Dusty Discipleship

It was a bittersweet day. Our last day at Mathare Worship Center had come and I was dreading it. I felt like we had really just gotten into our groove and here we were, leaving. The last day is a Saturday Kids Club that MWC holds for the kids in the slum. This Kids Club was the impetus for almost every other ministry that MWC has. It is a focal point. The kids growing up in the slums are the next generation and they will either continue the cycles or break them. MWC wants to help them break the cycles.

Our day started in the sanctuary with kids that seemed unfamiliar to us. Most of our school kids from the week weren’t there. These were the kids that count on Kids Club to give them their meal for the day…or for the next week. These were the kids that couldn’t afford the school tuition and so spent their days playing with trash and wandering around the slum. These were the kids that needed help in order to break the cycle. The kids we saw in school each day were the ones whose parents had found a way and were traveling the road to a different existence.

Not long into our day we headed to a large empty lot right down the road from the church. We spread out with our parachutes and balls and various other pieces of equipment and started rotating the kids through games. I barely blinked and we went from about 150 kids to 300! It was incredible. The neighborhood kids who didn’t know about Kids Club came pouring out from the nooks and crannies of the Valley. A little boy, maybe 2 years old, went walking by me dragging behind him a handmade toy. Someone had taken an empty plastic milk jug and cut it to make it look like a car. They had even fashioned wheels so it would roll! I really wished I could have gotten a picture of that little boy and his toy car.

Sara, Isam, and I were on parachute duty. These parachutes have been a gift from God to the kids of the Valley, the teachers at the school, and to us! The first day we unfolded them the wonder that lit up in the eyes and faces of the kids was worth every penny spent. And if you look around you see that the parachutes provide colors the kids don’t normally see in the Valley. They serve as reminder of the hope Christ can and does bring to a life dedicated to him.

So this large public yard is a big dirt lot. And there were 300 kids plus all of us adults kicking up the dirt in that yard. From a distance I imagine that all one could see was a dirt cloud rising from the Valley! At the parachute station the dirt was especially thick. The kids would grab on and we would all run in one direction together and then switch directions and run the other way. We would raise that parachute up and down, up and down and then call the kids to run under it while we pulled it down over them. We would throw balls in the middle of the parachute and everyone would start shaking it as hard as they could, popping those balls high up into the sky. Shooting bursts of color over the muted colors of the valley these kids called home.

I tried really hard not to think about it. And I succeeded for the most part. One time I looked down at my legs and saw that I no longer was wearing white socks. They were the color of the dirt in the yard. I didn’t look down again. At one point my eyes were filled with dirt and throwing all caution out the door I wiped my eyes with my shirt and my hands. As we walked back to the church after playtime I could feel the grit and crunch of the dust that had settled into my pores and on every fiber of my clothing. I could shake my head and see the dust fly out of it. Sara, Isam, and I had blackened faces. We took a second to wipe off what we could and then we shrugged our shoulders and went on with the day.

The moment we returned to Little Sisters I hit the showers. The water coming off of me was black, literally. The dust was everywhere. I had to pound my shoes on the pavement to try to get as much of it off as possible. Every time I blew my nose for the next few hours it was black. I didn’t even try to wash the clothes. I shook them out and put them in a Ziploc, I would just deal with them at home in Colorado. I went into our team meeting that night feeling refreshed from the shower but exhausted! Was it worth it? Was the blanket of dust worth the shrieks and joy of kids who may only have that pleasure once a week? You bet it was worth it. Every single minute was worth it. Every dust particle that found its way to me was worth it. The love of God doesn’t belong in a box, it isn’t clean, and it doesn’t belong just in stained glass sanctuaries. The love of God gets down in the dirt and throws caution to the wind so that someone receives a touch from their Creator.

Recently I heard a teaching on what a disciple of Christ really is and what it really looks like.* A whole new idea of what I should be doing, because I call myself a disciple of Jesus Christ, has opened up to me. Back in the day Jewish boys would go to school and as they reached certain ages they would either continue on in their education or not. Some would cease after learning the first five books of the Torah and go into an apprenticeship, learning the family trade. Others would continue and by the time they were 14-15 years old they would have every Hebrew scripture memorized. That’s Genesis through Malachi! MEMORIZED. And then the best of the best would go on even further still and “apply” to be a disciple of a rabbi. If the rabbi thought they “had it” then they would be accepted, otherwise they would be sent home to learn the family trade and no doubt be one of the most knowledgeable laypersons around.

How did the rabbi know if they “had it”? Well a disciple is one who isn’t just a student but is one who commits their whole life to walking in the footsteps of their rabbi. They give up everything to follow their rabbi and learn what the rabbi does and says. They orient their whole life to that of the rabbi’s. The wise men and sage’s came up with a saying to bless the disciple with. “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” See, the rabbi and his group of disciples would travel and in order to keep up with him they would have to be right on his heels. Israel is pretty well known for being a desert. (If that isn’t stating the obvious then I don’t know what is.) And in the desert you have, well, dust. And lots of it. So at the end of a busy day it was very likely that the group of disciples were covered in the dust kicked up by their rabbi. But it wasn’t a bad thing; no, I think it was a good thing. To be covered in the dust of your rabbi meant that you were remaining true to your commitment to be his disciple.

I’m sitting here today thinking about the dust of Kenya that covered me that Saturday in June 2007. I traveled to Kenya because Jesus looked at me and said, “Come, follow me.” And where he has led me to in that journey has been some pretty amazing places – and I’m not talking about location. I thought about the blessing, “May you be covered in the dust of your rabbi.” I want to be covered in the dust of my rabbi, Jesus. And I think that day in Kenya, as I got covered in dust, that maybe I wasn’t at the very back of the pack but a little closer to the heels of Jesus as he kicked up the dust.

May you, too, be covered in the dust of your rabbi, Jesus.

*www.nooma.com Dust : 008 Rob Bell