Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (Part 4)

The Apostle Paul passed on the call and character of his life to his protégé Timothy when he wrote, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).    Paul exemplifies for us what it means to journey daily the three-fold path of wholly following Christ.   In this post, I’ll conclude our brief description of the pathway of a disciple who is wholly following Christ in the concrete realities of life in the present. 

The path for all who wholly follow the Lord Jesus is three-fold – living a submitted, singular and sacrificed life daily for others.  The pattern is set by Christ himself:  to suffer, to die and to rise.  We are called to choose the path of wholly following, but we cannot choose it by our own strength of reason or self-determination.  We are both prompted to choose this path and enabled to follow his pattern of life only by the grace and strength Christ gives to us as his followers.

We must, however, be very clear on this point.  There is nothing, not a single iota of desire nor scintilla of inclination, naturally arising from our human hearts or minds that would prompt us to follow Christ wholly.  From the first to the last step upon this path of self-denial, cross-bearing and following Christ the whole way to death, each step is enabled by grace through faith.  Our daily following is by faith through faith just as much as our initial conversion was (Ephesians 2:8-10).  Just as we began our journey by faith, so the continuation each day on the journey of wholly following after Christ can only be undertaken by faith through the power of God’s Spirit (Galatians 3:2-3). 

Each step along the way is a step of faith – a step believing that Christ lives within us right now.  And so, we pray each day “Live Jesus!”  Wholly following after Christ is patterning our lives in the here and now after the life that Christ himself lived.  “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21).  The path Jesus walked thus becomes the pattern for our living and dying for others at this very moment in time.

We are able to “follow in his steps” only in the strength that God daily provides us to live submitted to his Word, singularly focused to do his will and ultimately sacrificed for others.  It is by such wholly following after Jesus that we humans image God in the person of Christ to others.  Living life in this way is the fulfillment of God’s purpose in re-creating us in Christ.  In so doing, we live lives imitating Christ.  In him we find our pattern; in him is our daily purpose.  And ultimately, Christ’s life living through us will lead us to death for others.  Laying down our life for others is the completion of a life imitating Christ. Wholly following Christ, then, is our destiny as human beings created Imago Dei.

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 3)

Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on his journey to Jerusalem – to taking up the burdens and sins of others.  Ultimately, his journey is along a path to death, yet it is a death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call, then, is to live a sacrificed life.  We offer-up ourselves for others just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life is the goal of wholly following. 

We may think about discipleship as a daily walk along a three-fold path wholly following Christ our Lord.  It is the path of living a submitted life, a singular life, and a sacrificed life.  The three-fold path embodies the whole life of a follower of the Son of God who himself lived a full human life and died a full human death.  He died for us not only to accomplish our redemption from eternal separation from God, but also to enable us to pattern our life and death in this present world after His.  He enables this wholly following in the here and now because he is our life – Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). 

When Christ spoke his call to discipleship he spoke not only the particular path that lay before him, but also the pattern for everyone who wholly follows after him.  It was the path of Peter as the risen Jesus foretold it to him when he met Peter on the shore of Galilee.  Jesus said “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18).  John explains that by these words Christ showed “by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (21:19).  Peter, as one of the first followers of Jesus, lived a life and died a death that was both patterned after Christ.

The path Jesus walked in his life and in his death was also the pattern of Paul’s life.  God foretold the pattern of Paul’s life in his commission to Ananias, the person God used to convey his call to Paul: “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15b-16).  Paul himself passed on that same destiny to his protégé Timothy when he wrote, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).    

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship (part 2)

God became fully human in order that humans could become fully men and women bearing His image - the Imago Dei.  Christ now calls and enables all those who follow him to live responsibly in the concrete realities of life in the here and now.    As we ponder this very present reality, we must ask yet another question: Where do we hear this call from God? 

The call to live such a life comes to us in the words of Jesus when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).  It is a call to live wholly following after him.  It is a call to live a submitted life as we deny ourselves; to live a singular life as we take up his cross daily; and to live a sacrificed life as we follow him on the road that leads to death upon that cross.  Christ calls the disciple to deny himself.  We deny ourselves by submitting to Christ and his Word. 

We subject ourselves to his examining eye.  We pray, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and see if there be any evil way in me.”  God must search us.  We cannot search ourselves.  We cannot examine ourselves.  We would too easily find excuses and justifications for our choices. 

Only by examining ourselves by his Word and as the Spirit of God wields its discriminating blade, sharper than any two-edged sword as it discerns the thoughts and intents of our hearts, (Hebrews 4:12), will we begin to live the submitted life – a life of denial to self.  Through living a submitted life we begin wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to take us his cross. We take up our cross by recognizing that the cross must mean to us what it meant to Christ.  It is an instrument of death, indeed our place of death, but not merely a death to our self-centered, self-focused life, but a death of the follower for others.  The cross was the fulfillment of Christ’s work on earth -- the work that the Father had given him to do – the giving up of his life for others. 

The cross was the sign-post that marked the way that Christ walked.  It displayed his willingness to do the will of his Father.  So the cross that we take up is for us the singular emblem of the one thing that the follower of Christ desires, and that is: to do the will of God.  Living this singular life takes us to the core of wholly following.

Christ calls the disciple to follow him.  When a person instructs you to follow, he knows the path that must be taken.  So, the question must be asked: where was Jesus going when he issued this call?  The answer is found in the preceding verse: "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised." (Luke 9:22)  Christ knew the destiny that he had been born to fulfill.  

With that knowledge, he calls upon his disciples to follow him on that journey to Jerusalem – to taking upon himself the burdens and sins of others – ultimately, to death with the assured hope of the resurrection.  His call is for us to live a sacrificed life just as he offered-up himself us.  Living this sacrificed life, then, is the goal of wholly following.   

Wholly Following ~ The Pathway of Discipleship

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.   Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)

So what are “the essential facts of life” to which Thoreau refers? We might begin the inquiry with some basic questions: What is a human being that God would take thought of him? What is the purpose of God’s creation of humans and His plan for their redemption? Is that purpose only to provide humans with a future hope that they will live forever with God after they die? Is the essential fact of life found by asking the question, “Where will you spend eternity?” Or, is the fundamental question of human existence something quite different?

Could it be that the primary purpose for which God gave His Son to die was that his human creatures might live fully in the here and now? Did God become a man so that men could live in heaven or rather, was it so that humans could become fully human and live meaningful lives in this present world? Maybe our question still needs to be refined.

What is the meaning of eternal life? When does life begin to be eternal? Does this happen only after we pass on from this present life? Or rather, could it be that eternal life begins the moment God grants a person the gift of faith – the moment that a person is born anew from above by the Word and Spirit of God?

Paul clearly taught that faith in Christ gives us more that just a reason to live in this present world. He wrote in 1 Corinthians 15 – “If only in this life we have hope, we are of all men most miserable.” In Paul’s day, the truth of the Gospel gave men and women a hope to live a meaningful and purposeful life in the here and now. It also assured each follower of Christ of an eternal on-going existence with Christ throughout all eternity. That hope inspired them to face and accept a martyr’s death for the sake of Christ.

In our day, however, we tend to be focused on the other extreme. We have hope for the life to come, but our faith does little for the way we live in the concrete realities of our daily lives. We are all too often simply living like everyone else around us – conforming to the world rather than transforming it. Maybe we need to be challenged by a new word: “If we have hope only for the life to come, we are of all men most meaningless.”

No one wants to live a miserable life. No one wants to live a meaningless life. So what makes the difference? What enables us to live lives freed of misery and full of meaning? Here again, our question needs to be refined. It is not a “what” that enables full and complete living in the here and now. It is a “who”. And the “who” is none other than the very Son of God, Jesus Christ. God, who became fully human that we, his creatures, could become fully men and women bearing His image, the Imago Dei, now calls and enables us to live responsibly in the concrete realities of life here and now.

[I'll continue on this theme in additional posts]

On Being a Christian Professor at Handong

What does it mean to be a Christian Professor at Handong?  This question poses an even more profound inquiry.  What does it mean to engage one’s profession in a Christianly manner?  Within the context of Handong, the question could also be asked, what does it mean to be a Christian student here? Or, what does it mean to be a Christian administrator at Handong?  How does the reality of our life in and through Christ impact the way in which we serve others in our respective callings?

In each of our callings, the life and teachings of Jesus should be the rule and guide showing us what it means to be a Christian who teaches, who studies, and who leads and administers.  Jesus’ teachings about leadership are especially applicable to being a professor who is truly seeking to follow Christ’s example.  When his disciples were bickering about who would be the greatest among them, Jesus said, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10: 42- 45, ESV).

A Christian professor should embody the reality of the life of Christ by serving his students rather than dominating them from some position of claimed cultural or intellectual authority.  Christ turned his disciples’ view on “being the greatest” completely upside down.   Some have even described the “Kingdom of God” that Jesus both proclaimed and lived as “The Upside-Down Kingdom” It’s true!  To follow Christ authentically in our callings, especially in the vocation of a professor at a university such as Handong where Jesus is claimed as Lord, we should be living a life that runs against the flow of this world, and dare I say it, against the flow of every human culture. 

The flow of this world says that one who is in a position of power and authority in the eyes of others (i.e. the professor/teacher) should readily assert his position through control.  The flow of Christ, to the contrary, seeks to serve and to be at the service of those to whom we have been charged to teach.  The Apostle Paul, whom many regard as the greatest teacher of the Church, embodied Christ’s life of service to others.  He did not teach in order to get something from his students.  Rather, in response to God’s gracious call, he served others through his teaching.

Paul lived the reality of the “Upside-Down Kingdom.”  We see it clearly portrayed in his letter to the believers at Thessalonica. “We never came with words of flattery, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed—God is witness.  Nor did we seek glory from people, whether from you or from others, though we could have made demands as apostles of Christ.  But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.  So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (I Thessalonians 2:5-8).

Because this sort of self-sacrificing service is true to the life of one who lives in and through Christ, a professor who professes to follow Jesus at a university where God is claimed to be in the center of all things (or at least in the center of its name) should be yielding his life for his students rather than demanding that students give their time and lives at his convenience.  This means that the professor will be so submitted to the sovereignty of God in her service to students that she will allow her schedule to be interrupted because the needs of others are viewed as the professor’s most important task.  We serve the best by giving our lives to listen to and seek to understand the needs of our students.

Through yielded service and a readiness to give of his time and attentiveness, the professor who draws his life from Christ at Handong should be not only led to teach his students in a professional and scholarly manner but also to live a life before and for his students that authentically demonstrates the love of Christ by sharing and even bearing their burdens.  “Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).  A professor can only bear those burdens he knows, and so he must take the time to get to know what weighs down his students so that he might be of some measure of help in lifting them up.

If our students would learn anything of lasting value from us as Christian professors at Handong, then may it be this – that we live in constant acknowledgement of our need for Christ’s mercy and forgiveness and that we then seek to be professors who are serving, giving and bearing them through this time together here as we are continuing to be formed by the work of Christ’s Spirit into the whole persons that he has designed, called and equipped us all – professors, students, and administrators – to be.

The Teacher and Table Fellowship

  

Learning may occur in a variety of settings.  While classrooms appear to be the conventional locale, many great teachers rarely if ever stood behind a lectern or upon the platform of an auditorium. 

As I read through the Gospel accounts, especially Luke, I'm struck by the number of times that Jesus teaches while reclining at table with his disciples.  One might even conclude that he preferred setting for instruction and thoughtful conversation about truth was indeed during a shared meal.

Students and teachers eating together, not so much in formal arrangements but in more casual settings, provides excellent opportunities for the engagement of ideas through more relaxed dialogue.  It is not surprising then to find other teachers through the ages who have also taken the opportunity for table fellowship as a wonderful venue for enriching the learning experiences of their students.

Martin Luther's kitchen table

Among my model teachers, Luther stands out as one, who through the gracious hospitality of his wife Katharina, regularly extended invitations to his students for discussions around his kitchen table. I've said on more than one occasion that when my students start bringing note pads to discussions we have during meals I will then regard myself as teacher worthy of being heard.

Having the opportunity to share a meal with my students and the good conversation that surrounds the table are clearly some of the most delightful blessings of teaching at a residential university.  In fact, I'm beginning to realize how very important such times of relaxed conversation are for my students.  They need to see and hear me in the totality of life -- not just in the formal setting of a lecture hall.

Paul followed Jesus example in this regard.  He could write to those he had taught, "What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me -- practice these things, and the God of peace with be with you." (Philippians 4:9).  Students rarely "see" in the classroom what their teachers are saying.  Rather, it is when students encounter their teacher in the fullness of life's experiences that they have the opportunity to see if what their teacher has taught is in fact practiced in his life.

I hope that my students here at Handong will be able to see whether that is true for me.  One of my favorite things is to invite several students out for a meal off campus. The student cafeteria at the university is called "Twelve Baskets" and I've been told that's because there are always at least twelve baskets of leftovers after every meal.  So, as you might expect, I don't have any problem gathering a crew to enjoy a Sunday lunch at "Mr. Big" -- the newest place to taste a hamburger in Pohang.

Each shared meal -- whether with many or just one or two -- provides a wonderful occasion for students and teacher to get to know one another better and talk more freely about those persistent questions of life.  Maybe one day, a careful listener within our happy fellowship will publish the Handong edition of "Table Talk."

Playing the Fool

I'm always trying to engage my students through new approaches that I hope will prompt them to examine different perspectives on the persistent questions of life.

So, this past Friday I thought I might take a slightly different approach to April Fool's Day.  I came to class dressed in a brown Franciscan-like habit and without my glasses or shoes (and sockless, too!).

To say my students were taken aback would be putting it somewhat mildly.  Now, you have to understand that in Asian culture in general (and Korean culture in particular), students are taught to accept what their teachers present to them.  That being said, many were still trying hard to suppress their laughter.  Has professor gone completely crazy?  Has separation from his wife and family driven him mad?  Does he really think that he has become a monk?

None of those questions were expressly stated, but you can be sure most of them were puzzling more than one student's mind.  So what was the point of this first of April performance?  I wanted to do for my new students at Handong what I had first done for students at Missouri Baptist University seven years ago on another April Fool's Day.  In the attire of a follower of Francis of Assisi, I told them his story and how he came to be known as Francis the Fool.

I had been assigned the responsibility of giving the message for the student chapel service at MBU on the first of April.  Earlier that year, I had read G.K. Chesterton's Life of St. Francis.  Chesterton's portrayal of Francis challenged me to think more deeply about what it means to follow Jesus fully.  Francis sought to live as Jesus lived and to love as Jesus loved.  He reached out and touched the leper just as Christ had done.  He left behind the wealth and security offered him by his family in order to find the fullness of life as he took seriously Christ's teaching to consider the birds of the air and the flowers of the field.

Having been so challenged by Francis' life, it was quite obvious to me that I was meant to tell his story in that chapel service on the first of April seven years ago.  I thought it would make a more memorable impression if I told the story as Francis himself.  So, now here at Handong, I wanted to continue the tradition and pass along the lessons from the life of the one who was called "Francis the Fool" -- a name that I'm sure he did not resent since he was seeking to follow the one who many had regarded as "God's own Fool."

Evidently that chapel message seven years ago was memorable.  When one of my Handong student's posted the picture above to facebook during our Friday morning class, one of my former students from MBU, who was on-line at the time, commented within minutes: "I remember that robe!"  I guess, playing the fool can sometimes be an effective means of teaching.