“Are you ready to leave your family behind?”

A friend asked me this question yesterday. I hate having people ask me questions that cut to the heart of the matter. Earlier, a friend asked me a similar question: “What’s it going to take for you to get off your ass?” He’s from New York: they’re less subtle out there. Something to do with the water.

“It’s obvious that you can pick up the ball and run with it. I’m not seeing you pick up this ball. You don’t have to pickup this ball, manasclerk, but you’ve got to pick up a ball!”

I’m at the “inflection point”, at the point to stand up and be counted. I’m standing before the burning bush and saying that I don’t speak clearly enough to do the job. I’ve got the fire by night and the cloud by day and I’m saying that I don’t have enough.

When am I going to leave my parents?

It’s been a long road. You can’t learn to live when you’re spending the bulk of your life trying not to die. I’ve talked before about my bizarre childhood — I won’t go into it now for reasons that will become clear later — but I still live back there. After having lived for some time as an adult (I’m thirty-something) I’ve got some guy telling me that I’m holding onto a hope for the past that is already complete.

I’m now at the inflection point. “Are you prepared to leave your family behind?” Will I leave behind their beliefs about me, their desires, their criticisms, their praise, the hope of their devotion and acceptance? Can I leave my identity, crafted in their midst, crafted by them whether actively or passively? Dare I step out of the social roles that have defined my own self?

Oddly enough, Jesus talked about this very issue.

He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good bye to my family.”

Jesus replied, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

— Luke 9:59-62, NIV

And he said elsewhere,

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” — Luke 14:25-27, ESV

When I decided as an adult that I would continue to follow the Christ, I made an irrevocable decision. (Ignore the issues of my Calvinism for a moment.) There is no turning back. There is not return to the people of the past, even to my past self. “Behold! All things are become new!” wrote Paul.

My identity can no longer be found in my family. My parents approval is not rejected: the resurrection of Jesus makes it irrelevant. My flesh, my blood, comes from him. These things are true.

I do not even get the opportunity to say goodbye to my family, to tell them I am leaving: I must only move after Christ. “Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

And in another place, Jesus tells the people:

“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” — John 8:34-36, ESV

I have spent several years learning to put these things behind me. What does it take to be free, then? Will it be worth it? Will it pay off? Can I truly leave their desires and expectations behind? Can I walk away from them and after Jesus?

To me, these are still good questions. You know, having not had that close of a relationship with anyone in my family, the thought of walking away from the permanently scares me shitless. I don’t even get the little I thought I had. I have to walk after Christ, no looking back, no “Is daddy watching me?” garbage. Eyes forward. Part of me says that asking if following Jesus will be worth this sacrifice is the wrong question. He’s God and I, very clearly, am not even a demigod.

But Jesus didn’t think it was the wrong question. He said,

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. — Matthew 19:29, NIV

How can this be? I am going to leave my family behind. I will step out from their union and join with the Bride of Christ, the Church Eternal. I will leave the hope of having a renewed relationship. I abandon the desire for what I never had. Where will I find a hundred times as much, I wondered.

And then I remembered something András Visky once talked about. You see, Jesus addressed this, too:

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” — Matthew 12:46-51, NIV

Here, at the table of Christ, I find my family. I am an Orphan no longer, for at the table of the One for whom I must leave everthing, I am given my brothers, my sisters, my mother, my father. “One God, father of us all; One Spirit, mother of us all; one Christ, true son of the father and now brother of us all.” So went an ancient confession of the early church in Jerusalem. Here, among the sacred elements, the Body and Blood of my Lord, I find my family. Here, the blood of Christ gives me my brothers and sisters. Here, I am birthed anew by the Spirit, through the power of the Father. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

I receive not a hundredfold but a thousandfold; an eternal fellowship, an unending joy. Giving up but refuse, even by the standards of this nation, I step into richness of heaven itself.

I am who I am, no more and no less. A brother to Christ by the power of the Spirit’s birthing and the Father’s choice. Grace pours out on me, not because I followed but for his own glory. A son of the Almighty by adoption; sinless, blameless, even given a fountain of “living water”, that which washes the profane away, bubbling up inside of me, always ritually clean by the power of the One who is.

Here, at the table of the Lord, at the feast of Christ, I find my family, one that I will never leave for I am born “not by the will of a man, but by the will of God.” His yoke, his leadership in this discipleship, this is easy; his burden upon me, light. He asks me to step out of that which I do not really have so that I can be given that which he seals onto me. “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Around me the players are stepping up to their stands. The orchestra is about to begin. I did not know how the piece would turn out, or what he had created. I didn’t know the players, or the instruments, or the numbers. Even now, I do not know what will be played. The music is hidden from me, only known by the many players who can see only a portion of their own parts.

Jesus does not ask me this question, “When are you going to leave your parents?” He only says, “Follow me.” The rabbi asking the disciple — what foolishness is this? “Come to me, y’all who are weary and loaded down, and I’ll give you rest.”

My Father. My Mother. My Brother.