Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging (15 page)

Substituting theoretical concepts for acts of love keeps life at a safe distance. This is the dark side of putting
being
over
doing
. Is this not the accusation that Jesus leveled against the religious elite of His day?

The Christian commitment is not an abstraction. It is a concrete, visible, courageous, and formidable way of being in the world
 
—forged by daily choices consistent with inner truth. A commitment that is not visible in humble service, suffering discipleship, and creative love is an illusion. Jesus Christ is impatient with illusions, and the world has no interest in abstractions. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand” (Matthew 7:26). If we bypass these words of the Great Rabbi, the spiritual life will be nothing more than
fantasy
.

As Maurice Blondel once said, “The one who talks, especially if he talks to God, can affect a great deal, but the one who acts really means business and has more claim on our attention. If you want to know what a person really believes, don’t listen to what he says but watch what he does.”
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One day Jesus announced that He had not come to call the virtuous but sinners. Then He proceeded to break bread with a notorious public sinner, Zacchaeus. Through table fellowship, Jesus acted out His passion for the Father whose indiscriminate love allows His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike. The inclusion of sinners in meal sharing is a dramatic expression of the merciful love of the redeeming God.

Jesus reinforced His words with deeds. He was not intimidated by
authority figures. He seemed unfazed by the crowds’ complaints that He was violating the law by going to a sinner’s house. Jesus broke the law of traditions when the love of persons demanded it.

Begrudgingly, the Pharisees were forced to acknowledge Jesus’ integrity: “Master, we know you are an honest man, that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you, and that you teach the way of God in all honesty” (Mark 12:14). Although it was a ploy to trap Him, this admission tells us something of the impact Jesus had on His listeners. A life of integrity has prophetic clout even with cynics. Yes, indeed, this Man was truly a Rabbi unlike any other in Palestine. His Word thundered with authority: He was the Great Rabbi because His being and His doing, like His humanity and His divinity, were one.

At another point in His earthly ministry, Jesus said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). On the eve of His death, Jesus took off His outer garment, tied a towel around His waist, poured water into a copper basin, and washed the feet of His disciples.
The Jerusalem Bible
notes that the dress and the duty are those of a slave.

French theologian Yves Congar stated, “The revelation of Jesus is not contained in his teaching alone; it is also, and perhaps we ought to say mainly, in what he did. The coming of the Word into our flesh, God’s acceptance of the status of servant, the washing of the disciples’ feet
 
—all this has the force of revelation and a revelation of God.”
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A profound mystery: God becomes a slave. This implies very specifically that God wants to be known through servanthood. Such is God’s own self-disclosure. Thus, when Jesus describes His return in glory at the end of the world, He says, “Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. I tell you solemnly,
he will put on an apron, sit them down at a table and wait on them
” (Luke 12:37, emphasis added).

Jesus remains Lord by being a
servant
.

The beloved disciple presents a mind-bending image of God, blowing away all previous conceptions of who the Messiah is and what
discipleship is all about. What a scandalous and unprecedented reversal of the world’s values! To prefer to be the servant rather than the lord of the household is the path of downward mobility in an upwardly mobile culture. To taunt the idols of prestige, honor, and recognition . . . to refuse to take oneself seriously or to take seriously others who take themselves seriously . . . to dance to the tune of a different drummer, and to freely embrace the servant lifestyle
 
—these are the attitudes that bear the stamp of authentic discipleship.

The stark realism of John’s portrait of Christ leaves no room for romanticized idealism or sloppy sentimentality. Servanthood is not an emotion or mood or feeling; it is a decision to live like Jesus. It has nothing to do with what we feel; it has everything to do with what we
do
 
—humble service. To listen obediently to Jesus
 
—“If I, then, the Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you should wash each other’s feet” (John 13:14)
 
—is to hear the heartbeat of the Rabbi John knew and loved.

When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet. The call to the servant lifestyle is both a warning not to be seduced by the secular standard of human greatness and also a summons to courageous faith. As we participate in the foot-washing experience, Jesus addresses us directly, commanding our complete attention as He looks into our eyes and makes this colossal claim: “If you want to know what God is like, look at Me. If you want to learn that your God does not come to rule but serve, watch Me. If you want assurance that you did not invent the story of God’s love, listen to My heartbeat.”

This staggering and implacable assertion about Himself remains the central notion with which we must come to grips.
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No one can speak for us. The seriousness of the implications in the confession “Jesus is Lord” reveals the cost of discipleship, the towering significance of trust, and the irreplaceable importance of fortitude. Jesus knew these things, too. Our faith in the Incarnation
 
—the enormous mystery of God drawing aside the curtain of eternity and stepping into human history in the
man Jesus
 
—is fantasy if we cling to any image of divinity other than the Servant bowed low in the upper room.

When I get sprayed by the storms of life and find my faith has faltered, my courage has gone south, I often turn to Matthew 14:22-33. Jesus sees the disciples caught up in a squall. It is between three and six a.m. He comes walking toward them on the water. They are terrified. “It is a ghost,” they cry out in fear. He says, “Courage! It is I! Do not be afraid.”

Peter, nothing if not brash, decides to test the voice. “Lord, if it is you, tell me to come to you across the water.” The tentative faith of that fearful “if” quickly deteriorates into sheer terror as Peter begins to walk to Jesus. I find comfort (perhaps perverse pleasure) in knowing that the rock on which Jesus would build the church sank like a stone.

…

The dystopian days in which we live are ripe for panic, as the messianic bean counters have joined forces with the apocalyptic spin doctors to predict the imminent end of the world. They put their personal spin on horrific events such as ethnic cleansing in Iraq, the earthquake in Haiti, and grand-scale terrorism in the United States and abroad. They try to match symbols from the book of Revelation with specific historical events, then prophesy that the global village is teetering on the edge and very soon things will be over for the human adventure.

The bean counters and the spin doctors may be correct in their dire ultimatum
 
—that human history has come to an end and the extermination of the species is at hand. The evils of the present generation may indeed be interpreted as definitive signs of God’s final intervention to bring about a fiery climax in awesome destruction and incredible triumph. On the other hand, since Jesus Himself disclaimed any knowledge of the day and the hour (Matthew 24:36), they may be completely mistaken.

The Apocalypse holds a certain morbid fascination for the human mind. It easily outlives the circumstances that give it birth. We always see groups who predict the end of the world over the graves of all former predictions. Symbols are always vulnerable to overliteral minds, and the inflated apocalyptic images seem more prone than most to be taken literally. But the tendency to take it too seriously is due to a disease of the human mind rather than to any inherent fault in the Apocalypse itself.

False prophets, playing on people’s innate fear of displeasing God, will abound in the coming years, leading people on wild pilgrimages and creating panic. As we listen to the heartbeat of the Rabbi, we will hear a word of reassurance: “I’ve told you all this beforehand. Shh! Be still. I am here. All is well.”

In place of end-times agitation and thoughts of doom, Jesus tells us to be alert and watchful. We are to avoid the doomsayer and the talk-show crank when they conduct their solemn televised meeting in the green room of the Apocalypse. We are to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). We are to claim our belovedness each day and live as servants in the awareness of present risenness. We pay no heed to the quacks and self-proclaimed seers who manipulate the loyalty of others for their self-serving purposes.

Edward Schillebeeckx, winner of the Erasmus prize as Europe’s outstanding theologian, said,

…

The movie
The Player
, directed by Robert Altman, offers a chilling portrait of a world that canonizes greed, the deal, the sure thing. The film, satirizing filmmaking itself, condones irresponsible wealth and power, shows contempt for unprofitable originality, and sanctifies self-interest: The bottom line is the only line. Altman implies that Hollywood is a microcosm of us all
 
—a society marinating in its own incestuous self-interest.

One imponderable trait of the human psyche is its ability to make irrational judgments about worthwhile human investments along with its refusal to view life in light of eternity. Whether it be the grandiosity of the addict, the self-importance of the workaholic, the self-interest of the movie mogul, or the self-absorption of the average person in his or her plans and projects
 
—all collaborate to weave the fantasy of invincibility, or what Ernest Becker calls “the denial of death.”

Of all the books written and all the sermons preached about death, none has come from firsthand experience. Yes, not one of us has intellectual doubts about death’s inevitability. The mute testimony of our ancestors tells us that to deny that death will one day come is literally
fantastic
. Nevertheless, among believers profound consciousness of death is a rarity. For some, the veil between present reality and eternity is the shroud of science
 
—death is simply the last disease waiting to be conquered by medicine. For others, their view is represented by a physician in a respected medical journal: “In my opinion death is an insult; the stupidest, ugliest thing that can ever happen to a human being,”
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and therefore, a cruel, unwanted interruption that is best ignored. For many the separation from loved ones is too painful to
consider. Perhaps for most of us, the frenetic pace of life and the immediate claims of the present moment leave no time, except for fleeting reflection at funerals, to contemplate seriously where we came from and where we are going.

Saint Benedict, the founder of Western monasticism, offers the sober advice to “keep your own death before your eyes each day.” It is not a counsel to morbidity but a challenge to faith and fortitude. Until we come to terms with this primal fact of life, as Parker Palmer noted, there can be no spirituality worth speaking of.

I waffle back and forth between fear and anticipation of death. I am most afraid of death when I am most afraid of life. When I’m conscious of my belovedness and when I am alert to the present risenness of Jesus, I can face death courageously. Paul’s boast that life, of course, means Christ, and death is a prize to be won (Philippians 1:21), becomes my own. Without fear I can acknowledge that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life. I buoyantly affirm the Great Rabbi’s words on the eve of His death: “I live and you will live” (John 14:19). Above all, when He holds me silently against His heart, I can even accept the terror of abandonment.

But when the night is darkest and the impostor is running amok, and I am thinking how well I have done and how necessary I am and how secure I feel in the affirmation of others, and how remarkable that I’ve become a player in the religion thing and how deserving I am of an exotic vacation and how proud my family is of me and how glorious the future looks
 
—suddenly, like mist rising from the fields, I am enveloped in thoughts of death. Then I am afraid. I know that behind all my Christian slogans and conversations about resurrection, there lurks a very frightened man. Entranced in my reverie, I am isolated and alone. I have joined the cast of Robert Altman’s players. Like a runaway inmate from the asylum, I have escaped into the fantasy of invincibility.

…

Suppose an eminent physician, well informed of your medical history, told you that you have twenty-four hours to live. You sought a second opinion, which confirmed the first. And a third agreed with the previous two.