ALIVE: Chapter 156, Hard Lessons

For the next few days young John could not stop thinking about why Herod wanted to kill Jesus, and that they were all targets by relationship. How was it possible that someone so wise and so compassionate and powerful enough to heal people of terrible maladies would want to be annihilated by anyone? John’s naïveté was beautiful. His loving nature couldn’t understand anything different. Jesus told them to be shrewd as a serpent but he just didn’t know how…yet. He was young and attracted only to the good which was why he was so drawn to Jesus, and why he was so beloved of the Master.

Mama Mary as they came to call her to distinguish her from Mary Magdalene and recently another Mary, the mother of Joses, who joined them; Mother Mary loved John as her own son. How she enjoyed reminiscing with him about the days when Jesus was John’s age, when He was home, working with Joseph and she had a family to cook for and care for. Bliss.

On the walks from village to village John and Mary often paired up, typically John catching up to be with her. They enjoyed each other’s conversation. Mary liked to hear about John’s own family and when and how he came to follow her Son. John especially liked to hear the story over and over, about when Jesus stayed behind at the Temple and Mary and Joseph thought they lost him. John thought that story was funny and always chuckled at it. Every time she told it, there was a new element to the story. How she felt and the family’s conversation as they were going home. To imagine his Master as a young boy, oblivious to his parent’s absence for days and nights, and to compare that to how alert He became to everything and every person surrounding Him endeared Jesus to young John even more, as if that was possible.

On evenings after supper the nomadic group sat around the campfire to listen to Jesus’ teaching as usual. Typically, curious people from the towns and villages sought out the campsite of the itinerant preacher and His followers; some just came to visit, bringing food for them, others brought their bedrolls to spend the night under the stars with them.

The message was always different, as if Jesus was a bottomless well of Wisdom. Priscilla, a regular, thought that if only she could become the person Jesus described in His teachings, she would be strong and healthy and happy enough to live forever whether in the body or out of the body. Priscilla was young and and beautiful with flowing wavy black hair that shined with health and skin as white as milk; eyes as blue as the azure sky. She never wanted to marry although she was given many offers. Once when she was much younger, she was spoiled and that memory haunted her with disgust. Instead, she was an adventurous young lady who wanted to never stop learning in her quest for holiness. That is what attracted her to Jesus, and what kept her near. He was different, loving but not seeking His own. He was, dare she think, somehow perfect in her eyes. She couldn’t leave Him, there would be nowhere else to go.

When He stood up to speak the chattering subsided and Jesus began, “When you go to a feast, do not grab the chief seat, or else the host may come and ask you to move so a special friend can sit there.  You will be embarrassed in front of everyone; instead, go down the line; look for the lowest seat left near odd unfriendly people, sit there and if you are worthy of a better place, you may be called to come up, and feel honored. The honor from others is truer than what you give yourself. For every one that exalts himself will be humbled; and he that humbles himself will be exalted.”

Priscilla thought about that, and why it was true. But Jesus kept speaking and she didn’t want to miss a word to stop and contemplate it. So, she carefully placed her unprocessed thoughts in a corner of her mind to fetch them one night when all was quiet under the stars, except for the few wild animals far away. No one ever wondered why the wild animals never attacked them, except Jesus who forbade them to hurt His people.

Jesus stayed with the theme of gatherings and said, “When you make a dinner party, don’t invite your friends, or your relatives, or your rich neighbors who all will want to pay you back with invitations to their homes. Instead, invite the poor and maimed and lame; invite the blind and then you will be blessed even more because they cannot pay you back. Instead, your reward will be given to you at the resurrection of the just.”

Priscilla listened carefully and thought that as there are laws of nature and the commandments, Jesus seemed to be talking about laws of another sort; laws of the spirit, of God. As if beside human Justice there is a different divine Justice. As if there is a different universe within this one. Jesus wasn’t telling people not to want Justice, or honor, or rewards, but to reach for the stars instead of the low hanging fruit. Make God the one you want to please more than yourself or your friends or your relatives. That kind of ambition takes trust, another kind of trust, more spiritual and yet more real and lasting. Then Priscilla thought, maybe she didn’t have to wait until night time, until she realized that she had just missed precious minutes of His message.

Mama Mary took her eyes off her Son to look around. She noticed that the crowd had swelled. More and more people had come to listen to Him. They left their homes and fields, corralled their livestock, set down their tools and shut their doors. They heard about miracles, but even without the miracles many were drawn by the crowd to the crowd. No one wanted to miss his or her own direct experience and have to rely on hearsay. This young teacher preacher, healer went beyond politics, He didn’t want to have power over them, He didn’t want their money, but rather He only conveyed wisdom, like Solomon. And that was refreshing. He spoke of self control of their inner lives, control of their attitudes, which was so much more important than fretting about those who wanted to govern them. He was giving them the way to better their lives and asked for nothing tangible in return.

Saul and Manasseh looked at each other and smiled with a nod of agreement when they heard Jesus say, “If any man comes to Me, and does not hate his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

Saul knew that statement would shock many people, especially the mothers whose love for their children was as much a part of them as the color of their own eyes, but there it was. Hate. Saul and Manasseh had been following Jesus for such a long time that they learned to accept everything He said, no matter how outrageous. To hear that to be a disciple, like Peter and James they had to hate their family, was affirming to them who sometimes wondered if abandoning their families to follow Jesus had been the right thing to do.

Of those who knew her, many looked over at His mother, who, feeling so many eyes on her, simply focused on her Son speaking, as if to guide those piercing eyes to the right place.

Along with every other shocking statement Jesus made that day in His description of a very different world, cutting ties with relatives seemed to fit for Saul and Manasseh. He didn’t say to hate, but rather He spoke of the exceptionally high standard, the sacrifice was required to be His disciple, His full time student, His protege, His apprentice.

Believing that Jesus was always right, Priscilla thought about what He just said too. She figured that He must be speaking of degrees of love that exceed one’s love for his father or mother, or wife or children or brother or sister. “What kind of love can that be?” she wondered. “What kind of love can turn the love of your own flesh and blood people who you have known all your life, maybe to a child you birthed and nurtured throughout childhood, day in and day out raising them in the best way you could with all the pressures of the outside world, how could such love and devotion be so small, as to be regarded as hatred in comparison with the devotion required of discipleship? Maybe,” thought Priscilla, “maybe Jesus was only speaking to the men.”

Priscilla was trying hard to understand that concept; she thought of how much she loved her father. “How could that be hatred compared to what was required of a true disciple?” She fervently wanted to be a disciple, even though she was a woman, but the cost was so high. She wondered how to achieve that?

After telling them to hate their families, Jesus noticed several people from the crowd walking away to go to sleep at their homes, but He continued speaking. He said, “Whoever does not accept his suffering, and cling to Me cannot be my disciple. For which of you who sets out to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to determine if he can afford the time, the money, the energy to finish the tower? After all, if he can’t do more than lay the foundation, and is not able to finish, his neighbors will ridicule him for leaving a useless foundation in the ground.

Or what king, when he sets out to combat another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel with his generals to consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that comes at him with twenty thousand heavily armed combatants?”

Saul and Manasseh heard that and looked at each other with the same thought. Saul said it first, “Did you hear what He said about hating our family?”

“Yes.” replied Manasseh hesitatingly because the statement demanded a response. He knew that after all these weeks with Jesus, he couldn’t let the message pass, like a burp or a hiccup, but that the commitment he was making, that he wanted to make, required real sacrifice, not just the sacrifice of discomfort walking throughout Galilee and Judea, but rather a sacrifice of his whole being, his soul, his spirit, his mind. He had to give everything of himself.

Manasseh continued, “Saul, as much as I want to, I will not go back home, ever again. I won’t see my parents or my brothers and sisters. I want to be His disciple, even more than I want the love of my family, and I suppose the love I have for my family, I must transfer to this man, Jesus, who I believe to be the Messiah.”

Saul was quiet. He knew what an enormous decision that was. He also knew that Manasseh would never break that vow. The same thought was in his own mind at the moment that they looked at each other. Saul decided to lighten up the weight of the moment and said, “Manasseh, you took the words right out of my mouth. I know that I can’t go back home either. To receive the love of my mother or father, would be to accept less and not more, it would be to reject my commitment to Jesus. I-I-I can’t do that. God help me.”

The two men felt as if they had just walked together through a great filagree iron gate into a new world, that they were new men, without a past, but only with a future. It was as if they left earth and would soon enter heaven, never to look back like Lot’s wife. There was no more to say to each other, Jesus was still talking and they wanted to listen.

Jesus bellowed for all to hear and to impress upon them the formidable contract between He and His disciples. He continued as if oblivious to the cacophony of thoughts vibrating through the air.

“Or else, while the powerful army is still far away, the general sends an ambassador to him to ask for the conditions of peace. So therefore whosoever of you that doesn’t renounce all that he has, he cannot be My disciple.”

Saul heard that and was astonished. It was as if he and Manasseh hadn’t missed a word while they were committing themselves to Jesus discipleship, with its great cost, it’s high qualifying bar. Saul didn’t realize that it would be the first of many instances in his life when he would experience the mastery of spirit over matter, as intended at the beginning of time. Such awareness and ability sealed the commitment. “Manasseh, do you realize what just happened?” Manasseh did, and nodded quickly with a blank face as if he was still processing it.

Teaching among the thoughts and whispers, Jesus continued, “He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. If therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will trust you with the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You cannot serve and be devoted to both God and wealth. Know this, wealth when it becomes an object of devotion, being an illusion, will have an evil influence on you.”

Jesus looked straight at two Pharisees in the crowd who were elbowing each other snickering and scoffing at that statement which they disagreed with as if not true at all. Both men loved their wealth for all that it did for them, pleasure, safety, protection, indulgence.

Reading them, Jesus said directly to the two men scoffing at His words, “You two are justifying yourselves in the sight of men because you think you are right, but God knows your hearts. Your reasons for being devoted to your wealth, while it is true that men will honor and exalt you for it, is an abomination in the sight of God.”

After belittling love of family and wealth in favor of total devotion to God, turning the world inside out, Jesus continued, by affirming the preeminence of the Law, something He was too often accused of violating. He said, “The law and the prophets were until John: from that time the gospel of the kingdom of God is preached, and every man enters violently into it. But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fall.”

Yet, He couldn’t end there, for the law was too often misinterpreted and with that His Father’s will. They accused Him of violating the law by healing on Sabbath, and not performing the ceremonial washing before eating, so He went on to reveal the meaning of laws that most people misinterpreted, and by doing so were actually violating the law themselves. He said something that pierced the well healed consciences of scores of people in that very crowd, while giving others an opening to feel superior.

He said, “Whosoever sends his wife away, except for fornication, and if she goes and marries another, she is committing adultery and the man that marries her is also committing adultery.” Jesus wanted the people to understand the absolute need for loyalty, even in the face of the conflicts of marriage, the bitter words, the difficulties they must share. The response to suffering together by disregarding the mystical union of husband and wife was shortsighted and repugnant to God and the people needed to know that. They needed to know that healing on the Sabbath, or not washing before a meal, even not fasting was as nothing compared to more serious violations of the laws of God as handed down by Moses.

He was all over the map, bringing up one situation after another but with one thread that joined them together and that was that God’s will and ways are the true plumb. He was describing the very narrow constricted gate that He said one had to force one’s way through to enter the Kingdom. God’s new world. The perfect world. The peaceful, abundant world. The reward for sacrifice and learning. Real life as God intended life to be.

Then, looking over at gaggle of children playing under the light of the starry sky, He ended His talk by saying, “It is impossible not to stumble, but woe to him who trips his brother along the path! It would be better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck, and he was thrown into the sea rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.”

The laughter of the children energized Him. His joyful heart broke into a smile, with the fleeting thought of how much fun they were having with each other.

After a fleeting daydream, Jesus continued , “Pay attention! Be alert and don’t allow serious sins to pass. If your  brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. I’ve said enough, let’s go to sleep. Go to back to your homes and think of all that I told you.”

Jesus sat down to give the crowd time to disband. No one dared to approach Him. Instead the crowd thinned as even His own troupe went to their bedrolls.