Cost of Discipleship: Passover Flight

After trying many times to jumpstart my new blog, Taka's Japan, and after announcing it already once before, here I am again to give it another try. Our trip, and I should call it pilgrimage, to visit our best friend Taka and see something of Japan, is now just over a month in the past. You'd think I'd have had enough time by now to let the memories ripen and start to harvest the telling, but to tell the truth, Japan affected me so deeply, it has nearly left me speechless. Nevertheless, at least on the level of a travelog, I should be able to tell it now.

I'm starting the story here on Cost of Discipleship, because it starts out with a remarkable testimony of God's faithfulness that I want to share. Afterwards, there will be a link to take you to Taka's Japan, and I hope you will enjoy it.

Brock and I had airline tickets for a 2:30 p.m. departure from PDX on the 19th of April. It hadn't escaped us that this day was of special significance—the first evening of the Jewish Passover would begin at sundown, wherever we were. It was the first trip outside North America for either of us, and we would be crossing the sea to get to our destination.

To observe in some modest way the Passover Seder, the evening ceremonial meal that Jews partake of on this night, Brock had bought a box of whole wheat Matzos and a six pack of Welch's grape juice.
(I saved the empty box from last year's Passover matzos, and that's where I got the picture, but it's not the box we used this year.)

Anyway, as we did some last minute packing at Brock's place, we stuffed the matzos in my carry-on bible bag, and divided the grape juice bottles, putting two of them in Brock's backpack, and the other four in the cargo pockets of his pants. Then, we set off for the train that would carry us to the airport.

Things went fairly smoothly for us at the airport. That is, until we got to the security screening. As a person who hasn't flown much in the last few years, I was not on the ball about how to get ready to pass through the metal detectors, and as a result almost got rejected. When our carry-ons went through the screening machine, the two bottles of grape juice in Brock's backpack were discovered and he had to surrender them. After we both emerged on the other side of the security station and took stock of what we had and what we lost, we remembered the four bottles of grape juice still in Brock's cargoes. Whew! We could still observe the minimum of the Passover observance. We still had our "bread and wine."

No more hitches. We soon found ourselves getting aboard the plane and found our seats—the two middle seats in the group of four that runs down the center of the plane. On my left was a very tired and very private Japanese businessman, stiffly dressed and very taciturn. During the whole flight he pretended we weren't there, even when I excused myself in Japanese for accidentally grabbing his seatbelt as mine. On my right was Brock, and on his right was an Asian man who looked to be about 35 years old and probably Korean. We got our bags stowed under the seats and in the overhead, and settled down for the long flight. I wondered, would I be able to sit that long?

Before we'd left the ground, we started up a little conversation of greetings and introductions with the Korean man (we were right about his nationality), and he seemed genuinely friendly and good-natured. After a few minutes of this, we all got quiet again, as the plane took off and we were airborne. But things just didn't stay that way.

Something the Korean gentleman had said a few minutes earlier had piqued my curiosity, and so I called over to him and asked him my question. I can't now remember what it was. Maybe I asked him about his business or where he lived. However and whenever we learned these details during the course of the flight, he was a Korean who worked for a company based in Germany and their business was antennas and other such equipment. In the course of his career with them, Phil (for that was his English name) had done quite a bit of travelling in Europe. As I am a German-speaker and have a cultural interest in Germany, I asked him what it was like there.

This is how our conversation started out. Of course, I'm not describing the topics we talked about during the first part of our acquaintance or any of Brock's words, but all three of us engaged in a gradually deepening exchange of experiences, thoughts and philosophies.

At some point, we found ourselves having to explain things about the two of us that brought into the discussion things like Jewish history, and the Bible. We had to assume at first that our new friend didn't know too much about the Bible or Jewish and Christian ideas. Brock explained about Passover, and how this evening was the first night of that holy day, and how it commemorated the Jews' exodus from Egypt. As Brock or I alternately explained and answered his questions, we noticed that Phil often repeated our answers and certain words we used, as if he were trying to memorise them. (Oh, I forgot to mention this important fact—Phil's command of English was almost perfect.) As time went on—and we occasionally took little breaks of silence—our new friend would sit up and turn to us with another question. Time passed, yet it didn't feel long at all for any of us.

It was finally dark outside (and dark in the cabin as well). The little monitor for watching movies had a map showing where the plane was. We were somewhere in the North Pacific off the Aleutian Islands. Our conversation had been going on for hours, but we weren't tired. We were very, very awake—all three of us. Brock turned to me, "Let's have our Passover now," and I reached down to my bible bag and pulled out the box of matzos. Then I reached up and turned on the reading light, and pulled the small New Testament out of the cigarette pocket in the sleeve of my jacket. Brock meanwhile dropped the tray open in front of him. We had emptied the grape juices out of his cargoes when we first sat down, and they were in the elastic pouches on the backs of the seats in front of us. I took the two out of mine, and Brock asked Phil if he would join us in breaking matzah and drinking juice as we observed the Passover together. "Can I really do it?" he asked, almost dumbfounded. "Of course you can," replied Brock, as he pulled another bottle of juice out of the seat pouch and placed it on the table close to Phil.

We were ready. Well, if all our talking and testifying on the trip hadn't disturbed anyone so far—not even the businessman to my left—I guess what we were about to do wouldn't either, although it might've raised some eyebrows if religious people were present.

Brock cited book and chapter, I found it in the New Testament, and Brock read the passages. First one, then another. These were the accounts of Jesus' last Passover with His disciples. (By now Phil already understood that we are followers of Jesus Christ, and that we also believe ourselves to be connected to Israel, as wild olive shoots are grafted onto the cultivated olive.) Brock also read some things in the epistles that related to partaking of the bread and wine. As he read the passages, we stopped, broke the matzos and ate them, drank the bottles of grape juice. Of course, we prayed also. All of this under the light of the reading lamp, using a drop-down table, and surrounded by strangers, not one of whom took any obvious notice of us. We weren't doing it for them, but for Him, for the Lord. "But even dogs can eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table…"

We finished reading scriptures, eating matzah and drinking juice, put the New Testament back in my pocket, and dropped the box of matzos into my bible bag. We turned the overhead light off. There was a peaceful silence.

The second half of a ten hour flight was still ahead of us. We rested sometimes, sometimes we talked. Something had changed. Phil was still asking questions, still repeating some of the answers, drinking it all in like a newborn infant. We learned a few more things about him too. Now we're entering a place that can't really be talked about, where people are becoming real, where the Spirit in us starts speaking things that words can't adequately express. We spent the entire remainder of that flight this way.

As the plane was coming in for a landing at Tokyo, we were jolted back to another reality—we were in Japan! We started saying our farewells early, and started promising each other to stay in touch. (That promise has been kept.) I had to give Phil something. I reached into my bible bag where I had seven or eight icon buttons pinned to an inside flap. They were for giving away as omiyage when I got to the Orthodox church in Nagoya. Only one would do for Phil. I gave him the icon button of the Pantokrator, the one that I usually wear. Someday, Phil would understand more, and know who this Man called Pantokrator is, and get to know Him, personally.

Phil, Brock and I exchanged cards and emails, and got ready to get off the plane and stand in some more lines, as we were cleared to get onto our connecting flight to Nagoya. We saw Phil a few more times, and then said our goodbyes for the last time. We were off to Nagoya!