MATHETΩN

I have seen a certain bulletin plastered on churches by Mathetai so often that I think I must quote at least part of it:

… His [Jesus's] most commonly-repeated command was:

Follow me.

Follow him to where? To his Kingdom of life, through death. Here is a list of questions that ask, Am I following Jesus?

“Have you left your home, your family, and your income?”

“Are you proclaiming, or teaching about, the Kingdom? Are you healing? Are you everywhere doing good?”

“Have you been, or are you soon to be, houseless or arrested?”

“Are you soon to be killed?”

(Once, attached to some Youth Camp caravan, I saw the list limited to the last two questions — but added to them, I think, toothlessness and jailtime — concluded with something flippant such as: “If not, you aren’t doing it right.”)

… Only let me not give up my life irrationally, only let me not give up my life faintheartedly, or from some casual pretext. For again, God does not so desire; for he has need of a good universe and of good men to go to and fro upon earth. …

What then? Must I explain these things to the multitude? When the children come up to us and say ‘Happy Saturnalia!’ do we say to them, ‘No, all this is not good’? Not at all; but we cheer too. And so you, therefore, when you are unable to make a man change his belief, realize that he is a child and cheer with him or hold your peace.

All these things a man ought to remember, and then, when he is summoned to meet some difficulty, he ought to know that the time has come to show whether he has learned. Wrestling students act displeased with the youths of light weight: ‘He cannot lift me,’ says one — ‘bring me a sturdy young man.’ But when the crisis comes, sometimes they weep and say, ‘I wanted to keep practicing!’ Why, what did you practice for! Now, I like to think that someone among you reading this is in travail within his soul, saying, ‘Alas that such a difficulty does not come to me now as came to such-and-such good man! Alas that now I must be sitting in a corner!’ You ought all to be thus minded.

If one should take away from a good tragic actor his paraphernalia, is he lost or does he abide? And so it is in actual life. God may say, ‘Take the governership’: I take it and show how a man educated in the good comports himself. ‘Lay aside the robe of state and put rags on’: What then? Has it not been given to me to mount the stage now as a witness summoned by God?

What kind of witness do you bear for God? ‘But, O Lord, I am in sore straits and in misfortune; no one regards me, no one gives me anything, all blame me and speak ill of me.’ Is this the witness that you are going to bear, and disgrace the summons so important?

Or what if the priest declares, ‘He is impious’ — what has happened? ‘I have been pronounced impious.’ Nothing else? ‘No nothing.’ And if he had made a declaration: ‘When it is day, then it is dark,’ or: ‘The circumference of a circle is not equidistant from its center’ — would the educated man pay attention? So why when he passes judgment on what is holy and unholy, just and unjust?

How great is the injustice committed by us if we do so! Leave to others quibbles, grumbling about the good. For what is lacking now is a man to bear witness to these arguments by his acts. This is the character I would have you assume, so that we may no longer use old examples of good men in the schools but may have some examples from our own time!

John Climacus’s “thirty steps to heaven” go something like this:

• Renounce the world
• Detach oneself from one’s habits, wishes, &c.
• Exile oneself from one’s career, family, &c.
• Become wholly obedient to God’s orders
• Repent and learn always to be repenting
• Remember, every moment, one’s death
• Shed tears for one’s evil, others’ suffering
• Abandon: anger, maliciousness, judging others, talkativeness, lying, depression
• Overcome: lusts for food, sex, money; cynicalness, fears; looking good, egoism
• Live frugally
• Desire humiliation
• Discern right and wrong for oneself and others
• Be still without
• Pray
• Be still within
• Love

Here are descriptions of a follower of Jesus by two churchmen; I quote rather-randomly from the first few chapters of their principal works.

Rick Warren, ca. 2000

The disciple:

• makes “a difference in the life of a relative or friend”
• will be “remembered after death”
• “owes it to himself” to accept God’s rewards
• will be more physically, psychologically “well”
• anticipates a reward “too good to be true”
• “balances his earthly concerns with his heavenly values”
• becomes “more responsible”, “more energetic”
• “attends church on a regular basis”
• attains a superior “reputation”
• is now “on a team”; “connected”, “comfortable”
• becomes “healthier, more-capable”
• “respects the ruling political system”
• runs a business “on spiritual principles” and so runs “simply a better business”, for “these things work in the real world”
• is “getting the pie right now because he is following an eternal recipe”
• “sticks to a task” and thus “builds character”
• has his “questions answered”
• has “Someone to help him hold on, in life”

John Climacus, ca. 600

The disciple:

• “freely accepts death”
• bears “a chastised heart”, “unrecognized wisdom”, and “an unnoticed life”
• is always “striving to be humble”
• “wishes for poverty”
• “longs for what is divine”
• “pours out love”
• “denies himself empty pride”
• dwells in “a depth of silence”
• endures “hardship, simplicity” in his “chosen route of great grief”
• is “separated from everything”
• is “set on fire, in the darkness”
• “sits like someone of foreign speech among people of other tongues”
• “drives out his love for family”
• “is a fugitive”
• “mortifies his appetites” and “constantly toils”
• drinks “the bitter cup of dishonor: derided, mocked, jeered”
• “denies his will; he must patiently endure opposition, suffer neglect without complaint, put up with violent arrogance”
• “has undertaken to travel by a short and rough road” of “self-mistrust up to his dying day”
• “turns away from earthly concerns, from human ways, from family; cuts his selfishness away”
• must “never grieve the loss” of these things

” … who feel the giant agony of the world
and, more, like slaves to poor humanity
labor for mortal good.”

– Euripides

“… God, whose law it is that he who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.”

– Æschylus

( 1 ) And as they journeyed along the way, a man said to him: I will follow you wherever you go. And Jesus said to him: Foxes have holes, and the birds of the sky have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. ( 2 ) And he said to another: Follow me. But the man said: Give me leave first to go and bury my father. But he said to him: Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but you go and announce the Kingdom of God. ( 3 ) And another man said: I will follow you, Lord; but first allow me to take leave of the people in my house. But Jesus said to him: No one who has put his hand to the plow and then looked back is fit for the Kingdom of God.

Today as I ate at Taco Bell I observed, passing in front of the window to my right, various persons with crippled limbs making their way slowly to the public housing beyond and, at the table to my left, a father boasting pompously of his son’s sexual exploits at college. These things saddened and angered me, and they put me in mind of the Tripart Survey of the Mathetai.

At regular intervals the Mathetai issue this report for themselves in their work, whether for the world, for a country, or for a small region. Just as their Teacher sent his first followers throughout the Levant to teach, to preach, and to heal, so the work of the Mathetai takes those three general courses; and just as the Works tells us that the work of his first followers turned the world upside-down, so the end of the Mathetai’s courses is to fix the world — to rid it of the sufferings I observed as I ate lunch. And before a thing can be fixed, its breakages must be surveyed.

Thus the Tripart Survey seeks to answer: ( 1 ) Against what lies ought we most teach? ( 2 ) Against what abuses of power ought we most preach? ( 3 ) Against what illnesses ought we most turn our skills of healing?

Some would remark — especially after reading a Survey — that this seems a very scientific approach for men of God. And indeed the Mathetai are practical as flint in their war to fix the world: they feel themselves badly outnumbered and out of time; they are not a bit daunted; they will use any How, Who, or What most effectually to approach the goal.

As two-year-old Grace Trenor lay dying, she told the mother who had tortured her to death for “disobedience”:

“I love you.”

Which was the Christian, O promulgator of Original Sin?