Since none of us have arrived, we are a community of people who are ‘growing’ up. If our spiritual eyes are blurred or closed, we must feel our way towards someone whose eyes are open. But if we apprentice ourselves to someone who is as blind as we are, all we will do is have company in the darkness and someone to share the catastrophe that awaits us.
True Disciples apprentice themselves to someone who is more grown up than themselves. If the goal is to be like our ‘teacher’, then the teacher has to be the sort of person we would like to be. Today’s disciples are tomorrow’s teachers. And Jesus has a powerful lesson for those who are on this path.
The lesson is this: We must not see ourselves as agents of another person’s improvement. This is made worse if we pretend a friendship that does not really exist. Our hypocrisy is exposed when we find ourselves able to speak at length of the slightest fault in our neighbours while remaining blind to our own staggering and destructive faults. The tragedy is that we have fine-tuned our ability to observe, judge and condemn others, but we do not know how to see ourselves clearly.
Best to admit, as all spiritual teachers advise, that we have bias, tapes and story lines that enter into every story we tell about other people. If we do not know what these are, we are ignorant. Without this knowledge we look in a mirror and gaze on our own innocence. Then, turning, we observe and comment on the world around us as if we were not part of it. Net result – we live in disdain and not in compassion. The only way to help anyone grow is to be very articulate about our own massive conversions. There is a great story about a woman who brought her granddaughter to Ghandi which makes this point.
She told Ghandi, “My granddaughter eats too many sweet things. Tell her to stop”. Ghandi gazed at the girl and said, “Bring her back to me next week.” The following week he said the same thing and this went on for four weeks. On their fourth visit Ghandi said to the child, “You should not eat so many sweet things. They are not good for you”. The grandmother was livid. “We waited four weeks for that?” “Ah!” Ghandi sighed. “It took me that long to stop eating sweet things myself!” The only way to really help anyone who stumbles and falls is to share the story of our own struggle to be faithful! And there’s more!
Isn’t it true that when we genuinely try to be more just, more loving, more compassionate, more truthful, we do not find it easy. The spiritual teacher would say that this has to do with IDENTITY. If we do not know we are good people, we will not be able to do good deeds. Moral change depends on identity change. Good trees produce good fruit, bad trees do not. Fig trees bear figs, not thorns.
For Jesus, this IDENTITY is found in the landscapes of the heart. The heart is the hidden source of our talking. It has an endless supply that the mouth draws on and pours into the world. Our heart (usually hidden) makes itself known by the words we speak. If the heart is toxic, the words we speak are evil and bring only harm. If the heart is pure, words of peace and reconciliation will flow from there and will transform the darkness. What appears can be traced back to what is hidden.
Jesus longs for mature disciples. Disciples who have grown up. Disciples who have grown away from a life of hurting and wounding others. If we follow His teaching, we become flood proof. Raging rivers symbolise the challenges that will come and the dark forces which want to destroy anything that is good. Jesus offers his disciples a foundation stone where we can withstand these attacks. It is down to earth, practical wisdom on how not to become engulfed by the evil inside ourselves. It is a mandate for disciples to act in a way that builds a new community and survive the dangers that come from outside ourselves.
But more importantly, the ones that come from within
