One year for my birthday, I asked a dear friend to paint me something with a fox in it. I didn’t have anything particular in mind of what it should look like; I knew I would love whatever she created. At my birthday, she presented me with a carefully wrapped package. I unopened it to find, not one, but three framed paintings. One painting was of a fox peaking out of a hole. The second was of a bird standing guard at its nest of eggs. The third was of a crown of thorns with a trio of crosses in the background. Included in the gift was a letter that explained how Jesus’ encounter with a scribe in Matthew 8 inspired my friend’s work.
“And a scribe came up and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:19-20).
Not only were the paintings beautiful, but they reflected the fact that my friend and I were reading and studying the Scriptures together, seeking to understand what it means to follow Christ. We often discussed those things we needed to die to in order to obey him. That was over a dozen years ago. Today, the paintings hang on a wall outside my office where I walk by them every day. The irony is not lost on me that they hang in my home, in a place I own, a place of comfort and safety, while my Savior never had a home of his own. These paintings remind me that following Christ is not easy.
John Calvin commented that the scribe in this passage lived an easy life. He was honored by the community. He had every need met. Calvin wrote: “He wishes indeed to follow Christ, but dreams of an easy and agreeable life, and of dwellings filled with every convenience; whereas the disciples of Christ must walk among thorns, and march to the cross amidst uninterrupted afflictions.” What a contrast! Jesus tells the scribe that even the animals have what he doesn’t have—is he really willing to follow in his footsteps? Does he know the cost? Is he willing to pay it?
Far too often in our western Christian culture, the call to follow Christ has been watered down so much that people don’t hear, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Instead, they hear: “Follow Jesus and he’ll give you the house of your dreams. He’ll make your life smooth and carefree.” In doing so, they believe a false gospel. A gospel that doesn’t save. Yet, Jesus makes it clear that there is a price to following him:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account” (Matt. 5:11).
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?…So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-28, 33).
Ultimately, it is the price of homelessness, of being aliens and strangers in a world that is not our own (1 Pet. 2:11, Heb. 11:13). But for those who do follow him, the reward far outweighs the cost: being restored in right relationship with our Maker and eternity spent in his presence.
While I’m thankful for the home in which I live (which I affectionately call “The Fox Den”), I never forget that my Savior had no place to lay his head. That’s because he wasn’t rooted to this world. His sojourn here models for me my own. I am to store up treasure in heaven, not on earth. To follow him, I must hold all things loosely, find him alone to be my place of safety, and to live like a pilgrim in this world until he returns to take me home.
Photo by Katerina Bartosova on Unsplash
