Both Willing and Unwilling

Ezekiel 4:1-7

4 Then lie on your left side, and place the punishment of the house of Israel upon it; you shall bear their punishment for the number of the days that you lie there.

I think of Bodhisattvas when I read this. Not only does the prophet speak hard truths to unrepentant people, but in order to be qualified to do so, must suffer on behalf of those same unrepentant ones. This is not a transaction, but an act of great compassion. That’s what makes a prophet a prophet: to embody the entirety of a thing; to be at the same time the helpless besieged and the implacable besieger; to be both willing and unwilling; to be both bound and free; to unreservedly belong to the world and accept it contentedly as it is, and at the same time point a steadfast and accusing finger at the senselessness of evil; to be utterly at home in the realm of Light and Peace, and at the same time be a homeless and bewildered wanderer in a desolate wasteland of suffering.

Hebrews 6:1-12

4 For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, since on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt.

This is a very tricky passage. I read it not as a judgmental exposition of what happens to someone who repents and then later on rejects enlightenment, but as an explanation of why that circumstance is utterly impossible. So I am going to take a chance and rephrase the passage. “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come to be restored to repentance after falling away, because that would mean that on their own they are crucifying again the Son of God and are holding him up to contempt. I think what Paul is saying is that once enlightened, there is no chance at all that those who have been enlightened and empowered by the heavenly gift and the goodness of the word of God, might ever truly fall away, because that would mean that they would have had to decide on their own account to crucify Christ all over again, and make a mockery of Reality. Paul is saying that this is literally impossible, that it just can’t happen. I find that quite reassuring, and not only that, it rings true, a pure bell-tone that cuts through all the noise and distraction of this world.

Luke 9:1-62

57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." 60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

I hear Jesus saying this: “I won’t let you follow the idea of me that you have in your mind, but only the real Me, right here and right now. You can’t say “I will follow you wherever you go,” because I am not going anywhere, and I have no home. If I say “Follow me,” you literally can’t do it later, after you take care of something else. There is no such thing as “later,” there is only Now. You mustn’t try to control things according to your ideas about what you want, or how you imagine things should be. In fact, it’s silly to try to control things at all, because it isn’t possible. All you can ever have is the eternally frustrating and fruitless pursuit of the illusion that you can. Be Present. It’s not possible for you to live and have your being anywhere but in the Present, and if you insist on pretending that you can, you are living your whole life under a misunderstanding. You can’t “fit” into the realm of God until you stop trying to live in an imaginary reality that exists only in the past and in the future, and not in the Now. It’s as if you were to take hold of a plow to till a field, but kept  looking back, perhaps to wish that you didn’t have to do it, or hoping that someone else will come and do it for you, or looking to see if the boss is watching to make sure you do it. Meanwhile, your furrow wanders from left to right and up and down, and the field will not be fit to plant.

(I thought of a great modern analogy to the plow: “It’s as if you get behind the wheel of your car to go somewhere, and on the way you take out your phone and start texting instead of paying attention to driving.”) 

Again, this is not a judgment about who gets awarded the prize of belonging to the Kingdom according to how well they compete for God’s approval, and it is most definitely not about checking off the items on a holy To-Do list, or jostling for a place in line for a pay-to-play contest with Heaven as the trophy.

No, it’s about learning to see clearly, and understanding the nature of things, and being aware of God’s Presence. It’s about insight, about understanding, about discernment, about enlightenment. It’s what Jesus meant when he talked about finding your life by losing it. Don’t overthink it, just take a deep breath and carry on.