These are some of the experiences and musings of an artist and disciple...

Sunday, March 24, 2013

After Kazakhstan - The Cost of Discipleship - Part 1



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?


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