“Thanks, but…I am a worker in my Church”
Tony feels words begin to form at the edge of his mouth but no reply comes. Instead he does a quick bob of his head to acknowledge Ore’s polite rejection of his invitation.The silence on his end must have drawn on too long because Ore whips around and continues in the direction of his parked car, but not before leaving him with a cordial “See you at the office tomorrow!”
Tapped Valedictorian of his graduating class from one of Nigeria’s premier universities, Class President, Best Graduating Student of Information Technology Faculty, only in his late twenties but yet boasting a glowing resume in the IT industry with years of coveted experience at a multinational IT software firm, a position he landed through an expert combination of resilience, lies and cutting kickbacks. He had gotten this far with the help of his silver tongue. He knew all the reasons Ore did not just have to but needed to accept his invitation, but still he had stood there, mute.
The sun was making its downward glide across the sky, leaving in its place an evening halo that cast a pale orange glow onto the thinning streets of Victoria Island. It was about half past 5, droves of employees were scurrying off to bus stops and street corners to board a bus or passenger car to get them across the lengthy Third Mainland Bridge to their homes on the Mainland. Since most were without the luxury of company-owned air-conditioned coaster buses with enough capacity to do without sharing a seat with another fatigued employee, the ensuing tug of war for the few seats available in the rickety public buses, was a daily evening ritual. Bus conductors hung dangerously from the sides of the dilapidated buses, with missing doors and side mirrors, yelling out their destinations “Iyana-Iworo-Oshodi, Berga, CMS,” Later that evening Tony would stand at one of those corners and listen for the call for “ “ the bus that made a stop closest to his city of Berger.
Class lines eroded as middle and lower class were cramped side by side in rows of 4 onto hard wooden planks that served as seats inside the buses. In one of the buses headed to CMS, a young beady eyed girl, haggard from a long day of selling dried fish seats cushioned between a window and the neatly dressed bank teller to her left, traces of her Vanilla-scented perfume still clinging to her skin, filling the air between them and mixing in with the acrid smell of dried fish.
The clock inched closer to six. He needed to be on his way. Tony starts down Idowu Martins street, stopping in front of a large complex of corporate offices. Closeby a Malam stoked the fires over his makeshift grill preparing to entice passerby’s with the savory smells of spiced roasted cow meat.
Tony whistles to an approaching commercial tricycle, slowing it to a halt, the young boy behind the wheels nods for Tony to enter. He enters and plonks down next to a plump woman with her hand proctectively over a large food cooler. The tricycle zooms off, rumbling along, making sharp maneuvers around the rain filled potholes littered along the road “O wa o” Tony alerts the driver to stop when he sights the well lit red and white KFC logo. He hands the boy his fare and then crosses to the other side of the road to enter through its small gated entrance.
“Broooo!” Joshua, sights his friend, and excitedly gets up from the table he had reserved for the evening, enveloping him in a bear hug. “It’s good to see you, how’s work?” A boyish soft grin as always stretched the corners of his mouth, and brotherly affection filled his deep-set coral black eyes.
“Ahh… so..so, nothing too grand” Tony says taking the seat across from Joshua who slides his tray of food closer to Tony, all that’s left is a small meaty piece of Chicken breast, but he offers it up anyway, “You go like chop?”
Never one to turn down free food, Tony smiles a sheepish smile, and thanks his good friend, “So this guy, he’s been coming out to the Bible Discussions for a while?” he asks Joshua before biting into the Chicken.
“Yes o! My brother, and consistent too! for over one month now”
“But he never agreed to go further and do a personal Bible study? Any reasons?”
“Ah..you know how it is, Religious guy, he doesn’t see his need for it” Joshua gives a matter-of-fact shrug when he says “religious guy”
Tony smiles at this, it wasn’t too far from his own response when he first met Joshua six months ago while waiting for a bus home at Eko Hotel Roundabout. It had taken all the self-restraint he had in him to keep from shooing off the well-dressed, eloquent gentleman whose inexperience with soul-winning had led him to mistake him, a confirmed worker in Church, for a novice in need of a Bible Study.
“So what changed his mind?” curious, Tony asks.
Before Joshua can form a response, he spots the familiar face of the gentleman who just walked through the doors of the eatery, and he shoots a hand up in the air to wave him over to their table. The gentleman is dressed in a blue and white checkered shirt that is tucked neatly into navy blue trousers. He advances in their direction, his gait sure and determined, a brown tan leather briefcase swinging by his side. With wide-set eyes, a broad nose that fanned over full lips, a neat crop of tightly curled tufts of hair clustered on the center of his head, edges trimmed and shaped to perfection, he easily passed for good-looking.
“Ernest! Welcome!”
A round of handshakes go round the small group of men. They exchange pleasantries and all register excitement for the Ramadan public holiday coming up in a weeks time. Tony hungrily cleans out what’s left of the Chicken bones. Ernest politely declines Joshua’s offer of food.
Formalities out of the way, Joshua signals a turn to why they had gathered. He gestures to Tony who leads the group in a short prayer. On hearing the last line of the prayer, Ernest shifts uncomfortably in his seat, “God I pray that this will be the very Bible Study that will transform the man that Ernest is”
“So Ernest, we’re finally here.” Joshua begins, holding his hands up to his side in a dramatic gesture.
Ernest returns him a small forced smile, an unfamiliar apprehension knotting the base of his throat.
Joshua notices Ernest body stiffen, he wasn’t the first, he had sat across enough men like this to know that, wary and unsure of what he had agreed to, Ernest needed a safe haven, and he would find it behind a fortified wall of self-defense. Joshua mentally braces himself for what lay ahead of them and carried on.
“Tell me, Ernest, how did you become a Christian?”
“Well, my parents raised me that way” he responds, a perplexed look on his face.
“So were you born a Christian?”
“Uhh.. I guess you can put it that way, sure” Ernest concurs again, with a slight shrug of his shoulders.
“So you’ve always believed in God then?”
“Why yes, of course”
“And at your current church, you’re assistant to the Head of the Ushering department, correct?”
Ernest nods.
“And for how long have you been a worker at Church?”
“Since I was 19 years old, maybe?”
“That’s quite a long time..” The gold wedding band encircled his ring finger, put him in his mid-thirties.
Joshua takes a large gulp from his 250cl Eva plastic bottle. “So you certainly must have wondered why we kept pressing for a man like you who has been raised in the Church from the time he knew how to walk, to sit down to a one-on-one Bible Study?”
There is a small almost unnoticeable flicker of reckoning in his countenance, and something else that wasn’t quite clear.
“Let’s take a look in John 8:32” Joshua continues
They each thumb at their phone screens to open up the scripture reference on their e-Bibles.
“Tony, let’s have you read this one”
Tony reads it aloud in his clear baritenor voice.
“So Ernest, who is Jesus referring to when speaking here”
“To the Jews..?”
“Yes, but what is particular about these Jews in question?”
“Well it says “the Jews who had believed in Him”
“That’s exactly right, Jesus right here is talking to a group of believers”
“Now, what does he say to these believers?” Joshua asks after a reflective pause.
“He says “You are truly my disciples if you hold to my teachings”
“So Ernest according to what Jesus says to this group of believers, does belief in God make you a disciple of Jesus?”
Ernest finger hovers in place over the scripture, a calculative concentration plastered on his face. Neat fold lines mar his forehead as he takes the question to task. “Well… with the way Jesus puts it to them here, I guess not”
“Right! It takes someone who “holds”, to go from just a believer to a disciple of Jesus. Now Ernest, that word ‘’disciple”, what do you think it means?”
Ernest mouths the word, ‘disciple’, under his breath, rolling it over his tongue, searching for the right words to express its meaning. “Follower of something or someone maybe?”
“You’re exactly right! The word disciple means ‘a student or a follower, many historical figures before and after Jesus had disciples, Plato, Aristotle, Hitler, so that word is not unique to Jesus alone”
Again, Joshua takes a reflective pause. “Let’s take a look at another scripture where Jesus uses that word again in Matthew 28:18–20”
Joshua has Ernest read. “So Ernest who is speaking here?”
“Jesus”
“And what does he want to see people of all nations made into?”
“His disciple”
“And now just for the record, does believing in Jesus’s message make you his disciple?”
“No..”
“So what does then?”
“Holding onto his teachings..?”
”But what does that mean? ”
“Hmm…I think by holding he means to actually do what he teaches..?”
“You think right!” Joshua beamed at his acuity, “Now, Do you know if Jesus ever taught anything about what it takes to be his disciple?”
A contemplative second passes before Ernest responds with a defeated shrug, “I am sure he should have..”
“Have you ever come across any?”
“Well…none exactly come to mind but I am sure if I give it more thought I can think of one..”
“Take your time, try and remember any you know..” Joshua presses, shocking Ernest who has a deer in headlights look on his face. Not wanting to risk appearing incompetent, he tilts his head back in search of a remotely appropriate scripture reference, mentally scanning through the ones he happened to remember from his Open Heavens devotional book that morning, but none smacked close to a teaching on what it took to be a disciple of Jesus. What were those scriptures Pastor Boye, Head Pastor at his church always quoted on Sundays again? There may have been one about asking and receiving, or had it been about seeking first the Kingdom of God? Ernest felt a gnawing sense of inadequacy begin to claw at his bruised ego, deeply upsetting the tender balance of scriptural jargon and blind faith that his spiritual ego rested on. In frustration he concedes his ignorance, “I can’t think of any” he mumbled in response and then trains his eyes squarely on Joshua in anticipation of what was to come next.
He sees Joshua’s eyes light up, eager anticipation widening the smile lines around his mouth, “You know four years ago, as a so-called Sunday School Teacher, I sat in the exact same seat you’re sitting in right now, and that was the same day I found out for the first time that Jesus taught some pretty radical things about what it takes to be his follower, let’s take a look at one in Luke 9:23–25”
Joshua reads the scripture out loud from his phone screen, then turns to Ernest, “Who is Jesus addressing his message to here?”
“Uhh..a crowd?”
“Look closer, in the first line.”
“Anyone who wants to follow him?”
“That’s right! He’s talking to people who are thinking about following him. And what does he make a condition for them?” Joshua asks, putting emphasis on the ‘condition’
“umm..it says..They must….deny themselves and take up their crosss…daily?” Ernest painstakingly reads the words aloud again.
“What has it been for you Ernest?”
“For me?” he looks up at Joshua confused.
“What cross have you been carrying daily?”
At this Ernest leans forward in his chair, an idle finger slowly dragged on his phone screen, trying to make sense of the red-inked words spoken by a Jesus that was paling in resemblance to the one he had sang about in hymns and had heard preached from pulpits. For a second, he looks about to give an answer but retracts it on further thought. “I’m sorry..” although he does not know to what he owed his apology. “I’m not just sure…i’m not sure what you mean”
“Which part?”
“Carrying a cross daily, if Jesus is not talking about a physical cross, like the one He carried, then what else could it mean?”
“What happened to Jesus on the Cross?”
“He..died..?”
“Who killed him?”
With a more confident arch in his back, Ernest responds “The Romans” hoping to impress Joshua with the specificity of his response. Expecting a confirmatory nod for this, he is disappointed by the expressionless look on Joshua’s face.
“Figuratively speaking, yes… but is it possible for the Creator of the Universe to suddenly be subjected to death by his own creation, except he allows it?”
“Well no… but that’s what happened!” Ernest responds defensively, his intelligence wounded and unsure of where this stream of questions were headed.
“What made it necessary?”
“Made what?”
“His death”
“Sin”
“Whose sin?”
“Ours”
“So who killed Jesus?”
“We..we did” Ernest says, looking at the words printed on his screen and then back up at Joshua who nods in solemn agreement. The weight of the charge settles slowly on Ernest, and a small squeezing sensation lodges deep within his chest.
“So then if the cross is a symbol of sin’s death, anyone who wants to follow Jesus must accept a lifelong decision to wake up every single day to die over and over again to their sins.” Pausing a beat for the words to land their target, Joshua asks “Does this describe the man that you are?”
He feels Joshua’s gaze on him, and Tony’s patient understanding eyes look up from the notes he had been taking, but he knows it is not their midnight dark brown eyes that were peering at him, but the question left hanging between them that bored holes into him, drilling its way through to the most clandestine corners of his soul. Did Joshua know? Had he caught his eyes as they had lingered on the female passenger with a low neckline at the bus stop that day? His racing mind betrays him, conjuring up images of the newest young attractive Usher that attended his last Orientation workshop. What had her name been? Bose? He had not even cared to ask the night they had gotten physical. He pushes back the thoughts, not wanting thoughts of the others besides Bose to slip through. As he tries to force the suddenly unravelling pandora box shut, he is arrested by another thought of the funds from a joint investment account with his wife that he had been stealing from to cover debts from his betting habit.
“No one is perfect” Ernest finally offers, his tone resigned.
“No, no we aren’t, none of us deserve to be told “come, just carry your cross daily and come”
Ernest doesn’t miss the use of ‘us’, recalling the peculiar kinship he had felt that day when Joshua had approached him with a large grin plastered on his face exposing a thin gap between his two front teeth. Thick wavy hair framed neatly around his hairline by a skilled barber. He had no large print bible under his arm or bundles of invitation tracks, so he had been taken aback to discover he was evangelizing. All he had was a fine brown leather laptop pouch slung across his body. He could easily have been mistaken for any other guy among the impatient throng waiting on an empty bus. It didn’t take too long to warm up to him, it was his way with people that puzzled Ernest. Where was the sanctimonious air of false sainthood that he had known with roadside religious proselytizers?
Not batting an eye when it comes to dismissing them either with a fake ‘phone call’ or outrightly telling them to get lost, Joshua somehow managed to corner him in a conversation. He worked in a Financial Technology firm on a street Ernest knew well, with a bar that was a go to for many of his work colleagues. Everything about Joshua did not fit the bill of a religious proselytizer.
“Is it usual for you to walk up to strangers to strike a conversation with them about God, like this?” Ernest had asked him that day, doubtful of his tactics yet intrigued by it.
“Yess” Joshua chuckled, not at all appearing slighted by his skepticism.
“And you walk up to just anyone?How are you so sure that..…”
“How am I so sure they aren’t already saved and not in need of salvation?” Joshua chuckles again, completing the thought that Ernest tries hard to find the most polite way of saying.
Joshua drew in a long breath, readying to answer, fixing Ernest with an intent gaze “You know, I grew up with the same kind of religious ‘resume’ that 90% of the people right here are carrying around in their heads,” he twirls his index finger in an invisible circle in the air, gesturing to the rowdy crowd around them, “it was what gave me this unconscious confidence that God and I were ‘good’. Both parents ordained ministers, played drums for the Church, went up for many alter calls, spoke in tongues. Going by society’s religious handbook, I met the bar. And then one day, Bam! God burst my bubble, and used the Bible to rip apart my empty shell of self-righteousness.”
“I had sat through countless sermons preached from that book all my life, but even with all that head knowledge, I only knew the Bible the way I knew my Uncle Ope who I only see once a year at Christmas. I was blinded by my shallow understanding of what sin was, based only on what society decided to frown upon; Drinking and sex, and since I only did those occassionaly, I managed to stay immune from a guilty conscience. But the Bible burst that bubble too, and showed me that while I wasn’t much of a drunkard or a one night stand kind of guy, I was the very devil of 2 Timothy 3:1–5”
That night, bored restless from flicking through his Instagram feed, and about putting out the lights to settle into bed, Ernest finally caved to the nagging thought that kept nudging him to find out what Joshua had meant by the ‘devil of 2 Timothy 3:1–5’ so he punched the scripture into Google, finding a list that struck a chord perhaps too close to home.
“What do you want from me?” Ernest asks, a hapless look casting a shadow over his countenance and his wounded pride adding an almost permanent slouch to his shoulders.
Tony had been watching him, he was like a cornered animal waiting for the perfect opening to make a narrow escape. God please open his heart to see that without the Cross, the deception of his religious lifestyle will end him with a lifetime of worship that would all be in vain. On the long bus ride home that night, Tony tried to fight off sleep so he didn’t miss his bus stop. Sitting on the hardwood bench inside the bus, dozing off only to be jerked awake by the jostling of the bus skirting around open craters on the road,
“Thanks, but…I am a worker in my Church” Ebere’s words from earlier that evening float across a distant part of his mind, out from under where they had nestled into. The sound of rattling tambourines ring in his ears with images of Ebere, spirit-filled and sweat-soaked at the 7:30am morning devotions organized by the Strategy department. With a vocal range as powerful as his, Ebere was always the first pick to lead Praise & Worship. But too often, Tony had heard that same angelic voice turn bitter and spiteful when addressing newly hired interns that took too long on an errand or knocked on his door requesting help on an assignment. His last thought before drifting off to sleep minutes before Midnight was of Ebere, a faraway distant look in his eyes, and a question inscribed in invisible ink across his forehead. “Does this describe the man that you are?”