Cover Yourself With the Dust of Your Rabbi

In the ancient world, a disciple who accepted the call to follow a rabbi, entered into the inner circle of that master, sharing life in all of its intimacies – warts and all. The aim of being a disciple was the application, the translation of all the long learning & memorization of the Hebrew Scriptures into real life lived under the watchful eye of the Rabbi.

A disciple would follow his rabbi everywhere. One of the sages of Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, used to say, “Cover yourself with the dust of [your rabbi’s] feet, and
 drink in [his] words with gusto.”

The idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi came from something that was a common sight in 1st century Palestine.

I like how Rob Bell describes this… He says a rabbi would be walking down a dusty local street and right behind him would be his students doing their best to keep up with him, as he went about from place to place teaching his yoke. By the end of the day, the disciples would have the dust from whatever their rabbi had been walking in literally caked all over them.  

Covering yourself in the dust of your rabbi… this is what devotion means when you are a disciple of Jesus.

Arms Wide Open

The Sermon on the Mount. These words of Jesus are life… life lived abundantly, generously, with arms wide open. They create the space for us to live life BIG, to embrace today – even when the storms of life come. These words are demanding because every stroke and letter is absolutely brimming with the merciful, compassionate and grace-filled way that God deals with people. These teachings of Jesus are what it means to live life naked and exposed in the very presence of God himself.

That’s why everyone who hears these words of Jesus and who acts on them are like the wise man who built his house upon the rock. The rains came down and the floods came up. The winds blew and beat on the house but it did not fall because it was founded on a firm foundation. I like what Rob Bell says about storms. He says it’s not like the storms might come. Storms come. The difference between a wise and a foolish man is in their ability to weather the storm. 

Pure Oxygen

Recently, a friend of mine asked the question, “If you were going to use a passage from Scripture to describe the kind of community you think God would like us to be, what passage would you choose?”

I had to think for a bit but the longer I did, the more I liked the Exodus image of being a pilgrim people in the wilderness. Lawrence Kushner says the wilderness is a place that demands being open to the flow of life around you. It’s a place “that demands being honest with yourself, without regard to the cost in personal anxiety… a place that demands being present with all yourself… possessions cannot surround you… preconceptions cannot protect you… guilt can no longer place you safely in the past”.

There is a sense of weakness and vulnerability, of depending upon God alone that goes with this image. It’s an idea of community that says if we don’t work this out together we are going to die here. This basic survival orientation focuses attention outwards, demanding openness to newness & difference. It is a picture of a community of people who are working out their relationship with God ‘on the way’.

Mars Hill is a church in Grand Rapids, Michigan – who have chosen to locate their story in the deep channel of the Exodus story. This grand narrative of Scripture lends movement, intention & focus to their community. It is the idea of having a deep story that they can keep checking in with to make sure their unfolding communal story is located in a place where God alone is the living center.

Kushner says of dwelling in the wilderness, “That such a way of being would be like breathing pure oxygen.” That we would long to breathe air of such intensity & purity in the Church. Amen, amen & amen again. 

Storm’s Coming…

There are 6 stories about Jesus immersed in a storm that appear in the Gospels. Like all good stories about chaos, these stories get told from different perspectives.

In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus sends his disciples out in the boat, and he goes off to a nearby mountain to pray. Soon, the disciples are out in the open water, it is dark and the wind starts whipping the waves up into a frenzy. We are given an image of the disciples straining & struggling to control the boat in the large swells. Off in the distance they notice a figure walking towards them on the water and they are terrified because the disciples think it is some kind of ghost. Jesus calls out to them, “Don’t be afraid. It’s me !” Then he gets into the boat and the storm ceases. And we are told that the disciples are utterly astonished.

The good news is when the storms come – not ‘if’ they come but ‘when’ they come – when chaos descends and overwhelms our lives – Jesus is not diminished or made irrelevant. Far from it, Jesus is at ease and amazingly present and powerful in those places.

In Mathew’s telling of the story, he focuses on Jesus’ disciple Peter – who is an experienced fisherman & a close friend of Jesus. In those moments after he sees Jesus walking on the water in the storm, Peter steps out of the boat and starts walking towards Jesus. What amazes me about this picture, is that while this is 2 steps beyond the reason of a smart fisherman, Peter has begun to encounter Jesus on his terms. Think about that for a moment, Peter is encountering Jesus on his terms when he steps outside of the boat. And what happens ? In this God space of holy chaos, a fisherman can walk on water.

For some reason Peter takes his eyes off Jesus – Rob Bell says he begins doubting himself. Peter notices where he is standing and he is gripped with fear. As Peter begins to be swallowed up by the angry water, Jesus reaches out his hand and grabs hold of Peter and together they return to the safety of the boat.

The good news is that when the storms of life come, Jesus is powerful and present and we are wonderfully held.

In GK Chesterton’s book ‘Orthodoxy’, he says, “… the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.”

Give me a Jesus who is rock solid but also give me an Elastic Jesus who expands and intensifies when all about me is a storm of chaos !