Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi. Along the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They said in reply, “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said to him in reply, “You are the Anointed One.” (Mark 8.27-29)
In her newly released memoir, On the Way to Casa Lotus, the writer Lorena Junco Margain tells the moving story of her journey, first from Monterrey, Mexico to Mexico City, then to Austin, onto New York, and back to Texas. But the book is much more than a story about geography. It is a story about the human journey, traveling a road with unexpected twists and turns, unforeseen suffering and setbacks.
Diagnosed with cancer in her 30’s, a young mother of several children, Margain undergoes a surgery that is supposed to restore health, but through a surgeon’s error, compounds her problems and increases her symptoms. The book retells her experiences as she moves from fault to forgiveness to a future. Using the beautiful image of the dream home that she and her husband want to build, Casa Lotus, she presents a parable of the walk of life that each of us must take as we set our feet on the way that lay before us.
In her prologue, she uses contrasting images to inform us of the work in progress that is her own life, writing, “On the way to Casa Lotus, the home I have imagined with my husband, Eduardo, the street bucks uphill and down, snakes left and right, and eventually sweeps a wide bend, shaped by one of the many small tributaries flowing into and out of the Colorado River.”
She continues, “The Texas Hill Country is a watercolor landscape in early spring: muted amber, green, and gray. There’s a halo of bluebonnets and wildflowers around the first blossoming redbud trees. Bright pops of red announce geraniums in terracotta pots outside the gates and garage doors.”
Abruptly shifting our attention, she writes, “Right now, Casa Lotus is a construction site, piled with bricks and lumber, mired in mud. But as I slog across the inlet where my children will swim someday, I think of Thich Nhat Hanh’s book No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering. “If you don’t have mud,” he gently reminds us, “the lotus won’t manifest. You can’t grow lotus flowers on marble.”
And therein, as the reader quickly sees, is the truth of her book, the naked fact that we’re all going to find mud on the road of life. But sometimes, oftentimes, the beautiful only grows in mud. Much the same profound insight is offered to us in the scriptures today as Rabbi Jesus, accompanied by his disciples, walks towards Caesarea Philippi.
The evangelist tells us that “on the way” Rabbi Jesus poses this question to his followers, “Who do people say that I am,” a serious question, not just curiosity at play. Before we see how that question is answered, we may want to pay close attention to the phrase that the evangelist uses in presenting this story, those three words on the way.
The words will appear four more times in the same gospel, more than coincidence, but clearly an intentional marker, reminding us that the Galilean Rabbi has left behind the relatively peaceful area of Galilee and is now on the way to the turbulent city of Jerusalem, a place where, as he says, “the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes.” In other words, there is going to be a bunch of mud in Jerusalem.
For much of the gospel, the Rabbi has shielded his followers from the hard and harsh reality of his death, but here, at the halfway point, he begins to open their eyes to the fact that following him comes at a great price. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me,” he tells them, “For however wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”
Mark’s fellow writer, Luke, will use similar imagery, sometimes even more clearly than his compatriot, at a clear turning point writing, “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9.51), offering in this way much the same message as Mark, alerting the reader to the ugliness that awaits the Rabbi in Jerusalem where all the higher powers collude and conspire to crucify him.
Not surprisingly, the earliest followers of the Crucified Rabbi did not overlook the message implied in the words “on the way,” but embraced them, finding in them the best means of expressing their own fidelity to the teachings of the Rabbi, choosing to describe their own footsteps in imitation of him as “the Way.” It would be decades in the making before they were called Christians.
First, they were known as followers of the Way, the term carrying the full weight of the words of Rabbi Jesus, “I am the way,” words that reminded them that they also were “on the way” to Jerusalem, where they would find suffering and a cross awaiting them. If they were to be like him, then they were to be like him in all ways, including trials and torment, the way to Golgotha always a muddy slog uphill.
It is for this same reason that Rabbi Jesus asks the question of his followers, “Who do people say that I am?” Hearing the answers, “John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets,” he challenges them further, “But who do you say that I am?” He wants them to be clear-eyed about his way of life, a way that requires courage, conviction, and commitment. Carrying a cross is not for the cowardly or the unconvinced.
Clarity of their commission comes when they see that his way is not the way of the world, but the way of God, a bifurcation that requires walking one way or the other, but doesn’t allow walking both ways. Already the Psalmist of old prescribed much the same path, writing, “Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers. Rather, the law of the Lord is his joy; and on his law he meditates day and night” (Ps 1.1-2).
As we see, Peter, always representative of the disciples, then and now, wants it both ways, answering the question rightly when he says, “You are the Anointed One,” but, in the next breath, rebuking Rabbi Jesus when he is told by the Rabbi that his expectations of an easy way for the Anointed One are wrongheaded, the path not one to power and prestige, as Peter thinks and wants, but one of self-sacrifice and suffering. In other words, lots of mud.
And here, Peter, as always, serves as a cautionary tale, reminding us that we can either follow the way of Rabbi Jesus or we can get in the way, watering down his teachings, weakening his message, turning his way of life into a wraith, a weak imitation, a whiff. Abandoning the cross, as Peter urges upon the Rabbi, is easy to do. We simply have to choose selfishness over self-sacrifice, keeping for ourselves over giving to others, closing our hearts over opening our hearts.
Of course, as Rabbi Jesus makes clear, getting in the way is the work of evil forces. “Get behind me, Satan,” Rabbi Jesus says to Peter, forever reminding any of us who want to cheapen the cost of discipleship that we are working with Satan, not with the Anointed One. Any effort on our part to reduce the weight of the cross is connivery.
The reality, as most of us can attest, is that we seldom find following the Galilean a straight and narrow path for us, too often choosing highways and byways that simply are not consistent with the way of Rabbi Jesus. We are like Peter nine out of ten times, looking for excuses, exemptions, and escape clauses, anything that turns the cross into a trinket on our chest instead of a beam on our back.
The concept of losing our life for him, as Rabbi Jesus posits as the gold standard for discipleship, does not suit many of us, preferring, as we do, the comforts of life, not the crosses, the rewards, not the restrictions, the easy way, not the hard way. Surrounded as we are by the way of the world, a way that exalts serving the self, not others, we find ourselves easily making compromises with the radicalness of the cross, lounging atop the water on pool floats, never diving deep into the depths of discipleship.
For many of us, then, it is a long road to discipleship, full of false starts and fumbles and free falls, requiring fresh starts and forgiveness and forging ahead again. Given our feebleness and failures, we find ourselves more often than not slipping and sliding on the mudslides of life. The measure of our discipline comes, not so much from our successes, but from the number of times we pick ourselves up to try again. There is something to be said for stubborn determination.
At one point in the book, The Lord of the Rings, after Bilbo the Hobbit has completed his long journey to places that he never imagined or desired, including surviving severe storms, climbing rugged mountains, wrestling wicked wolves, battling fire-breathing dragons, somehow making his way through it all and learning to hold his own, he finds himself finally face to face with the great wizard Gandolf, who, looking at the hobbit, says, “My dear Bilbo, you are not the hobbit that you were.”
And, perhaps, that is the same praise that we hope for when we have come to the end of our way, the recognition that we are not who we once were, but who we are now, someone better than we were at the start, less selfish and more generous, less cowardly and more committed to the One who says to us, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
In the end, for the faithful follower of the Teacher, the only way is to stay on the way and, to the best of our abilities, not get in the way.
–Jeremy Myers
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