Discipleship

I want to talk about the concept of discipleship.  I am going to assume that people know the Gospel stories because I will refer to them without attribution in most cases.

 

Kung Fu

The concept of discipleship exists in areas other than religion; for example, the martial arts.  A Kung Fu master will have disciples who study with him at this school.  Sometimes they even live with him in the school.

 

If you have ever watched kung fu movies, you will notice a common trope or pattern in the story.  The bad guy will come into the school of the good guy and challenge him to a fight.  He fights and loses at the beginning of the movie, then goes and studies with a new master who gives him special skills.  The good guy then returns to the bad guys’ school, or waits for another challenge and then is able to beat up the bad guy.

 

Both fights reflect on the school, the master, and the flavour of kung fu that is taught in the school.  When a challenge is received, it is usually the top disciple who responds to the challenge.  The underlying attitude is that discipleship means that you fight for your school, and its honour, to prove that your style of kung fu is the best.

 

Wing Chun

Now in reality, this actually happens.  The Wing Chun Master I study under is has the reputation for winning a hundred fights in Hong Kong to defend his style and master.  There was one story where a Mantis-style Kung Fu fighter challenged him.  He accepted the challenge and the date was fixed for the end of the month.  During that month, he would walk home from the restaurant where he worked and at each telephone pole along the way, he would hit it a few times with his fists.  The Mantis guy heard about this, saw the damaged telephone poles, and then came in with a gift and an apology and called off the challenge.

 

Now, this is not a life that I live, mostly because if you get into fights, you can get hurt.  But the concept of discipleship within Wing Chun, and other Kung Fu schools, does exist, even here in Canada.

 

Why disciples

Why does a master look for, train, and select disciples. It is succession planning.  A master wants his disciples to demonstrate in their lives the value of the Kung Fu that they learn.  He knows that he will die someday.  He wants to see his martial art continue beyond his lifetime.  He wants to continue the lineage of the art from his teacher (In Wing Chun, the original Grand Master is Yip Man) through him, into his students and their students.  He doesn’t want to water down the art, or let heretical ideas slip into his discipline.

 

So he teaches his students to a high degree of rigour and chooses ones that match his beliefs and values with regards to the practice of Kung Fu. He wants them to pass on their knowledge to a next generation of students and choose their own disciples in order to continue the discipline.

 

Tea Ceremony

How do you get to be a disciple in Wing Chun? Students are “outside students” when they initially join a family of Wing Chun practitioners. Once students reach a certain level of skill, they are offered a tea ceremony (Bai Si) with the master.  The ceremony confirms the relationship between a teacher and student.  Once you are an “inside” student, the hidden secrets of the martial art are exposed.

Within this ceremony, a drink of tea and some other food is served.  You share the meal with the master and the other disciples.  You promise to teach only this flavour of Wing Chun; to be true to the master and your brothers in Wing Chun.

 

Parallels with Last Supper

Hmmm.  Does this tea ceremony remind you of anything? Twelve guys go into an upper room and share a drink with their master.  Hmmm.  Interesting parallel.  Are there more?

 

In terms of the secrets of the inner circle, there were quite a few stories previous to this Last Supper where Jesus is noted to tell things to his “inside” students more of the secrets of his art than were exposed to his “outside” students.  For example, the admonitions to not tell people that He was the Messiah.

 

The concept of a disciple at that time was probably the same as I have described for Wing Chun.  At that time, with all the different heretics walking the countryside, being a disciple of a great master would have had cachet as well as risk. Think of how many references there are in the gospels to the disciples asking what things meant, what would happen in the future, what their role was.  After the resurrection, they knew that they would have to defend their “school” and champion its “art”.

 

Why have disciples at all?

Jesus was a smart guy.  He was simply doing succession planning.  He wanted guys who were committed to his style of “Kung Fu” and would defend their “school”.   They would have to be willing to schism off from standard Judaism and believe that he was the Messiah.  They also had to be willing to continue his teachings and create new students and more disciples to continue the work.

 

What about us.

We are the logical extreme of the tradition of Jesus’ disciples.  We know enough inner secrets to debate the holy books with the learned men of the day. We follow in the steps of the Grand Master of the Art.  We have to be willing to defend our school when someone attacks it.  This implies that you believe that your school is the best.  We share a “tea” ceremony with our fellow disciples to show our unity of fellowship.

 

We have to copy our Master’s Kung Fu.  Turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, give to the poor, the sick, the needy, … Whatever that means to you.  Our challenge is to define what discipleship means to us now and what the impact of that is on our lives.