Wednesday
Nov022011
The Discipline of Death
Bernie Anderson
Yesterday I turned 44. I informed Renee’ that I’m currently half way to 88 (as if she’s not way better at math than I am). It’s an odd way to view age, I suppose, but now as a true “middle-aged” man, it’s just a realistic way of facing truth. I’m not at all under the delusion that my “best years are behind me,” nor do I have any desire to “return to my youth.” I’m quite content to be where I am. However, nearly every year, my birthday tends to begin a season of personal reflection that lasts until January. My wife told me I could probably blame my Dad for that. She may be right. I learned a lot about personal introspection from him.
I read these words this morning:
Mission is about following Jesus into the world, and this act of following is ultimately about death. The Bonhoefferian word regarding Jesus’ invitation to come and die is indeed the reality of taking the Cross to the unreached, the least reached and the unengaged peoples of the earth. Out of death comes life. But only out of death. Missional leaders through out the ages (circa: Augustine, Martin Luther, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, CT Studd, and the list goes on) make the same appeal.
This sort of apparently morose spirituality is generally unpopular. It’s not happy-sounding or optimistic at all. It’s not befitting to our American sense of well being and fairness. Death is not really a part of our everyday experience. When we face death, the corpse is dressed up in his best suit, has her hair done and is wearing makeup. “Doesn’t she look beautiful?” “It looks just like him.” Really now?
I’d never seen dead people outside of a funeral home until moving to Ulaanbaatar. Since being here, we (and our children) have seen corpses several times. A man coming out of a store just falling over like a cold stone. Maybe he had a heart attack? I never really knew for sure. His heart was no longer beating. We’ve seen several instances of people lying dead in the street after being hit by a car. Mongolian tradition (I don’t know if this comes from Shamanism or Buddhism) requires that a corpse lay where it fell for a certain period of time. Uncovered. Bare. Dead and exposed to the elements and available for all to see. It has something to do with giving the spirit time to properly depart from the body. It’s just one more evidence of death’s cruel reality.
There are other places in the world where death is even more in your face and life has even less value than here. Places where open mass graves are not an unusual thing and where guns and bombs and disease are as everyday as a loaf of bread or a carton of milk, and death is a part of life. Children of the world are generally not protected from it’s harsh reality in the same way suburban American children tend to be.
The Cross of Jesus makes more sense when it is considered in the matter-of-fact way most of the world views death. The Cross takes on more meaning than a gold chain or an ornamental stone in a graveyard. It was a very tangible instrument of torture and death that Jesus demanded we take up in order to follow him.
Here’s what I’m rediscovering that this means as an overseas worker.
Unless there is a personal laying aside of my preferences and my opinions and my will for my sake, this thing called “mission” is never going to work. Team will not work, mission will not work. Nothing will work. Mission cannot be just be me trying to accomplish my vision and my plans and my goals and my direction for the sake of my own glory. So this is why Creps book starts with the “Off-road” “discipline of death.” It’s why Jesus said no one who comes after Him will be able to come after him without a Cross. His Cross. Jesus bids us come and die. Its’s the reality. It’s the way … and there’s no other way. Death can be violent and death can be gradual. Either way, the paradigm shifts which must take place in our lives will equate to death of a way of life. Or a Dream. Or a goal. Or an agenda. The death of these kinds of things is not easy. It’s painful. It’s agonizingly painful, because it’s personal. But that’s the call to “come and die.”
Mission and the cross are inseparable and not to be ignored. Too much of our “mission talk” in America is about glory. It’s about making sure that our prayer letters are full of glowing stories of all the Saints from all the world marching into the glorious Kingdom of God because you gave and I went. That’s mostly rubbish. It doesn’t look like that right now. It will. But it’s all quite messy at the moment. Frankly, if you hear so much “glory talk” from most fields, you can be fairly certain that the truth is being stretched - at least a little. Personal pain and death to self has to take place before anything “glorious” is going to happen. Young dreamy-eyed grad students want to work overseas in the world of “missions” … raise the Banner,“for the Kingdom” … and little do they know what they’re heading into. I was there once. That was the triumphalistic closing of all my correspondence. At 44 years old the greeting “for the Kingdom” has changed simply to “Grace.” Please don’t get upset. I’m still very much about the kingdom of Jesus. I am. It’s my highest value and what I aim live the next 44 years for, whether in Mongolia or anywhere else in the world our Commander asks me to go. However, it’s not going to happen without an enormous amount of grace. Overflowing, burgeoning floods of grace … because fruit will only be born when the seed goes into the ground and dies. (John 12:24. Always John 12:24.)
There’s not another option.
I read these words this morning:
“Sometimes violent, sometimes gradual, paradigm crashes create an opportunity for God to take me off road, awakening me to mission by crucifying aspects of my culture, leadership and spirituality that, unbeknownst to me, need to die”From “Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders” by Earl Creps
Mission is about following Jesus into the world, and this act of following is ultimately about death. The Bonhoefferian word regarding Jesus’ invitation to come and die is indeed the reality of taking the Cross to the unreached, the least reached and the unengaged peoples of the earth. Out of death comes life. But only out of death. Missional leaders through out the ages (circa: Augustine, Martin Luther, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, CT Studd, and the list goes on) make the same appeal.
This sort of apparently morose spirituality is generally unpopular. It’s not happy-sounding or optimistic at all. It’s not befitting to our American sense of well being and fairness. Death is not really a part of our everyday experience. When we face death, the corpse is dressed up in his best suit, has her hair done and is wearing makeup. “Doesn’t she look beautiful?” “It looks just like him.” Really now?
I’d never seen dead people outside of a funeral home until moving to Ulaanbaatar. Since being here, we (and our children) have seen corpses several times. A man coming out of a store just falling over like a cold stone. Maybe he had a heart attack? I never really knew for sure. His heart was no longer beating. We’ve seen several instances of people lying dead in the street after being hit by a car. Mongolian tradition (I don’t know if this comes from Shamanism or Buddhism) requires that a corpse lay where it fell for a certain period of time. Uncovered. Bare. Dead and exposed to the elements and available for all to see. It has something to do with giving the spirit time to properly depart from the body. It’s just one more evidence of death’s cruel reality.
There are other places in the world where death is even more in your face and life has even less value than here. Places where open mass graves are not an unusual thing and where guns and bombs and disease are as everyday as a loaf of bread or a carton of milk, and death is a part of life. Children of the world are generally not protected from it’s harsh reality in the same way suburban American children tend to be.
The Cross of Jesus makes more sense when it is considered in the matter-of-fact way most of the world views death. The Cross takes on more meaning than a gold chain or an ornamental stone in a graveyard. It was a very tangible instrument of torture and death that Jesus demanded we take up in order to follow him.
Here’s what I’m rediscovering that this means as an overseas worker.
Unless there is a personal laying aside of my preferences and my opinions and my will for my sake, this thing called “mission” is never going to work. Team will not work, mission will not work. Nothing will work. Mission cannot be just be me trying to accomplish my vision and my plans and my goals and my direction for the sake of my own glory. So this is why Creps book starts with the “Off-road” “discipline of death.” It’s why Jesus said no one who comes after Him will be able to come after him without a Cross. His Cross. Jesus bids us come and die. Its’s the reality. It’s the way … and there’s no other way. Death can be violent and death can be gradual. Either way, the paradigm shifts which must take place in our lives will equate to death of a way of life. Or a Dream. Or a goal. Or an agenda. The death of these kinds of things is not easy. It’s painful. It’s agonizingly painful, because it’s personal. But that’s the call to “come and die.”
Mission and the cross are inseparable and not to be ignored. Too much of our “mission talk” in America is about glory. It’s about making sure that our prayer letters are full of glowing stories of all the Saints from all the world marching into the glorious Kingdom of God because you gave and I went. That’s mostly rubbish. It doesn’t look like that right now. It will. But it’s all quite messy at the moment. Frankly, if you hear so much “glory talk” from most fields, you can be fairly certain that the truth is being stretched - at least a little. Personal pain and death to self has to take place before anything “glorious” is going to happen. Young dreamy-eyed grad students want to work overseas in the world of “missions” … raise the Banner,“for the Kingdom” … and little do they know what they’re heading into. I was there once. That was the triumphalistic closing of all my correspondence. At 44 years old the greeting “for the Kingdom” has changed simply to “Grace.” Please don’t get upset. I’m still very much about the kingdom of Jesus. I am. It’s my highest value and what I aim live the next 44 years for, whether in Mongolia or anywhere else in the world our Commander asks me to go. However, it’s not going to happen without an enormous amount of grace. Overflowing, burgeoning floods of grace … because fruit will only be born when the seed goes into the ground and dies. (John 12:24. Always John 12:24.)
There’s not another option.
Reader Comments (2)
Sitting in US suburbia the past couple of years, I have had several conversations about death and the harshness of it... and how upper and middle class Americans are so scared of it, even in the church.
I remember, vividly, walking to school one morning. I think I was a fifth or sixth grader. It was one of those days where my cheeks felt like they were going to fall off, because it was so cold (and I was only half way to school). On the southeast side of 15th district, there sat a man, slouched against a wall, puke frozen all over him from drinking the night before. It was 9 in the morning, and still in the negative 30s... he was gone.
Jaws drop when I tell that story here.... I pray that it makes them more thankful for Christ and His grace. I point to them to Him.
A big thankyou, as always, for your work. Mongolia will always be home to me. Plans in my life are changing, and while in some transition time, I will probably be back for at least a month.. probably more like three months.. this winter. I'll be looking forward to seeing you =).
Thanks for sharing David. There are many things here that would shock a lot of our American "niceties" (not that we're even that nice!)
I talked to your Mom the other day and she said that you might be heading this way. Look forward to seeing you, as well!