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Mastering our Jerusalem: The charge to face our most difficult problem

(The following is an excerpt from E. Stanley Jones devotional classic, Mastery, week 4. It continues his discussion of what happened to the disciples following Pentecost)

We have seen that these disciples were mastered by Christ and mastered from within…They took on the authority of that with which they were identified. And since they were identified with the risen Christ by complete surrender to Him, they took on His authority…So mastered at the center, they became masterful at the circumference. Life around them felt the impact of a new moral and spiritual mastery.Look at the masteries that were coming into being. First, there was the mastery of the disciples’ greatest problem – Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the center of both political and religious hostility – so hostile that they combined and crucified their Lord. Before the storm of that awful hostility the disciples bent and some broke – in betrayal and in denial. And what breathtaking thing did Jesus tell them then to do? Nothing less than “not to depart from Jerusalem.” And the account begins: “He charged them” (Acts 1:4). The only time it is said that He “charged” His disciples. Why this insistence and emphasis? Apparently this: Jerusalem was the place of their failure – there they forsook Him and fled. They caved in. Suppose they had gone off to Galilee to a quiet mountain to receive the Holy Spirit, what would have happened? Down underneath they would have the feeling that all this would work in the quietness of Galilee, but it would not work in Jerusalem – that was too tough. But here was Jesus asking them to walk up to their most difficult problem – Jerusalem – face it and master it.

…Jung said: “I do not look in the past for the cause of neurosis, but in the present. I ask, ‘what is the responsibility which the patient will not assume?’” In other words, what is he [or she] running away from and refusing to face?

What would [facing their Jerusalem] do to their [the disciples’] mentality? Something fundamental and necessary – wipe out all escapism, running from problems, dodging unpleasant issues, failure of nerve. It would save religion from something that has plagued it in all countries, in all ages, and earned it the opprobrium – “opium of the people.” The disciples came near falling right into that morass. After the resurrection and before the Spirit came, the account says: “while he blessed them, he parted from them. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God.” (Luke 24:51-52.) “Blessing God” – and dodging the issues! The temple authorities had crucified Jesus, and here were His followers in that same temple “blessing God” and raising no questions, not confronting the hierarchy with their crime but retreating into their inner happiness – an escapism. Had this been the outcome, we would never have heard of the Gospel again. It would have died, wrapped in its mystical states, or drugged with devotion and emotion and incapable of shouldering its world task.

Jesus, seeing the possibility, “charged ” them to wait for the Spirit, knowing if the Creative Spirit came upon them, they would not compromise with this guilty religious system, but confront it with a demand for repentance. This they did, and Jerusalem responded with tears and repentance, and multitudes were converted in a day. The worst had been met and mastered. Henceforth they were ready for anything…Someone said: “Whenever you raise a question, raise it in its most acute form. Solve it there, and you solve it all down the line.” Jerusalem was their problem in its most acute form. They solved it, and henceforth they could face anything and everybody unafraid.

Categories: Virtues & Choices
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