humbles himself and proves the authenticity of his authority. What authenticates it is partly the fact that it can be so easily misinterpreted. True humility is easily mistaken for pride. Some religious people are particularly skilled at masking pride as humility. When they encounter real humility they mistake it for an exceptionally good mask and enviously want to expose it. It is not so surprising that to many of his contemporaries Jesus appeared as a manifest egomaniac claiming, as they said, to be equal to God.
Perhaps this is why Jesus said the first will be last and the last first. His humility is the authority which turns the tables of the ego’s power.
It is never those hungering for power who recognise him. Humility of this intensity is revolutionary and dangerous. It upsets the balance of power constructed by egotism. The ego plays its power-game at every level: individual, relational, social and political. It must find the question of Jesus disconcerting because the question threatens to expose the ego’s need for total control. Jesus was playing with fire when he provoked the ego’s reaction to the true self. We can see it in ourselves daily. Hearing his question the ego rushes to dismiss both question and questioner. This simple question has all the revolutionary humility of a guru, a teacher, a rabbi and a prophet. Whoever truly knows himself can help others to know themselves simply by asking them who they think he is. There is no playacting in this. He communicates himself simply by being himself. Such humility allows the community of the true self to unfold towards us and to enfold us.
Redemption is knowing with our whole being who we are and where we have come from. It is the grace of the spiritual guide or guru to awaken this knowledge. By communicating himself through a gentle question Jesus invites our attention. This has the potential to become a relationship with him as our teacher.
The word guru is not a common term in Christian vocabulary. But that does not mean Christianity lacks a rich tradition of spiritual friendship and union with the guides we need for the inner journey–from the didaskaloi–, or teachers of the New Testament, to the monastic abbas and ammas of the Desert Tradition to the staretz of Eastern Christianity or the anamkara, the soul-friend of Celtic Christianity. The modern idea of a spiritual director can be a somewhat psychologised version of this ancient wisdom of spiritual friendship. In the gospels Jesus is called rabbi, or teacher, more often than by any other title. Yet it can seem strange to Christians to think of themselves as his students or disciples. This could only happen because they have been diverted by answers and stopped 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
