Training in Christianity: The Inviter

“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

–Matthew 11:28 (NRSV)

After reflecting on the reasons that people hesitate to truly follow Christ in “The Obstacle” chapter of Training in Christianity Soren Kierkegaard says that the best answer to those objections are the very qualities of Jesus himself. For Kierkegaard, Christ’s status as a low-status human being from the wrong side of the tracks in the Roman Empire is part of the very reason that Christians should be willing to take him seriously. In his humanity, Jesus is able to identify with us and has experienced the brokenness of our world.

As a result, he knows what it means to be weary and carrying heavy burdens. The “humiliation” built into Christ’s identity means that when he offers an invitation to come to him for rest we can take him seriously. Christ is not someone who stands far off in the exultation of heaven. Instead, he is right here, a contemporary even, ready to welcome us into his open arms.

Transforming Christ into something other

One of the reasons that Kierkegaard focuses on the word “humiliation” is that Christ is so different than the kind of Messiah the world would have chosen for itself. Society wanted someone with power, glory, and social position. Kierkegaard argues that following that kind of Messiah would not require much, if anything, of his followers. If Christians followed a Messiah with privilege in society it would mean that we could comfortably remain just the way we are.

Even more dangerously, it would encourage us to set ourselves up as more powerful than others in the society around us. This is why Kierkegaard says that casual followers of Christ “transform him fantastically into something other than He is.” (p. 33)

This transformed, domesticated, Christ is not the one who invites us to follow him. Instead, it is the humiliated Christ who says that truly following him will necessarily transform us into people just like him. Rest will be provided, but it will be a rest unlike anything we could dream up on our own. Writing to comfortable, urban, Christians in a rapidly industrializing Copenhagen, Kierkegaard said that Christians must allow ourselves to be transformed into “contemporaries” of his humiliated self.

Conversely, those who are already humiliated, the “deaf and blind and lame and leprous” (p. 33) can respond to his invitation knowing that the Inviter truly understands their plight. Having assured those on the margins of their closeness to the humiliated Christ, he returns the real target of his book, a complacent Christendom which had forgotten what Christianity was all about.

Christendom: contrary to Christianity as it could be

Kierkegaard then engages with many of the reasons that “sham Christians” hold back from truly following Christ. He points out the societal costs of “letting oneself be helped by Him.” (p. 33) Taking on the values of Christ necessarily means rejecting the values of the society. As a result, it could lead to rejection and “banishment from the society of other men.” In short, the potential of getting scorned and scoffed at is far too great, causing many Christians to simply go through the motions of faith.

This unfortunate reality is not confined to 19th century Denmark. It is happening right here in the United States today. At the inauguration prayer in January, Episcopal Bishop Budde was heavily criticized by certain members of the Christian establishment for issuing a plea for mercy for the “least of these” in our society.

In order to ensure that our personal Christianity is as Christian as it could be, Kierkegaard asks each of us to examine ourselves. This self-examination is critical because it easy “without self-examination, to let thyself be deluded by ‘the others,’ or to delude thyself into the belief that thou art a Christian.” (p. 34)

Looking ahead: Christ’s life in two parts

To guide that self-examination process, Kierkegaard will next invite us to look at the first and second periods of Christ’s life. Most importantly, if after self-examination we determine that we are not yet fully Christian, we are all the more invited by the Inviter to come unto him.