It had happened in just this same way to his uncle Bilbo, Frodo reflected. Well, perhaps not exactly the same way; but the similarities were striking. He had heard the story many times from the old hobbit himself: Bilbo had been standing outside the round green door to his hobbit hole one fine morning, contentedly smoking a pipe and minding his own business, when along came Gandalf. The result? Staid, stolid, stay-at-home Bilbo had ended up doing unthinkable things, things that no sensible, respectable Baggins would ever have dreamed of doing. A Took, perhaps. But a Baggins? Never.
And now this same Gandalf was back at Bag End again. Sitting there before the fire in Frodo’s study, puffing out smoke rings, watching him out of thin-slitted, heavy-lidded, bushy-browed eyes, waiting. Waiting for Frodo’s answer.
Frodo fingered the Ring where it lay in his pocket on the end of its chain. It felt heavy, heavier than a small ring of gold had any right to be. Far heavier than it had felt just half an hour earlier. He stared into the fire’s dying embers and shivered, thinking over everything Gandalf had just told him about his terrible ring. The One Ring. The Ring of Power. Long believed lost, now earnestly and desperately sought by its maker, the dreaded Dark Lord. The Ring that threatened to overpower everyone and everything, to change Middle-Earth forever. The Ring that had somehow landed in Frodo’s pocket.
There is only one way, he heard Gandalf saying again. One way to save the Shire. One way to destroy the Ring before Sauron can seize it and use it for his own ends: Frodo must find Mount Orodruin in the dark land of Mordor and cast the cursed thing into the Cracks of Doom. And how was he – a simple hobbit of the Shire – supposed to do that?
Not that Frodo was a stay-at-home. He had often dreamed of traveling. He wanted to have adventures like old Uncle Bilbo. Like Bilbo, he had more of the Took than of the Baggins in him. That’s why gossips in taverns had taken to calling both of them “cracked.” Frodo was notoriously impractical. Images of pleasant, leisurely rambles and idyllic wanderings filled his mind at every idle moment. Many times he had pictured himself taking long, aimless journeys through endless woods, splashing across fabled rivers under the stars, conversing with elves.
But this! This was something else altogether. He was not made for perilous quests! He hadn’t counted on taking his life in his hands and fleeing from danger to danger. Most of all, he hadn’t planned on carrying the burden of the world in his waistcoat pocket. He wished now that he had never seen the horrid Ring! Why him? Why should he have been chosen to undertake such a task? When he had posed that question, he had received a most unsatisfactory reply from the inscrutable wizard: You may be sure that it was not for any merit that others do not possess.
“Well!” said Gandalf, looking up at last. “Have you decided what to do?”
-----------------------------------------
Every adventure has a beginning. Unfortunately, that beginning isn’t always pleasant. It might be more in the nature of a rude awakening. A prod, a sting, a shove. A bucket of cold water in the face. The thing you least expected to happen. The words you never wanted to hear. That’s how it is, more often than not, with those who find themselves on the adventure of following the living Christ.
As Jesus was walking beside the
Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers; Simon called Peter and his brother
Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come,
follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of me.” At once they
left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:18-20)
Fishers of men? They hadn’t been expecting that when they rolled out of bed that morning, pulled rough, homespun tunics over their heads, and stumbled down to the lakeside to work on those perpetually torn and shredded nets. Fishing for fish, now that was something they knew. But fishing for me? What did it ever mean? It was clearly out of their line of work.
As He walked along, He saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow Me,” Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed Him. (Mark 2:14)
It was like a bolt
out of the blue, unanticipated and totally unpredictable. Imagine what must have
been going through Levi’s mind as he turned his head at those thunderous
words: Is he talking to somebody
else around here?
When
Jesus reached the spot, He looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down
immediately. I must stay at your house today.” (Luke 19:5)
He had climbed a
tree out of pure curiosity, just to watch the parade go by, and suddenly
Zacchaeus found himself at the end of a pointing finger – an accusing finger,
a forgiving finger, a defining, inescapable, Uncle Sam “I WANT YOU” finger.
And he came. (Lucky for him he didn’t fall!)
Then, of course, there was Nathanael, the skeptic. He had been sitting
under a fig tree, laughing in his beard – “Hah! A Messiah? From Nazareth? Give me a break!” – when suddenly he felt a little tap on the
shoulder. “Here,” said Jesus with a beckoning smile, “is a true Israelite,
in whom there is nothing false.” Nathanael probably did a double-take. “How
did you know me?” he asked. (John 1:46-48)
Rustic fishermen as ambassadors for the King of the Universe? A slimy,
pocket-padded tax collector as an apostle for the gospel of righteousness? A
cynic as a herald of the truth? Why them? One wonders whether these unlikely
candidates for glory – as unlikely as a furry-footed halfling trudging
determinedly and heroically down the road to Mordor – thought about the words
of Moses, Gideon, and Jeremiah as they stood there confronting the Christ Who
Lets No One off the Hook: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it!”
(Exodus 4:13); “But Lord…how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in
Manasseh, and I am the least in my family!” (Judges 6:15); “Ah, Sovereign
Lord…I do not know how to speak; I am only a child” (Jeremiah 1:6).
In every case there was reluctance, resistance, protest. In every case
the chosen one made a manful attempt to beg off. But in every case the ultimate
response was the same. “They left their nets and followed him.” “Levi got
up and followed him.” “He came down at once and welcomed him gladly.”
“Nathanael declared, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of
Israel.’”
It says volumes about the irresistible power, the inescapable attraction,
the captivating, compelling personality of the one who issued the call to
adventure; “Come, follow Me.”
And so it was with Frodo. As he felt the weight of the Ring on the palm
of his small hand, as he trembled inside, staring into the glowing embers and
picturing the fable fires of Orodruin, it dawned on him that, for all the
danger, for all the terror, for all the unthinkable labor and pain it might
involve, there was simply no other
choice. And though he felt “very small, and very uprooted,
and…desperate,” he knew he had to go.
What about you? Have you decided what to do?
Reflection:
The call to follow Christ is a call to
adventure
– inconvenient, imperious,
and irresistible.
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Finding God in the Lord of the Rings - Kurt Bruner & Jim Ware. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2001.