Have you ever come to a point in your life where it was as
if you were approaching a fork in the metaphorical path of time? You first see it as you come around a bend in
the road, but as you get closer you realize that at some point you are going to
have to make a decision on which direction to take. Sometimes there are road signs. Go left and you will be successful, go right and
you will surely be doomed (though most often life does no give us two extreme
choices like that). Other times there
are no signs whatsoever and you must choose solely on instinct or from the
knowledge of your surroundings. You may
know that the left eventually leads to a river of fresh, rejuvenating water and
that the right will lead north, which is further into the forest.
This past August I came to one of these forks in the
road. One way lead back to education,
the other way led to solely working and paying off debt. The only thing was that I was given a day to
make up my mind. Two days later, I was
moving all of my things into my college dorm.
After the trip to Kazakhstan, I had much time to myself in
contemplation of what I had experienced.
I was sure of many things. New
convictions had made themselves known in my life. I came back with an awareness of society’s
fragility and endless vanity. I was
ashamed in myself, for the years I had wasted on useless things. I grieved at all of the opportunities I had
passed by to bear witness to God’s love and grace through my own life, the
words from my mouth and from the deeds of my hands. I questioned everything over again.
The words I had uttered in Kazakhstan were coming around and
piercing my heart as if they were a red hot blade. These words were indeed the sharpest of any
in the world, sharp enough to sever soul from spirit. They presented a reality I had known for so
long, yet my heart had not understood the depth of their command
“Whoever wants to by my disciple must deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
There are several things happening here. First, Jesus had just finished telling the
disciples that he would experience great suffering, rejection by the elders,
chief religious leaders and killed.
Second, he made it known to those he spoke to that if they
truly wanted to follow him, they must adopt a new worldview which does not
include the ego as the center of importance.
They must deny their pride and desires of the flesh. They must give up their personal lives,
possessions, time, energy, minds and bodies to the service of the one they wish
to follow. When Christ approached the
apostles, he asked them to follow him, and then began walking. The apostles either had to choose to follow
this “rabbi” which meant giving up their jobs and saying goodbye to their
families and personal comforts…or they could’ve just ignored Christ’s words and
continue living life following other idols.
Could they keep up with Jesus as he walked away?
Third, when Christ tells those around him that they need to
pick up their cross daily, he invoked a strong, deeply rooted series of
emotions inside of his audience. The
cross represented different things depending on which ancient near-eastern
ethnic group you belonged to. If you
were Jewish, to be hanged on a cross was to be cursed by God. In Deuteronomy, God established a law that
states
“if a man has committed a sin
worthy of death, and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his corpse
shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same
day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God)...” (Dt. 21:22-23)
God made it known
that anyone who was hanged on a tree is someone who has committed a sin of such
severity that they were to be put to death.
By the time of Christ, the cross represented this same curse, but in a
different way. If someone’s sin made
them worthy of death, they would be stoned.
In that time, they had the chance to ask forgiveness of God; but if they
were condemned to be crucified, they were being cursed to God with no chance of
redemption. On the cross, God forsakes
the sinner…
If you were Roman, to
be hanged on a cross was to be shamed by men.
The cross was not just viewed as a horrific means of death. It was also a means of portraying shame upon
the person being crucified. Those who
were crucified were stripped naked, beaten and tortured, hung from the crucifix
(often for several days of agonizing pain and suffocation) upon a well-traveled
public path. The cross was reserved for
the most despicable people, mostly escaped slaves. There was no greater form of humiliation and
dehumanization as the cross in the Roman world.
Christ knew what
was coming; he predicted his death to his disciples, but he didn’t stop
there. He told them that they must pick
up their own cursed crosses and die each day. This death was to be a death to their worldly
self which conceded too its fleshly desires.
To follow Christ meant to give one’s self up and to face a world that
would curse them, humiliate them, and dehumanize them.
Could people keep
up with Christ?
The reality of the
cost of discipleship hit me hard. I knew
that I either had to give up my whole life, or to give up my faith. There is no room for an intermediate state. Either one is in all the way, or “out of luck”. As I started school again, I constantly
questioned my motives, my faith and my sanity.
In wintertime, I had
grown so tired from the weight of unanswered doubts and negative thoughts that
I arrive at a place where I began to rebuild my faith from the
foundations. That week made me realize
something though: Faith means very little unless you are willing to put time
and energy into it. The more that you
invest or put on the line for your faith, the more important your faith will
become to you.
In the following
weeks of January, I felt something for the first time in my life. I felt as if I was not alone. Every time that I opened my Bible, the words
struck my heart’s strings. My body
resonated with their vibrations. I was
putting time and effort to spend with God and giving Him the invitation to
speak to me…
And I would not
fully understand the extent to which He would take advantage of that invitation
until the last week of January…
Could I keep up
with Christ?
