The banker needs a portfolio of equity before he fronts the loan to the entrepreneur. The publishing house wants clear line of sight on a fail proof marketing plan to a specific target audience before it offers the book deal to the aspiring author. The mother wants a safe and steady environment in which her children can find footing, and when it’s time for their wings to be spread her desire is still for continued proximity. The career man grits his teeth and bares the final five years in order to secure his pension so he can live the life he’s always envisioned for himself. The motivation for risk in the most daring Wall Street trader is still undergirded by the desire for greater gain to secure the future.
Security. Predictability. Comfort.
If you look around you’ll see it. If you look inside you’ll see it, too. Risk aversion rooted in fear is around every corner and hiding in the deep recesses of who we are. It changes our movement like a heavy yoke around the shoulders. We are plagued by what ifs? and then what’s? The instinct to self preserve runs deep in our blood. Call it a consequential byproduct of the fall. If we listen, we hear a faint cry echoing deep in our hearts. It’s a plea for the safety of the garden where all we needed was readily available with a little subduing and cultivation, but that was a long time ago and we are far east of it now. In our minds that God can no longer be trusted. We’ve matured to become the masters of our own destinies. We’ve made boots for ourselves with straps strong enough for us to pick ourselves up. After all, real men and women are self-made. Only the fittest survive…or so we tell ourselves.
It’s in the middle of these delusions that the God of that garden meets us again. We open the Scriptures and hear him speaking to us the same way he did to his first followers. Let’s flex our biblical imagination through the account of Matthew the tax collector:
Jesus’ words pull us away from subsistence and survival, back to the possibility of deep and purposeful living in the here and now. We picture him like Moses on the mountain, seated like a great Rabbi. He speaks of finding blessing in poverty of spirit, comfort in mourning, and gaining a great inheritance in restraint. He speaks of the discovery of true satisfaction when one hungers for the right things, of the beauty of reciprocated mercy, of the possibility of being able to see the really real from a place of purity, of joining God in a life that welcomes wholeness. He even speaks of finding reward in persecution. Many of the things he shares rubs up against our propensity for security in all the wrong ways. But he is seemingly un-encumbered by any anxiety as he speaks and there is something alluring about the picture he is painting.
We were extended the same invitation they were. The same Follow Me that was offered to Peter, Andrew, James, and John was offered to us. Like them, we considered the outcome of accepting the invitation alongside the outcome of turning it down. After weighing the options something in us said, “I’ll do it.” But we’d by lying if we said our motivation to take that first step wasn’t tainted by seeds of self preservation.
“I wonder where this will take me,” emphasis on me.
In the back of our minds we entertained visions of standing in circles of influence where we could be clearly seen. At one time it was the appeal of loud street corner prayers, fancy religious robes, and proximity to power. Now it’s microphones, platforms, cameras, and social media prominence. Different era, same demons.
Our weak roots shot down quickly. We figured if we could follow him closely we might end up with a cabinet position in the new regime. That sure was appealing to our desire for security and comfort. So, we push our way up to the front of the pack so he can see our level of tenacity and devotion. Now shoulder to shoulder as we walk ahead we gush our deep commitment. “I’m with you come what may.”
His feet don’t stop. He looks ahead and responds with clarity.
“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Unexpected. He does have a way with words, doesn’t he? “It’s a brilliant metaphor, a figure of speech,” we think. But homelessness is no way to for a king to live. A palace, or a temple. Surely that’s what he means.
One of our fellow followers appeals to his compassion. “Master, my father is about to die. The most loving thing to do is to be at his side as he crosses over to the other side, right?” He stops and turns to look him in the eye…
“Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”
An uncomfortable silence follows. It becomes clear that there is a stark difference between our internal instinct toward security and comfort and where following him might take us. We begin to wonder what we signed up for.
In a matter of minutes we find ourselves following him as he boards a small fishing boat off the coast of the Galilee. We are headed for the Gadarenes which isn’t that far away, but faster by boat than on foot. Once aboard he immediately makes his way to the hull and lays himself down on the worn out cushion that’s there. By the time we all find our seats and look around we see that his body is already easing up and down slowly on the cushion. He’s breathing in and out deeply, fast asleep. It took no time at all. We’re thankful that he’s getting the rest he needs. As the boat is pushed back from the rocky beach a brisk, cool breeze hits us in the face off the surface of the water. The sail is hoisted and the rudder positioned to keep us in proximity to the shore on the journey. A few hours pass. We find our minds going back to the interchanges that were shared with him before we boarded the boat. No place to lay your head…Huh. As we consider his words we look down at him and remember how quickly he was able to fall asleep on that cushion with no roof over his head. If anything his sleep had only deepened over the past few hours. “I wish I could fall asleep that fast,” we think. We grapple again with his words about the dead burying the dead. We see our friend across the boat who’s father is on his death bed back home while he’s here with Jesus on the way to the Gadarenes. Something deep inside our gut is unsettled by Jesus’ words and actions. They seem unnatural and contradictory to everything we believe to be right and true. We decide to go and sit beside our friend to engage him in conversation over it, but just as we do we are instructed to remain seated by the captain. We realize that over the last several minutes the air temperature has plummeted as the wind has picked up considerably. The sky has begun to darken and the boat begins to jostle back and forth in the white caps of the growing waves. The captain makes an attempt to shift his course and harness the wind to tack us to our destination, but we can tell his confidence is wavering. We see the veins in his neck begin to bulge as he shouts instructions to us. The shore that was once no more than 50 yards off the port side of the boat is drifting farther and farther away. Just then a bright flash of lightning shoots across the sky dancing horizontally from cloud to cloud followed by a deafening crack of thunder. The ragged surface of the water begins to dance as tiny, fierce rain drops pierce the surface. We begin to loose our equilibrium. The horizon becomes completely indiscernible. We look around the boat at eye level and all we see are expressions of fear and doubt on the faces of our traveling companions. All are plagued with unsettling questions behind their eyes. “How did I find myself here?”, “Why did I agree to follow?”, “Wasn’t the decision to follow Jesus supposed to lead to a place of greater security and contentment?”. The question multiply and multiply, but eventually they all boil down to one common denominator. Fear. It’s rearing it’s ugly head like a ravenous lion. That same fear boils up from our own belly into our throat. Our eyes drift down to Jesus who is still sleeping like a rock in the hull of the boat. The dissonance between our circumstances and his silence eventually pushes the fear up from our throats to our tongue and we verbalize it at the top of our lungs.
“I don’t want to die!”
“Don’t you care?”
Amidst the chaos a realization starts to set in. Almost an out body experience. We begin to see ourselves more clearly than we ever have. We realize we have been operating as imposters. We said we would follow, but from this new vantage point our true source of motivation was not him. It was us. The power of the storm and the sight of the God who is sleeping in the hull have brought us to a tipping point of internal honesty. We know what we’re incapable of. We discover that we really do need salvation from a source other than ourselves. We thought we were strong enough, or smart enough, to self preserve. We visualize our life as if we were on a path. At the end of that path was a cushy royal throne. We see that we envisioned ourselves sitting on that throne with the entire world situated around us prostrating itself in our direction. Now, in the middle of the sea with the wind and waves baring down on us we are graced to envision ourselves differently. More honestly. Two more words form in our mouths.
“Save us.”
We look down. He stirs on the cushion in the hull of the boat and rises slowly from his sleep to his feet. He’s soaking wet like the rest of us, but it doesn’t seem to bother him at all. As the rain drops pelt his face he raises his voice above the howling wind and speaks sharp, two-edged words that are tailored to our newly discovered posture of heart.
“Why are you afraid?”
Yes, Lord. You are right. We are afraid of loosing our lives. We had grown used to control, and dependent on it. We didn’t realize that when you asked us to follow you, and we agreed, that they no longer belonged to us. We didn’t have any faith, or if we did it was misplaced. We only had ourselves. Now, here in the storm, we know that we are not enough.
He smiles at us in the middle of the tumult. We don’t know how to take it, but we begin to form the impression that he had this very moment in mind the entire time he was asleep. He lifts his eyes up to the black skies and whispers to them right in front of us. In the blink of an eye they cower in obedience to his command. The sea around us instantly becomes glassy and serene. We feel the warmth of the sun hit our face again. “How?,” we ask ourselves. “That seems impossible.” We are overtaken with a new kind of fear…the right kind of fear. Something in us has been silenced along with the power of the wind and the waves. We have been changed from the inside out and are no longer primally driven by what ifs? and then whats?. Instead we are overtaken with a reverence for the immensity of Jesus’ power. That reverence has become the driving force for the purpose of our lives.
The boat eventually glides smoothly to the rocky shore of the Gadarenes. We still can’t believe what happened out there in the middle of the sea, but we know we are different because o
f it. As we crawl out and our feet touch the Gadarene beach we have a sense that there will be more storms like this ahead. Possibly even some demons to confront. We’ve come to grips with the fact that following Jesus will lead us to trials where faith will continue to be forged. But now we know what it’s about, and who it’s about. We’ve learned to look at ourselves honestly. There’s still a throne at the end of the path of our life, but there’s a different King on it now. Security, predictability, and comfort aren’t there any longer. We’ve learned to pray. As we look around the world we live in we still see the effects of living in fear. There are all kinds of people hedging their bets in all kinds of ways, building fortresses to buttress themselves from storms like the one we just experienced. But now we’ve seen the master at work. He was sleeping in the boat. That’s where our faith grew, and we’ll never forget it.
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