Читать книгу Decisive Encounters - Roberto Badenas - Страница 6
Оглавление1
The Meeting
The peacefulness of the afternoon falls upon the hollow of the valley. The shadows stretch their embrace through the crossroads of the ford and slowly ascend the steep hillsides. The chirping of the cicadas begins to subside; and from the ponds—behind the oleanders in bloom—the croaking of frogs rises in clear notes.
The quavering bleats of flocks returning to their pens slowly fade. From the bramble patches and myrtles arrive the humming sounds of bees, intent on the sickly sweet remains of the last berries. Below, beyond the murmur of the sugar cane fields and the quagmires bristling with reed beds and papyruses, the Jordan meanders, loamy and green.
Two young men wait impatiently, at the crossroads, under the precarious coolness of the willows.
They have arrived at this mystical place, following many other seekers of God. It could be said that at the bottom of this depression—steeped in history, the most sunken in the world, in the void left by major cities struck down by the divine fire1—the distance from heaven pains the most; consequently, the nostalgia of drawing closer to Him is felt the most.
From their precarious observatory, the travelers spot, mounted on the last cliff of the desert, the monastery thereon built by the Essenes, facing the Dead Sea, in order to always maintain, in the monks’ sight, the accursed effects of sin, and to distance themselves from it with their ascetic rites.
If Andrew and his friend were to decide, they could knock on its door that very afternoon and request their admission in the community, giving in to recent temptations. A novice of their age, proudly draping himself in his white robe, had extolled, with a serious frown and an ardent look, the purifying virtues of monastic spirituality:
To rid ourselves of evil, we must withdraw from the world. There is no possible salvation in Israel. Do not listen to its apostate clergy: it deceives you. We are the faithful remnant, those who live by the sanctity that the divine judgment demands. Your corrupt Teachers of the law do not hold the truth. The Teacher of Justice is the only one who teaches it. Keeping its precepts2 is the only path to enter into the kingdom of God.
The young man seemed to be very convinced. Yet, is it not that the kingdom of God can be accessed only by renouncing the risks of life in society? Is it not of cowards to flee from danger? His friends the Zealots, with whom they sometimes met in secrecy, stressed upon them almost the opposite:
We must impose the kingdom of God and build it ourselves, breaking by any means necessary the yoke of the idolatrous oppressor. We have to fight with our own hands, with our own strength, and even with our own blood if necessary, against the enemies of the Lord of hosts if we want the Messiah to come to free us from Rome and from all the evils.
Their friends, the Zealots, were also very sincere and fanatical, brave up to the sacrifice. One of them had died as a martyr, crucified for being a terrorist a short time ago.
Whom to follow? That is the big question that torments the idealist minds of the young travelers. Which path leads to salvation . . . that of a fight to the death against the adversaries of God, or that of isolation from the world?
Foolish dilemma, reply the Sadducees with haughtiness. Heaven belongs only to God. For mortals there is no more “kingdom” than what they get hold of for themselves. The Almighty metes out blessings and punishments in this life because there is no other. He rewards or sanctions according to His sovereign will, without us always knowing the reason for his decisions.
To which the Pharisees claim:
Grave heresy. The Torah clearly indicates the route to follow: God saves through observance of His law. Divine justice will inexorably reveal itself in the coming judgment regarding your conduct in this life. Your actions save or condemn you. After the inevitable death, the supreme Judge decides if the scales of your good actions, prayers, fastings, and charities, surpass the weight of your sins.
Perplexed at this crossroads of paths, the young men do not know what direction to take. That is why they have traveled from afar to here, the ford of Bethabara, driven by their uncertainty and by their absolute thirst, to hear the new prophet in person. Compelled by his message, they have answered his call:
Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens approaches, and demonstrate through your fruits the conversion of your hearts. Let God cleanse you of your past, being reborn, through baptism, into a new life. Only God can save us from ourselves and transform us through his power. I baptize you with water, to mark the breaking of a new birth, but He who comes after me will submerge you in the atmosphere of the spirit.
They have heard it from his lips. To quench their spiritual thirst, the restless travelers have to steer their course toward a new guide, and such is not the Baptist.
Are you not the awaited Messiah? his opponents had asked.3
No, I am not. I am but a voice calling in the desert to prepare the way for him. The Teacher who is to come is your guide. Moreover, He is the proclaimed Lamb of God, the only one capable of saving the world from its sins and of opening the gates of heaven for us all.
The clue does not seem very clear, but the travelers already know that the key to what they are seeking is not there, in the ford of the Jordan, neither in the caves of Qumran, nor in the temple of Jerusalem; and neither in the daggers of the Sicarii nor in the classrooms of the Teachers of the law. The course to follow will be indicated by the promised Savior.
Their restlessness is incited when the prophet points out in the distance, with his gaunt right hand, a wayfarer walking down the side of the mountain:
At last, there He comes. Follow him wherever He guides you.
Seized with emotion, the young men impatiently draw near to encounter Him. That man who approaches whistling, with an angular, sun-tanned face, is the Teacher whom they must follow.
But the wanderer is unaware that He is expected and continues without stopping.
Although His pace is steady, He does not appear to be in a hurry, and the young men do not have any trouble catching up to Him. Intimidated by His proximity, they do not dare to address Him and walk behind Him, feeling inhibited. They follow Him so closely that the traveler notices their presence, stops while smiling, and with a deep but welcoming voice, asks them:
What do you seek?4
The young men, taken aback, do not manage to reply, because they do not know how to articulate what they seek. They feel disoriented, confused, dissatisfied with their lives and wish to find a path that will give them meaning and make them happy. But they do not know how to put into words the object of their search.
The Baptist had given the traveling Teacher the enignamtic title of “The Lamb of God.” 5 Strange name that, like a key or a secret code, seems aimed at clarifying a mystery. However, they, at the moment, have few details to resolve the enigma.
The Lamb of God so far from the temple, apart from the altars, alien from the circle of priests and their sacrifices?
The lone traveler, who does not exude an aroma of either incense or smoke but of thyme and rosemary, repeats his question. And it has nothing to do with rites, clergy, or theologies: it has to do with them, with their lives, with their here and now:
What do you seek?
What they seek is undoubtedly not very different from what other serious young people search for at some point in their lives. They seek, beyond any immediate urgency, what they truly lack in order to direct their dissatisfied existence: a reliable guide, a lasting love, someone with whom to share life, a gratifying vocation, a faith, a project that will make them dream.
What do you seek? The traveler insists.
And they, who cannot envision what they seek, muddle through with another question:
Teacher, where do you reside?
They want to know where to find the Teacher when they need him. Their question is equivalent, in an indirect and possibly unconscious manner, to the answer: “Perhaps we seek you.” Because many times, without knowing, we seek something when in reality we need Someone.
The two friends wanted to know where they could listen to the teachings of the new rabbi recommended by the Baptist. They do not expect anything now nor do they ask for anything special. They do
not feel worthy of the personal attention from someone like Him. They want only to join the group of His possible followers. They hope that it will grant them access to the privilege that is enjoyed by the disciples of the few Teachers they know in their environment: to attend on a regular basis, after the day’s occupations, the place where the Rabbi shares His knowledge. They have so many concerns that, in a brief meeting, along the side of the road, they cannot receive what they yearn for. They desire to be alone with Him, to sit at his feet and receive his teachings.6
Their question is timid and respectful; it indicates, further, that those males are younger than the one whom they already call “Teacher.”7
Jesus understands their question well. He also knows that “to reside” is more than to stop for a moment. To reside is to dwell, to inhabit, to live in, or to remain. And He has no intention of staying there, by the desert. For that reason, he does not show them a place, but a presence:
Come and see.
That is, “Follow Me.”
To the surprise of the travelers, the new Teacher does not confine himself to any permanent domicile. He lives in the “come” and “see” of those who follow him. He is found coming and seeing: departing from where we are and discovering what we could not see. Drawing nearer to it and observing closely . . .
The traveler tells His road companions that in order to find what they seek, it is enough for them to come and see.8 If to come one must get under way; to see, one need only to open one’s eyes. The essence of their search entirely rests upon two action verbs, which he conjugates as two invitations: to approach him, and to keep the eyes of the soul wide open.
Additionally, God, whom they truly seek, can be found everywhere, even where most unexpected. It is not necessary to turn to sacralized spaces for that purpose, where some would like to demarcate the privileges of the encounter. Because there are people who soon after becoming aware of a place where someone once had a glimpse of the divine immediately take control of it and create upon it an oratory, a temple, a basilica or monastery, which they zealously keep under their own tutelage. To find him, you need only follow him. And that is what John and Andrew are doing.
With this warm welcome, with his intriguing message, and with the endearing enchantment of his voice, Jesus bewilders those who are accustomed to being guided through orders and prohibitions. He unsettles and disorients them, because the Baptist himself had incited them to the conversion wielding threats of axes and fire.9 Jesus proposes a transformation that goes in the same direction but through a different route, despite also using strong images at times. In this manner, a new era in the spiritual experience of these young men is ushered in. The speech from the Baptist served, at the time, to raise in them the fear of the divine judgment; but, to the new Teacher, what these young men now need is not to tremble in fear but to shudder with enthusiasm.10
He knows the depth of their thirst and what can transform their lives. That is why He invites them to follow Him, not with orders or demands, and not with resorting to the fear of punishment, but with a simple and cordial welcome, making them desire the adventures of discovery. His positive pedagogy arouses in these young men the urge to progress, advance, and grow.
The newly initiated Teacher has just come across His first two disciples.11
He has given up the easy routine of His profession as a craftsman to follow the difficult vocation of an educator. He has stopped building and furnishing homes to start building and furnishing minds, a challenging call that imposes on His spirit with all the force of that which comes from heaven.
Upon closing His carpentry shop, His family circle and His neighbors insisted that He was making a serious mistake. Being such a good professional and with His exceptional talent, leaving the modest security of His customers, thereby risking His future, seemed like madness to them. It always happens like so. If the greatest resistance to do something big tends to come from ourselves, the most reticent opposition to assume new risks can emerge from our closest surroundings and from those who love us most.
But Jesus does not seek an easy life, sheltered by His many relatives:12 He wants a useful life, even if no one supports Him. His ideal does not belong to this world, and for that reason He does not follow in the footsteps of the majority. He has a dream, a grand plan. He wants to try something new to build a better world, changing people’s lives.13 And He aspires to share his ideals, dreams, and plans with the best youth of the country. He does not have experience, titles, means, or influences. But He has God and that is enough to feel optimistic, spirited, and strong.
Furthermore, His first two disciples are already there, waiting to receive their first lesson. This lesson, initial and definitive,14 is the most important of all. It consists of merely discovering the power that the divine presence transmits in the life of whoever seeks it. And He is pleased to accompany those who really seek Him, no matter how young they are and how confused they find themselves.
There is no inhabited place on the entire way from the Dead Sea to Jericho. However, the Teacher without hesitating takes His new friends to the place where He claims to reside at the moment. Without a doubt, it involves the place where He had stayed during his visit to the Baptist, about forty days ago . . . a cave such as many that abound in the area? A shed built with reeds, like those that are occupied one after another by travelers at the side of the road? Or rather, He leads them to a selected place whereupon to pitch the tent He is carrying in His backpack, like so many travelers?15 The old texts do not state it. But they specify that the young men went and saw where the traveling rabbi was dwelling, and that He shared with them His poor lodging until the following day.
They would soon decide to remain with Him forever.16
They will never forget the exact hour of that decisive moment: the tenth hour, penultimate hour of the afternoon.17
The day draws to a close on the travelers. The sun sets between golden-reddish clouds. But in the hearts of those three young men something very new awakens.
A magical, pivotal encounter for the disciple apprentices as well as for the new Teacher . . .
What might they have talked about on that unforgettable evening under the stars? The writings of the main characters do not mention it.18 They specify only that the moment at which these young travelers encounter Jesus and decide to stay with Him marks a milestone in their history. Because with Him they found what they were seeking, many things that they were not seeking, other things that they were seeking without knowing it and something much better than what they were seeking.
The lesson that the new Teacher begins to impart involves a verb that is conjugatable in all persons, in all tenses, and in all forms: the verb “to love.”19 An irregular and unpredictable verb where it exists because it is at odds with imperatives; it lacks perfect tenses; and its present tends to be imperfect and its future conditional. A verb that demands to be exercised in all its forms and with all its synonyms: to like, to appreciate, to take in, to support, to value, to respect, to share. But because the conjugation of that verb does not fit in books, these first disciples must learn it in the action.
With astonishment, they discover that the personification of the verb to love has set out to encounter them on the path of their search, and is catching up to them where they are, in that unexpected camping.20 If to love is really to seek the good of the other, to want their happiness, these disciples discover love incarnate in Jesus, solidarity in person, and the practical demonstration of what it is to really love, unconditionally: not an ephemeral feeling but an engine of action. Vital principle that permeates their person and that makes them recognize in their Teacher someone who comes from God.21
John, probably the youngest disciple, years later alludes to that feeling as so indefinable and new, which he began to experience that day in the presence of the Teachers’s amazing capability for empathy, “feeling accepted and understood but not daring to express gratitude for it.”22 And since then he appoints himself with the most daring honorific title anyone had ever flaunted: “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” 23
Therefore the great lesson from the Teacher to His first disciples and to all those who will follow them is to learn to conjugate the verb to love. Beginning right there and continuing in their homes, in their neighborhoods, in the towns where they live, in the shops where they work, in the spaces where they enjoy recreation and, of course, in the sanctuaries where they worship. If the divine Word has come closer to them because of love, practicing the verb to love will now also be the way to get closer to another and elevate themselves to heaven.
And so, the young men discover that, in the company of Jesus, to find the meaning of their lives, they do not need to seek a place but a person. That to feel the presence of God, withdrawing themselves to the solemnity of a temple is not necessary. His closeness is also found in the refreshing embrace of water from a bath at sundown. That to enter into communion with the sustainer of all things, participating in the ritual of a sacrifice, is not necessary. One can take communion with Him by gratefully sharing several bits of pomegranate and a handful of dates. That to get closer to the Creator of the universe, no mystical initiation is required; allowing yourself be carried away by the emotion of an astonished contemplation of the stars suffices.
The travelers have found the Teacher whom were searching for. But the latter puzzles them. He shatters all their plans. He does not fall within any of their categories. They do not know how to describe Him: admirable adviser, Teacher and friend, path and goal, love in person, serene joy, truth and life . . .
His words are at the same time so simple and profound that each of His reflections seems inexhaustible, in a way that they never reach the depth of his thoughts.
There is, as well, something that deeply moves and scares them. Because the Teacher caresses, with amazing realism, the impossible dream of the most ambitious prophets and reformers: to change the world.
And they would like to be a part of that dream.
But, will they be capable of following the Teacher in such an inconceivable plan?
1. The Depression of the Dead Sea is the site of Sodom and Gommorah, consumed according to tradition by fire coming down from heaven (Gen. 19:1-28).
2 . Regarding the Essene community of Qumran, see Flavio Josefo, The Wars of the Jews, Book 1, Barcelona: Orbis, 1985, pp. 122-126.
3 . John 1:19-28.
4 . These are Jesus’ first words recorded in the Gospels (John 1:35-39, NKJV).
5 . John 1:35-37.
6 . Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 112.
7 . My studies of the gospels have led me to the conclusion that these first disciples of Jesus were younger than 30 years of age. The first and foremost reason is that they call him “rabbi” (Teacher). Jesus was then about 30 years of age (Luke 3:23) and had never worked as a Teacher, but as a carpenter. In that patriarchal society (of traditional gerontocracy) it was not conceivable that a Teacher were younger than his disciples, or that he would take it upon himself to teach prior to 40 or 50 years of age. If these young men address Jesus calling him “rabbi” it was because they clearly appeared to be younger than he. Until the end of his ministry, Jesus continued calling them paidia (John 21:5), Greek term that means ‘children’ or ‘little children,’ an appellation that would be unthinkable in that culture if they had been older than he. They were more likely to be about 20 years of age. Their youth would explain their enormous availability, which allowed them to follow Jesus full time for more than three years, what would have been very difficult if they had had families to support (Luke 18:28-31). See Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 73.
8 . “Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows where the path will lead [. . .]. The following is the joy.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. The Following, Salamanca: Sígueme, 2004, p. 12)
9 . See Matthew 3, 7-10 and parallels.
10 . In reality, Jesus threatens only those who dedicate themselves to threathening those who are weaker than they; that is, the Scribes and the Pharisees, who think that fear serves to obtain desired changes. But the threats achieve only external and fleeting changes. True transformation is born simultaneously from within and from above.
11 . The term “disciple” describes a follower of a Teacher who is in the process of learning.
12 . The Gospels say that Jesus had four brothers, named James, Joseph, Simon and Judas, in addition to several sisters (Matt. 13:55).
13 . “The life of Jesus can be seen from the perspective of change rather than conservation.” He was the Reformer of reformers, and His lever for reform was the revelation of God’s plan for humanity.” (George Knight, Philosophy & Education, Miami: APIA, 2002, p. 255)
14 . According to Matthew 28:20, the last words of Jesus will be: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
15 . Paul of Tarsus, Jesus’ great disciple, made a living producing such tents (Acts 18:1-3).
16 . This availability confirms that these disciples were young. Some of their reflections, like the one expressed in Matthew 19:10 “if this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” It would imply, based on the use of the aorist tense, that they were still single. The fact that we later find the disciple Peter already married, does not mean that he was older, given that the recommended age for marriage by the rabbis was from 16 to 24. His impulse of wanting to walk on water (today we would say “surfing without a board”) is much easier to understand as a juvenile fit—which the Teacher does not care to indulge—than a mature decision of an adult, who would not have dared to have such a crazy idea (Matt. 14:28-33). More than three years later, when John and Peter compete by racing to see who arrives first at the tomb, John has the naive satisfaction of indicating that he won the race (John 20:3-8). If you bear in mind that in such society the act of adults running in public was frowned upon, this “feat” clearly appears as a juvenile thing.
17 . The “tenth” hour is equivalent more or less to two hours before sunset (John 1:39).
18 . The author of this account is John, one of the travelers, who would go on to become an apostle (John 1:35-42).
19 . John 1:1-14.
20 . Hence, the first activity of Jesus’ public ministry was camping with the young men . . .
21 . “Every glance of the eye, every feature of the countenance, [. . .] expressive of unutterable love” (Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages, p. 81). “God is love” John would write years later (1 John 4:8).
22 . [Translated quote] Antonio Muñoz Molina, Sefarad, Madrid: Editorial Santillana, 2001, pp. 291-192.
23 . John would sign his Gospel with the pseudonym of “the beloved disciple”or “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:20). “Even John, the beloved disciple — the one who most fully reflected the likeness of the Savior— did not naturally possess loveliness of character. He was not only self-assertive and ambitious for honor but impetuous and resentful under injuries. [. . .] The strength and patience, the power and tenderness, the majesty and meekness that he beheld in the daily life of the Son of God, filled his soul with admiration and love. Day by day his heart was drawn out toward Christ, until he lost sight of self in love for his Master. [. . .] The power of the love of Christ wrought a transformation of character.” (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, Madrid: Safeliz, 2018, p. 75)
