnership with other faiths. The question by which Jesus relates to his disciples therefore also connects him to the spiritual search that is common to humanity.
Jesus is not seeking disciples to enhance his self-esteem. In fact the gospels tell how he let many opportunities for guru stardom pass him by.22 He saw many of his followers turn away from him because his teaching threatened them by its sheer personal authority. For this or other reasons it may not suit us to think of Jesus as our guru. We may not want a guru at all or we may feel called to another. Jesus does not condemn that decision. But even if this is how we feel about him we can still listen to the silence from which his question arises and touches everyone.
The word disciple derives from discere, to learn. A disciple is one who acknowledges that he has got something to learn and that his teacher, at least for the present, knows more. There is a paradox involved in acknowledging this. It implies a separation from the person in union with whom we are to learn how to transcend duality. Beyond duality lies the full participatory being of love. So in fact discipleship does transcend itself. The disciple goes beyond the teacher because the teacher goes beyond himself. This paradox–is the essence of the identity of Jesus. It is good for you, Jesus told his companions, that I am going away. Discipline is the way the disciple learns to enter this paradox–the discipline of listening, of silence, of reading with the heart, of meditating without desire.
When we are unaware of the stages by which relationship unfolds, we risk premature failure in every relationship we make. The first phase of romantic attachment seems like the end of everything. In learning to relate to Jesus, we begin by listening to his question, sitting at his feet. But as we hear his silence we find that we are inside his question, compassionately known by his self-knowledge. The mystical truth of the New Testament is that we are in a union with Jesus that takes us beyond every kind of ego-centred relationship with him. Christian fundamentalism, like all forms of fundamentalism, is arrested development–relationship that gets blocked at an early stage. In union with Jesus the disciple’s individuality, though not destroyed, is transformed. What else does love or death mean? As a second-century Christian writer put it:
For you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person. 23
Deep prayer guides us beyond dualism into union, beyond ideas and images into reality. From the gospels it is clear that Jesus did not want hangers-on or devotees but full disciples or friends. Insight–into our being ‘in Christ’ and of his being ‘in us’, of our sharing the same God and Father with him24–dawns when egotism has given way to self-knowledge nurtured by the grace of relationship with him. We need duality in order to transcend duality. In other words we must work with the ego to transcend the ego. Similarly we need the historical Jesus to reach the Cosmic Christ. And yet we encounter the Jesus of ancient Palestine not as he was then but as he is now. Meeting him now we encounter everything he has ever been and all he will yet be.
In listening to the question which Jesus puts to humanity we are also hearing a call to self-discovery. Listening to him leads to listening with him to the mystery of existence at its source. This process is what makes the question and person of Jesus so relevant for the modern spiritual seeker. If we are to see Jesus as he is, and not just as our ego imagines him to be, we must learn to listen to his question in the very silence from which he asks it.
‘And Who Do You Say I Am?’
Because of its position at the entrance to Bantry Bay, one of the world’s great natural harbours, Bere Island once enjoyed great strategic military importance. Churchill even had to be dissuaded from reoccupying it with British troops during the Second World War with the reminder that Ireland was now a sovereign state.
To reach Bere Island, you take a little ferry that leaves at the discretion of its owner from the dock in Castletownbere about a mile away. On my first visit there since childhood, I arrived direct from London. It was a day of driving rain and gale-force winds. The pub, however, not the weather, was delaying our brave captain. So I took dry refuge in the tiny cabin to anticipate stepping ashore again on my magic island. I was startled to see a young woman sitting silently in a corner by the steering wheel. She said nothing as I entered and returned my greeting with a fleeting glance and nod. Despite being English it seemed to me too absurd to sit there saying nothing so I attempted a conversation. After trying the weather I asked if she lived on the island. She shot me a frightened look as if I was probing her most intimate secrets. After mumbling an incoherent answer she looked resolutely out of the window. Wondering if she was just shy I launched on a number of friendly questions which I soon realised were merely compounding my error, whatever that was. The psychological temperature fell lower than the weather. Eventually we retreated into a neutral silence until the melancholic captain tottered on board. The crossing took fifteen minutes. As we climbed off the boat onto the island my fellow passenger turned suddenly to me and with a softly knowing smile, as if we had been chatting easily all along, asked if the weather was as bad as this in London. Had she read my mind, looked into my soul with psychic powers? I had given her no information about myself. I guessed that the island grapevine had informed her that one of the O’Sullivan Bere’s girls’ children was coming from England to visit his cousins. She probably knew before I did.
I had learned an important lesson about island silence and privacy. The truth is a sensitive creature around which you have to tread very gently. Too many questions scare the truth away. When we want to find out about others too directly we often forget that we ourselves are also known.
What are we trying to find out about Jesus by listening to his question?
Luke tells us that the people considered Jesus to be a kind of reincarnation of John the Baptist, a second coming of Elijah or one of the other prophets.
. . . he asked them, ‘Who do the people say I am?’ They answered, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others that one of the old prophets has come back to life.’1
This was what the people were saying about him2. Neither Jesus nor the gospel writers discuss these as literal answers, although Jesus once indicated that John the Baptist was the Elijah who was expected to be the forerunner of the messiah.
The New Testament uses about one hundred and thirty titles to describe Jesus: Christ, Lord, King, Lamb of God, rabbi, Son of Man, Son of David, Son of God, being the most frequent. ‘Teacher’ is used about 50 times in the gospels (‘Rabbi’ is found only in John’s gospel, and there nine times.) ‘Son of David’ is found about seventeen times and so less often than ‘King’ or ‘Lamb of God’. The characteristic title ‘Son of Man’ is found eighty-five times and has a rich fabric of meanings which Jesus found useful. The prophet Ezekiel uses the title often to mean a weak or mortal human being (the prophet himself). The book of Daniel (Chapter seven) uses the phrase in a heavenly sense and it is found in some psalms where it means, simply, a human being. Jesus thus knew the title from scripture and used it of himself. The uses of ambiguity in the phrase