I Repent: A Journey into the Heart

Copyright © 2012 Caleb Gave Mathis

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-6414-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-6415-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012915070

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/16/2012

Contents

A New Cast

St. Louis

Chicago

Grand Rapids

Philadelphia

Baltimore

Home

It’s Okay To Be Wrong

Epilogue

For Janie:

Your encouragement and belief in me is endless.

You’re my editor – in writing and life.

I love you.

"Nothing now remains for us but to . . . proclaim the truth,

and take the adventure that Aslan sends us."¹

"I went out there in search of experience,

To taste and to touch and to feel as much

As a man can before he repents . . ."

– Johnny Cash

The Wanderer²

A New Cast

(I Repent)

"The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence:

At last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth

And addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly,

‘I-I hardly know, sir, just at present –

At least I know who I was when I got up this morning,

But I think I must have been changed several times since then.’"

– Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderlandi

I made a new cast, of the death mask, that’s gonna cover my face.

– Bright Eyes

Classic Carsii

There’s nothing that the road cannot heal.

– Conor Oberst

Moabiii

Home

I went home the other day.

To the town where I grew up.

To the house where my parents still live.

I drove by the high school where I graduated,

And past familiar store fronts and churches.

Back home, to the same town where I went on my first date,

Had my first kiss,

And got my first speeding ticket.

It’d been a while since my last visit, but not much has changed.

That seems to be the siren song for small towns –

Not much ever changes.

This small town happens to fall right smack dab in the middle of Kentucky.

It reads like the lyrics of a John Mellencamp song.

Everybody knows everybody else.

People work hard.

We fly the flag on the Fourth of July,

Put on our best and brightest for Easter,

And stand in the cold to watch the Christmas parade.

But above all else, the soul of this town is its people,

Who are more than willing to lend a helping hand –

No questions asked.

My father loves telling a story about his high school days.

After walking into Sophomore English, he was greeted by an elderly instructor.

She started the class by saying,

Rather shrilly,

"Students! You are sophomores.

Sophomoric means ‘wise-fool.’

You are wise-fools.

Don’t forget that."

Obviously, my father never did.

I was one of those wise-fools.

Growing up, I never realized just how good my life in small-town America really was;

All I could focus on was how little my hometown could offer me.

On the weekends, after escaping the trappings of high school,

My friends and I spent our time at one of three places.

We’d go to Walmart, the only store open twenty-four hours,

And spend our time rummaging through the electronics section,

Having sword fights in the toy aisle,

Or gorging ourselves on string cheese and cheap energy drinks in the parking lot.

Plan B was the movie theater;

But with only four screens at our cinema,

There was a pretty good chance we’d have already seen the featured films.

If those plans failed, we’d retreat to our basements,

Playing video games like Goldeneye and Super Smash Brothers until the Sun came up.

We learned, early one, that if we didn’t put the video games down, we’d never get girlfriends.

It was still hard to stop.

One night, after exhausting all our options,

My friends and I jumped the fence into the graveyard.

After the adrenaline rush faded, it was pretty obvious that the graveyard was just like our town:

Pretty dead.

Of course, like most small, Southern towns,

Ours didn’t have a shortage of churches.

You could find them on nearly every street corner.

It just so happened that my father was a pastor of one.

A Southern Baptist church.

A gathering of believers with strong beliefs,

Plenty of support and love for one another,

And great potluck dinners.

Church was my second home.

My closest friends were there.

The girls I dated were there.

My life revolved around this building.

And because my father was the pastor, I had keys.

(I’m not saying an ex-girlfriend and I snuck onto the roof once,

To watch the sunset and look at the stars –

But it would have been a good idea.)

The lessons I learned underneath that steeple were instrumental, life-changing.

At that church, I learned of God’s plan for salvation,

The sacrifice of Jesus,

And the coming Kingdom of God.

It didn’t happen often, but every now and then, there seemed to be a disconnect.

It was as if part of our lives were to be affected by the gospel

While others remained unchanged.

The Messiah I knew was content to only change my life halfway;

He wanted me to stop cussing and watching R-rated movies,

But He didn’t seem to have much use for environmentalism or Democrats.

Like a good student, I didn’t question my teachers.

I didn’t know enough to do so.

But a day was coming when everything I learned would be undone.

I would ask questions, find answers,

And seek out a Messiah that would influence

Every part of my life.

Death Mask

We don’t see them much in our culture,

But death masks have been around for quite some time.

Some of the oldest date back to the time of the ancient Egyptians,

When they were used to decorate and commemorate the dead.

The death masks of the Pharaohs were inlaid with gold and precious stones,

Making them invaluable.

An artistic representation of the deceased’s face,

Egyptian death masks were designed to project an ideal representation of the Pharaoh,

An image that would represent them for eternity.

Thousands of years after his reign, the name Tutankhamen,

Immediately conjures up images of his death mask.

His actual face has been lost to history,

But he lives on in an image of gold.

For precisely that reason,

It’s easy to see why the death mask was given such importance in ancient Egypt:

The legacy of the Pharaoh was directly tied to it.

The mask itself would dictate how he would be remembered for all time.

As centuries passed, the art of making death masks improved.

Instead of being just a representation of the dead,

Technology allowed them to become exact replicas.

Shortly after death, a layer of wax or plaster was applied to the face;

When it hardened, a cast was left behind.

Before the advent of modern photography,

Death masks were an important way of recording the deceased’s facial features

For purposes of medical records and identification.

As was the case with the Pharaohs,

These death masks became part of the lasting legacies of the deceased,

A kind of final recording of their life,

Documenting it for all those to come afterward.

The only immortality available to humanity was the death mask.

You’ve Heard It Said

As I read the story of Jesus, I like to think that I would have been one of the ones who got it,

That I would have been a faithful follower,

Heck, maybe even a disciple.

But if I’m really honest with myself,

I’m probably more like the Pharisees than I care to admit.

At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees were a group with significant religious and social power.

Much like the clergy today, the Pharisees dedicated themselves to matters of the cloth.

It was their job to come before God in the name of the country,

To be the mediators between the Almighty and the common man.

Over time, the Pharisees lost sight of their original intent.

Instead of being the bridge between God and Israel,

They became more like a toll road,

Deciding who could,

And more importantly, who could not,

Approach God.

Thousands of years earlier, God had revealed a set of laws that His people were to live by.

These laws helped to separate the Israelites from their neighbors

And were to be a concrete example of their special relationship with God.

The Pharisees were experts in these laws; they knew the ins and outs,

What was allowed and what was forbidden,

Better than anyone else in the entire nation.

Along with this knowledge came power;

Their interpretations and teachings were held up as sacred by the masses.

But instead of using their position to draw near to their Creator,

The Pharisees used this power to justify their own actions,

To make themselves look and feel holy,

And to make those outside their circle feel unworthy.

The Pharisees interpreted the law of God with the rigor of a fundamentalist;

There was no room for mercy.

They even went so far as to create new laws and forms of morality,

Ones which would serve to further highlight their own holiness.

In that day, the term Pharisee was synonymous with

Moral.

Righteous.

Respected.

Holy.

These guys had a pretty good thing going on,

And then Jesus arrived,

His words and actions completely uprooting the status quo.

He came into the world and promptly turned it upside down.

Throughout His entire ministry, the recipients of Christ’s harshest words were the Pharisees.

Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees,

He said during an important sermon,

You shall not enter the kingdom of God.³

To the average listener, that statement must have been heartbreaking.

How can I, a normal, working man, ever hope to be more righteous than the Pharisees?

But to the Pharisees, that statement was incendiary;

It set them ablaze with anger.

Hatred.

Malice.

No wonder they started to plan Jesus’ demise;

He was robbing them of their status in the community,

Taking away their followers,

And passing judgment on their lifestyle and teaching.

Christ was starting something new,

With the Pharisees soundly refusing to let go of the old.

In his book, The Secret Message of Jesus,

Brian McLaren correctly identifies the fact that Christ calls His followers to a life of repentance, Something he defines as a profound rethinking of everything in the light of [Jesus’] message.

He goes on to explain that true repentance leads you to

"Begin looking at every facet of your life again –

It doesn’t mean that everything changes all at once,

But it means you open up to the possibility that everything may change over time.

It involves a deep sense that you may be wrong,

Wrong about so much,

Along with the sincere desire to realign around what is right and true."⁴

The need for repentance,

For a profound rethinking of everything,

Is highlighted by Jesus in His most famous sermon.

Known as the Sermon on the Mount,

And found spread across three chapters in the book of Matthew,

This message is the manifesto for the Kingdom of God.⁵

It starts with Jesus calling the down and out blessed.

He goes on to teach about forgiveness,

Love for our enemies,

Giving to the needy,

And standing in judgment of others.

Throughout the message, Jesus uses a speech device to get His listeners’ attention.

He would start a new teaching with the words,

You’ve heard it said,

Followed by a restatement of the ancient law.

For example,

In teaching about anger,

Jesus started His lesson with,

You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not murder.’⁶

But Jesus’ life was about bringing something new into the world,

So He always followed, You’ve heard it said

With the words, But I say to you.

Christ would review the ancient law,

And then offer a new interpretation of what it meant to actually follow God.

These new teachings forced the crowd to reexamine their lives in light of what He was saying –

It was a call to repentance.

The full text of the previously mentioned teaching on anger reads:

"You’ve heard it said ‘Do not murder.’

But I say to you

If you are even angry with someone you are subject to judgment.

If you call someone an idiot you are in danger of being brought before the court,

And if you curse someone you are in danger of the fires of Hell."⁷

Jesus wants His followers to rethink how they treat others.

It is not enough to have not killed anyone,

If your heart is full of hate.

Every day of our lives, Jesus calls us to rethink what we know,

To question our perceptions and to realign ourselves with His Kingdom.

Listen closely and you can hear Christ whisper into the deepest part of your soul,

Calling you to a higher level of engagement with Him:

"You’ve heard it said . . .

But I say to you . . ."

A New Cast

Doing what Jesus says is dangerous.

Society does not respect those who question it.

The world does not want you to rethink.

It does not want you to repent.

That’s why the process is so difficult.

Once you start to rethink,

You’ll realize just how shallow our society is,

And you’ll find that same deficit within yourself.

Hope for something more will begin to grow within you;

You will seek it,

But it will never be found in the things of this world.

Money can’t buy contentment.

Sex won’t bring happiness.

Power doesn’t provide satisfaction.

The only real life change is found in repentance

And in radical pursuit of Christ –

In living a life devoted to rethinking.

Society won’t be excited about this,

It will try to ruin your repentance by distracting your thinking,

Slandering your name,

Calling you an idealist or idiot.

Society will hate you.

It may even try to kill you.

This has been its response to everyone brave enough to repent.

Jesus questioned society,

Calling people into the Kingdom of God.

He beckoned them to a life free from the false morality of the Pharisees.

He brought news of hope and salvation to the downcast and forgotten.

He found people living on religious pedestals and pushed them off.

In return, society gave Him a cross.

The apostle Paul questioned society.

He brought Christ’s message of life-change to the Roman Empire.

He was hunted,

Abused,

Jailed,

And murdered.

Martin Luther King Jr. questioned society.

He dared to speak out against years of hatred.

He chose to confront ignorance.

He would not ignore his God-given right to be human.

He was spit upon,

Stabbed,

Jailed,

And shot.

It is a dangerous proposition to repent,

To rethink;

But without asking the questions,

Without reexamining everything around us,

Have we really lived?

When you repent, you will find that what once represented you,

No longer seems to fit.

The death mask your life was casting,

The legacy you were leaving behind,

Will have to be recreated,

Reformed,

And recast.

I know mine has.

I’ve come far since my days in that small town.

Truths that were once blindly accepted have been analyzed.

Ideas once considered important have been reevaluated.

Theology that had never been questioned

Has been put under the magnifying glass and examined.

My hope is that you will answer Christ’s call to repentance,

That you will find the courage to rethink what you know about Him and His teachings

And the aspects of your life that they touch.

When you repent,

Christ himself will stand near,

Teaching you how to

"Make a new cast, of the death mask,

That’s gonna cover [your] face."⁸

World On Fire

I was at a concert, a few years ago,

When I heard a story that’s stuck with me ever since.

The opening act, just a guy and a guitar,

Told it to introduce one of his songs;

It involved a monk who, in order to forsake normal living,

Moved by himself into the desert.

Pilgrims got word of this monk and began visiting him,

Curious as to why this once popular man of God would leave his easy life behind

In order to dwell in such an inhospitable place.

These visitors wanted to know what made the desert so special.

Each time he was asked this question, the monk would respond with the same answer:

"Some people see a burning bush.

Others see the world on fire."

At the start of the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible,

God’s people are enslaved by the Egyptians.

For four hundred years, they were the unpaid, disrespected, and abused servants of Pharaoh.

Pyramids and palaces were built on their backs,

Royal feasts raised and prepared by the sweat of their brows,

All while abuses continued to be heaped upon them.

The Israelites dared not complain to their captors,

But God wasn’t deaf to their cries for justice.

Indeed, His ear seems always turned toward the call of the oppressed.

God’s plan to bring His people out of bondage

Involved a man named Moses.

Born an Israelite, but raised in the palaces of Pharaoh,

Moses had fled Egypt as an adult and was making a living in the desert as a shepherd.

Without warning, God came to him.

One day, while tending to his flock,

Moses came across a small plant, a bush, burning.

Nothing new for a desert shepherd;

Living in such a dry environment, this must have been a daily occurrence.

Things started to get a little weird, though,

When Moses noticed that this burning bush was never consumed.

Instead, it just continued to burn,

And burn,

And burn.

Walking over to inspect this strange sight, God spoke,

Calling Moses to repent, to rethink his life’s purpose.

Against his own cries of inadequacy, God commissioned Moses, then and there,

To bring His people out of slavery.

When the desert monk remarked that some people see a burning bush,

He was observing that many people, like Moses himself,

See and hear from God in particular areas.

For some, they feel the closest to Him while worshipping inside a majestic church building;

Others feel His presence in nature,

Or through music and art.

Others, according to the monk, see the world on fire.

These people understand that the earth, in all its grandeur and glory,

Points upward toward its Creator.

For those people, a flower breaking through the concrete of a downtown sidewalk,

A new song on the radio,

Or the laugh of a child