At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
Turning to the disciples, He said privately, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things you see, for I say to you, that many prophets and kings wished to see the things which you see, and did not see them, and to hear the things which you hear, and did not hear them.” (Luke 10:21-24, NASB 1995)
The music at the top is one of the recently discovered pieces that are thought to have been composed by Johan Sebastian Bach, whom I once heard Dr. Oswald C. J. Hoffman describe as “the second greatest Lutheran in history.” I guess there’s some dispute about authorship, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. Bach’s whole ouvre could have been forged by Mendelssohn, and how would I know?
My devotions this morning were on the passage printed at the top of this text. What struck me was how different this speech is from a lot of what the Lord says about discipleship. (Or at least how I perceive what He says.) I tend to go the same way as Jordan Peterson, who is a legalist and is always discussing it in a cautionary way. “Have you really thought about what that means, ‘taking up your cross’?” Peterson asks. “It means suffering. It means dying. Are we really prepared to do that?”
Which is fair enough; He’s quoting the Lord Himself.
But Christ is in an entirely different mode in this passage. He’s looking at these guys He’s chosen – guys He’s chosen for suffering and ostracism and death – and He’s telling them how lucky they are. He’s given (and is giving) them something that outweighs all that suffering and death to such a degree that they’re not even worth considering.
I certainly believe we should talk about – even stress – the cost of discipleship.
But I’m pretty sure I under-stress the joy of the knowledge of Christ. Which is not surprising, considering my personality.
But I need to work on it.
Thanks for this! Just before finally getting around to enjoying the videos, I listened to a recording of a Gresham lecture by the late Sir Christopher Hogwood about Bach’s first work in his job as the Thomas Cantor – his “Magnificat”. Among other things, he discussed how in one section other parts were written out in detail but the organist – on that first occasion presumably Bach himself – was free – and expected – to improvise a lot of his part. Yet here is something earlier, completely written out (from the look of it) – different approaches appropriate to different circumstances, in the thinking of his day.
Somehow this, in the context of your reflections on your devotion text reminds me of Sts. Matthew 10:19-20, Mark 13:11, and Luke 12:11-12, while your reflections had already brought to mind the passage in The Descent of the Dove where Williams discusses and quotes from an exchange in chapter 5 of The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity: “In Asia Polycarp, in Rome Justin Martyr, in Gaul Irenaeus, and many more perished. With the names of such men is registered under Severus the name of a slave who not only endured martyrdom but in a sentence defined the Faith. Her name was Felicitas; she was Carthaginian; she lay in prison; there she bore a child. In her pain she screamed. The jailers asked her how, if she shrieked at that, she expected to endure death by the beasts. She said: ‘Now I suffer what I suffer; then another will be in me who will suffer for me, as I shall suffer for him.’ In that, Felicitas took her place for ever among the great African doctors of the Universal Church.”
I had heard that story somewhere, but forgot the source. Thanks.