Day 79: Saying No to Status Quo

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life?” Matthew 16:24–26

I’m sure you’ve heard of St. Francis of Assisi, who by all accounts was quite the Italian Stallion in his early, hard-partying days. However, according to his first biographer, after several transformational encounters with Christ, he sensed God telling him to repair “the church, which was in ruins.”14 So Francis pilfered some expensive cloth from his father’s shop (his dad was a very wealthy merchant) and rode to a nearby village where he sold both the cloth and his horse. Then, when the town priest was reluctant to receive the funds, Francis hurled the cash out of a window.

Mind you, when his father found out about it, he was furious with Francis and brought him before their bishop to answer for the reckless embezzlement. But before the bishop had a chance to address him, Francis of Assisi stripped completely naked, handed his clothes to his shocked dad and announced: “Until now I have called you my father on earth. But henceforth I can truly say: Our Father who art in heaven.”15 Then he basically turned on his heel, hiked up into the mountains above his hometown, and devoted himself to a much simpler, mostly solitary life surrounded by animals instead of people.

Less well known than Saint Francis but every bit as passionate about forsaking anything or anyone who distracted them from their pursuit of Jesus was a group of Christians in the 1400s called the Stylites or “Pillar Saints” (after the Greek word stulos, which means pillar or column). Their extremely ascetic practice of moving away from community and making their homes atop pillars in the wilderness so as to avoid distractions and devote themselves entirely to God began in 423 BC by Simeon the Elder and continued until the mid-fifteenth century. One saint named Alypius is recorded as standing upright on a column less than four feet in diameter for fifty-three years until his ankles collapsed. However, instead of descending from his pillar and maybe going to a podiatrist, he laid down on his side and spent the last fourteen years of his life prone but still solitary, on his airy altar!

Now quite frankly, I think the Pillar Saints’ “statuesque” acts of faith, while well intentioned, are totally bonkers. I’ve been studying Scripture for almost forty years and I’m pretty sure the Bible tells us to go and minister to other people and make disciples out of them, not run from them. I’ve yet to find a single verse that advocates hanging out alone on a glorified pole in order to please God! And unlike Assisi if I staged a nude protest, I’m pretty sure no one would call it an act of devotion. More likely probable cause for arrest! However, as totally bonkers as St. Francis and the Pillar Saints behavior seems to us now, I have to admit I admire their radical willingness to forgo comfort . . . to snub their noses at normalcy . . . to quash status quo for the sake of Christ.

• What creature-comforts do you typically run to instead of Christ? Why?
• What does Jesus’ command to “take up your cross” look like in the context of your life?
• What or who have you felt compelled to deny yourself of so as to be closer to God?