“Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
That has to be one of the least attractive things Jesus ever says.
Considering he’s just said he himself is going to undergo great suffering, rejection, and death before rising, it’s pretty clear he’s inviting us to embrace the same thing: suffering, loss and death.
And also rising?
It might be the scariest thing he says, too.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take up much of anything this weekend. Much less a cross.
The transition from summer to “school year” often makes this week chaotic, even if you’re long past anything to do with school.
Lots of our friends and neighbors are still trying to find the big chunks of life and work that Ida flooded or blew away.
Yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of the attacks on airlines and landmarks that changed the course of America, and we’ve all been carrying burdens of remembered suffering, grief, and change. And we’re worried about the refugees the “war on terror” just blew onto our doorsteps.
Covid hasn’t ended yet, not on any of the time frames we’ve set for it, It’s just round after round of expectations and concerns.
And of course there’s more in the world; there’s more in our personal lives.
Maybe you’re living your best life right now, ready to take up anything. But I don’t want to take up anything else right now, thanks.
I want to breathe, and enjoy the weather.
I want to think about the future – about the dreams and plans and excitement we’re launching through our Campaign for Trinity, our party this morning.
How about you?
Whatever you're ready for, or not, here’s Jesus this morning, saying,
“deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”
Take up suffering, loss, and death, and come close to me.
Yes, I want to be close to Jesus, but that cross plan just doesn’t sound appealing.
But what if I’m wrong about that?
What if the call to embrace death and suffering isn’t a call to misery?
What if “taking up my cross” isn’t something that requires teeth gritting and shoulder squaring and resignation?
As one of my friends observed to me this week, none of us get out of this alive, anyway.
Death is part of us.
No matter what Jeff Bezos thinks he can buy or invent, all of us get older, bits of us break or stop working, we die.
People we love die.
Maybe taking up our cross isn’t choosing death and suffering and loss.
We’ve got that anyway.
Maybe taking up our cross is choosing not to be intimidated by death, or suffering, or loss.
Choosing not to run away from that universal truth -- so that we’re free to do the things that scare us, free to try things that might be too hard, free to give away what I don’t want to lose, free to fail and break and rise again.
Free to be fully present to all of life - in things as big as hearing a serious diagnosis or marrying the love of your life; fully present and alive in things as small as the bug bite on your ankle or the taste of a ripe tomato fresh off the vine.
Maybe taking up our cross as Jesus takes up his means looking at our natural fear of death, or suffering, or loss, and saying “okay. I see you coming. I might still be afraid of the pain of loss, but I’m not going to run away from it. I’m going to live and love with all of me, and you can’t stop me.”
Years ago, when I first met the cat who lives with me (who many of you have seen on Zoom), I was fresh in my grief for another cat who’d held my heart for more than a decade, and had just died. When Dobby grabbed my ankle, sprawled on my lap, and adopted me, I knew I was adopting grief, down the road, if I chose to love him. But choosing to love him is entirely life-giving. Even when it means cleaning up inconvenient messes and worrying about his health. Even when he’s bitey and restless and will not let me sleep and I don’t like him very much. Even when it hurts to know we’re not forever.
That’s a really small example, but it’s what you and I do all the time when we choose to love, to give ourselves and our hearts.
Many of our choices to take up love are more complicated and less clear cut. Commitments to marriage and parenting and deep friendship take longer and are more complex than adopting a cat.
Still, in the hours and days and years that we fall in love, that we build a slow and irrevocable commitment to someone else, we’re choosing a life that doesn’t run away from the hours and months of rearranging our schedules for someone else’s needs – because being there with or for one another is much more life-giving than being alone. We’re choosing a life that finds more life in the way we hurt when someone else is in pain, as well as the way we feel more joy when it’s shared.
We choose love and life, too, when we look at our fear of failure – and all the suffering of embarrassment and disappointment and loss that comes with failure – and say “that’s not going to stop me”.
And then go ahead and start a school strike to protest human trafficking or climate change, even though one voice will never be loud enough and you’ll get mocked.
Go ahead and join a movement to integrate public transportation even though all the odds are stacked against you, or to build a world where everyone can eat healthy, abundant food even though governments can’t get it done and history and economic interests are more powerful than you.
Or found a company (or even a government program) that’s going to not just get humans into space, but make life more livable on earth as in the heavens.
Or set an ambitious goal that needs a whole lot of people to stretch themselves and their wallets and hearts to believe in and build a congregation that’s more accessible, stronger, safer, more welcoming for all. (And also better air conditioned.)
Or go ahead and love your enemies – the ones you’re afraid of, and the ones who just annoy you on the news and in the office or school and on the internet.
And all that? That’s just the tip of the iceberg of possibility. That’s what I can imagine in one busy weekend. There’s so much more potential that God can imagine, more ways Jesus can invite us to grow closer to himself and to take our own part in God’s work – in the ultimate defeat of death, and the whole and lasting renewal of the world.
And that – that power and freedom and possibility and transformation and hope that come from refusing to let fear stop us – now that’s attractive. That might even be exciting to take up when I’m too busy for anything new.
The joy and wholeness that come from choosing love, even when it hurts, that’s attractive, too. That looks like life abundant. Like the life I need when I’m worn down by how much we’ve already taken up.
Jesus is offering us a gift – of power and love, freedom and hope – when he invites us – commands us – to put ourselves aside so that we can take up that brave, risky, exhilarating life that can’t be intimidated by suffering, death, or loss.
It’s the scariest thing he asks of us, or offers. But it may, after all, be the best.
I’ll take it.
How about you?
No comments:
Post a Comment