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The Master conquers the heart firstBy Renato Kizito Sesana, mccjHow do Nuba catechists scattered in the mountains of Central Sudan succeed in keeping the faith alive? How were they able to make the church grow during long years of isolation—10 or 15 years depending on the region? What missionary methodology did they use? What “structures” did they put in place? The three senior catechists Jibril Tutu, Musa Arat, and Paul Chalu are authentic “fathers of the Nuba Church.”During my most recent visit to their mountains I was able to intuit an answer to my questions. I had gone there in order to conduct a course for teachers at Kujur Shabia, so I was not free to move around. Even though Paul was not feeling well, he decided to come to Kujur Shabia because he had some important things to tell me. From afar I saw him arrive, exhausted by the walk of more than six hours. Three young catechists he had trained accompanied him. When Paul sat down to tell me the reason for his visit, the three other catechists participated, interjecting their own opinions, even contradicting him with the attention and affectionate respect, which in Africa is given to elders. Looking at Paul and his young associates that sunset, sitting on rocks, sipping fresh water from the shell of a large dried gourd, and talking about the life of the Christian community, it was as if I was witnessing a Gospel scene. Unexpectedly the answer to my questions came to me. The Nuba catechists without any other education than the continuous reading of the Gospel had instinctively followed the methodology of Jesus and the apostles. They made disciples. Like Jesus, they announced the good news and gathered around themselves those more open, who continue to walk with them literally and figuratively in a communion of life. Together they taught and guided the community, which was growing daily. In short, they had practised the method of discipleship in which the “teacher” shares the life of the disciples, instructs them, exhorts them on the road in search of the Kingdom and with them resolves the problems of the growing community. The catechists are disciple-teachers without ever forgetting that there is only one Teacher—any others are just a veiled image. Make disciples Matthew wrote that after the resurrection Jesus sent out his disciples, saying: “go, make disciples of all nations, baptising them…and teaching them.” Why was the bidding to make disciples not considered an indication of a method at least in recent missionary history? And yet it would be the most logical conclusion. During his public life Jesus taught “making disciples.” Naturally he would leave the order to continue announcing the Kingdom making other disciples. Why in some translations does the phrase “make disciples” become “teach,” which is a repetition of the following mandate? After returning to Nairobi, I began looking for everything written on “discipleship.” I looked in my books and in the theological libraries around the city. I found many things, some well known, some of grand theology, but nothing on discipleship as methodology. In all the pages dedicated to discipleship as following Jesus, there is just one passing reference of an author who asks himself why, according to Matthew, Jesus commanded first to “make disciples…baptise…teach,” while instead, the missionary church in recent centuries has inverted the order. First the church has taught, then baptised. The answer, according to that author, is that Matthew wants to make a theological declaration. Putting baptism before teaching emphasises that baptism is a gratuitous calling, a gift of grace. But could it not be that he also wanted to question the missionary praxis of the last centuries? Perhaps a rather bureaucratic ecclesiology had imprisoned the missionary church, stressing membership in a “perfect society” and the priority of acquiring new members. While Jesus, on the other hand, was more interested in keeping alive the tension toward the Kingdom of God—the sense of life as a pilgrimage toward the Father. Jesus first wins the heart. He calls the fishermen, who were repairing their nets; the Samaritan who was drawing water from the well; the tax official, the curious rich man, who climbed up a tree in order to get a momentary glimpse of him, and then in a second moment he teaches them. The persons, who have fallen in love, open their hearts to the truth from on High. The Gospel shows us the approach to Jesus. It is not a search guided by reason, but an experience of love that often hits us like a thunderbolt. The sequence of verbs in Matthew becomes logic, if becoming a disciple is considered an irrevocable decision to search for God and to serve neighbours according to the teachings of Jesus. It is a split-second decision that knows no return because the object of our love holds an irresistible attraction. It is the beginning of a difficult path, the opening of a new vision of the world oriented toward the discovery of the presence of God's love in the disciple's life and in human history. The teaching comes later, little by little when the reality of love has been accepted. Even today in Africa (and throughout the world) whoever approaches Jesus, they do it because they want to know the Master, they want to experience Him as a real person, risen from the dead, who walks on the paths of their village or the slum where they live. They want to feel His love so that they may then understand and live His truth. In this way the Nuba catechists made the Master known. They made Him present on the paths hidden among the rocks and along the trails among the palms disseminated in the valleys. We need an experience of love Often the church, on the other hand, teaches a codified and defined doctrine, forgetting to give an experience of love. We present the catechism to those who are searching for a person that gives complete significance to the mystery of life. Thus we shouldn't be surprised if youth do not asked: “what must I do in order to have eternal life?” Instead, as all missionaries in Africa have experienced, they ask: “how can I become a part of your association?” If belonging to the church, having documents, baptismal certificates are perceived as more important than a genuine relationship of love with the Master, then the church is born anaemic. To me it seems—I speak as a missionary of the bush and of the slum—that the distinguishing marks of discipleship are two: the continual search for God and the communion of life with the Master. It is the Master who guides the pilgrimage in the common search for God. With disappointment I recall the years of education in the seminary when they taught me not to “attach” myself to others because it was not good for a priest to develop a relationship with persons who were in training. But how can you communicate and teach love if you don't love? Three Italian priests in the second half of the nineteenth century, Zeno Saltini, Primo Mazzolari and Lorenzo Milani loved intensely the persons entrusted to their care. Their disciples recognised them as masters capable of leading them to the Master. There is no church, if there is no love. Love, forgiveness, reconciliation, and service are only learned loving, forgiving, reconciling, and serving. It's not the years of study, or priestly ordination that make a person a witness, or a master. It is communion of life with God. The Gospel is learned practising it, not studying it. Rereading the expression of tender affection with which St. Paul addresses his disciples, we understand that the transmission of the faith happens only where there is a context of affection, tenderness, and love. The means and the end are inseparable. You cannot speak about God who is love without practising love. In Chadiza, Zambia, my first mission, the Christians came to live in the mission in appropriate, but hardly comfortable, dormitories. For one full month before receiving baptism and confirmation they followed an intensive course on the catechism. The important thing that left a profound effect on them was the sharing of life with the missionaries. They saw them get up early in the morning and go to church to pray. They saw them teach and put themselves at their service, if someone got sick. They ate together. Everyone dipped the porridge in the same bowl. They saw concretely that the life of following Jesus was possible. They went home to tell stories of fraternal attention of the missionaries. The entire context affected them personally more than the lessons on the catechism. The Nuba appreciate a good lesson rich in biblical citations, but they value even more an attentive listener, a respectful word, and a small affectionate gesture of attention. An old Nuba gentleman told me that he became Christian because Father Silvano, one of the first Comboni Missionaries to evangelise the Nuba took an interest in everything in his life. “I asked myself, why is this white man interested in me, my family. Why does he worry when my family is ill? What makes him different from the merchants and travellers who pass by? And then I learned that Father Silvano lived the Gospel.” Many Nuba today consider Father Silvano the master who put them on the road toward Christianity, even though they haven't seen him for decades because he gave them an experience of love that transcends every division of language, culture and peoples. Were they four or five? To become a disciple means to enter into a living relationship that involves the whole person, not just doctrine, projects, or programs. It means to accept a person and then with that person to work on projects, to deepen the truth and to follow the path of God. It means to undertake a journey together with eyes fixed on him, putting your feet there where he puts them, choosing the path he chooses. It means to trust that even in the darkest forest he knows the way through because he or she wants to take us to Him. Disciples gamble their whole life on Jesus before having understood and analysed all his words; it is a choice with no return. “Take up your cross and follow me,” He says, that is, accept definitively that your life is no longer centred on you, but on me. Then you are ready to walk with me. You are ready to accept, to love the incomprehensible. Why do we preach so much, catechise so much, teach so much and make so few disciples? That evening in the magical light of a full moon, Paul and his disciples stayed awake late into the night. They told me the story of their community. They spoke of how to give hope and to heal the Christian life of a girl violated in prison. They talked about nourishing the faith of a very small group of Christians who live a six-day-walk from the nearest community. Then, on the mats offered by the Christians of the village and laid on the ground, they slept under the open sky. The next morning after having shared a plate of boiled sorghum with a little honey, I watched for a long time as slowly their figures blended with the rocks. Were they four or five? Certainly there was the Master with them. I should have had the courage to follow them. Renato Kizito Sesana is a Comboni Missionary. He has lived in Africa since 1977. At present he is in Nairobi, where he is involved in pastoral and social activities and teaches Journalism at Tangaza College.
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