In his book, The Solitaire Mystery (trans. Sarah Jane Hails; New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996), Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder creates the following dialogue between father and son as they stand outside the temple of Apollo at Delphi (p. 162):
[Dad] gestured toward all the tourists
swarming out of the tour buses far below and crawling like a fat trail of ants
up through the temple site.
“If there is one person among all those who regularly experiences the world as something full of adventure and mystery…”
He now took a deep breath before he
continued.
“You can see thousands of people down
there, Hans Thomas. I mean, if just one of them experiences life as a crazy
adventure—and I mean that he, or she, experiences this every single day…”
“What about it?” I asked now…
“Then he or she is a joker in a pack of
cards.”
“Do you think there’s a joker like that
here?”
A look of despair now crossed his face. “Nope!”
he said. “Of course I can’t be sure, because there are…a few jokers, but the
chance is infinitesimal.”
“What about yourself? Do you experience
life as a fairy tale every single day?”
“Yes, I do!”
There
is a lot in that snippet of dialogue that expresses well the meaning of mischievous
discipleship.
Being aware of the adventure and mystery in daily life
Jesus
calls and enables us to become mischievous witnesses to him on a daily basis.
He does this by inviting us to join him in conspiracies of goodness. This
invitation comes to us through life-transforming words which he shares with us
always at the most unexpected times. Our daily enjoyment of the mystery of
God-with-us is just this discerning of Christ’s words and our joyful joining
with him in his always surprising adventures.
Many are called but few are chosen
This
daily call of Jesus is something Jesus initiates with everyone, Christian or
not, mischievous or conventional, no matter what. Most ignore him, some respond
to him unintentionally, all are invited to be intentional about listening for
his voice and responding.
Being jokers in the deck of life
Through the character of Dad, Gaarder refers to people who intentionally experience the adventure and mystery of life on a daily basis as jokers. Of all the cards in a regular deck, that does seem to be the one most analogous to what Jesus calls us as mischievous disciples to be.
