Wrestling with the cross.....again

"Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."  Luke 14.27

Mention a cross and Christians think Good Friday with its unbearable image of a suffering, dying Jesus nailed to a cross, arms outstretched, chest bared to the world, stripped of everything.  But it is not his naked form which causes us to avert our eyes, but his powerless vulnerability and the wrenching violence of the scene.  For people of faith, the Good Friday cross is deep mystery, other worldly power, and - somehow - a promise.  When Jesus speaks of us carrying the cross, it is also frightening.

Our fear is not grounded in our death; our fear is grounded in the possibility that this cross is calling us to a particular manner of living.  We fear that we are called to live with arms outstretched, vulnerable, and powerless: stripped of the masks behind which we hide, the defenses we have built to protect ourselves,  and all of our resources including bank accounts and storage units.  Our fear is that faith in the Jesus who was crucified in some manner demands that we, like him, are emptied of power and solely dependent on the Creator God.  I think it does.

"Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

Yet, it will not be soldiers who nail us to our modern cross of faith but love: that deep love of God which we have come to know through Jesus.  It will be the love that has transformed us by crushing our hearts of stone and giving us hearts of flesh.  It will be the love of Jesus which has opened our eyes to our neighbors - no longer categories and labels and judgments - but wounded and gifted children of the Creator God.  It will be the love that builds relationships based not on family connections but on forgiveness and reconciliation which will bind us to this path.

It is this love which draws us to follow Jesus and calls us to carry our imperfect version of this life giving love with us - wherever we go, whomever we meet, and whatever the consequences.  As it flowed from Jesus to us, it now flows from us into the world.  We cannot put it down because we have discovered that the life we live inside this love is our most valuable possession. 

If we look closely, this cross of life-giving love for every corner of creation is the same cross Jesus carried, loving the haughty and the low, healing the broken, inviting the outcast.  His cross is our cross.

So now I must confess that my fear is real; I am afraid to do it; I am afraid that I cannot.  I struggle to release old patterns of behavior, old prejudices, and all the privileges I enjoy.  Luther was right when he wrote, "I cannot by my own strength or understanding come to faith in our Lord Jesus".  I fear what I will lose, most especially I fear that in the end, I will lose my grasp of this precious gift of grace which is Jesus.

So Jesus sits down at the table and holds up a loaf of bread and says to us, 'Whenever you gather together with bread, remember!  Remember!'  Breaking it he reminds us 'This is my body, broken for you.  Every time you raise a cup together, remember!  This is my blood poured out - in love - for you.  Wherever you go, I am there.  Remember!' 

Fed and nourished, we walk the way of cross together, you and me and Jesus, out of love, and for the sake of the world. 

What are you worth?

How many widgets you can make in an hour?

How high a salary you can command?

How many perks you get....private bathroom, personal parking space, important title?

How strong or bright or tall or talented you are?

In a market economy, you are worth whatever you can command from the market.

In the Divine Economy, you are worth the sum total of divine love....just because you are.  

The Good Shepherd will seek for the one lost sheep out of 100 and carry you home.  The landowner will go to the marketplace again and again from sunrise to sunset looking for waiting workers just so no one is overlooked.   The father will stand at his gate and watch for the foolish, profligate, disrespectful son to return.....so he can welcome him and throw a party.

You will never be worth more than you are to your Creator God.  

Jesus lived to give us a concrete example of God's love for all of creation.  Jesus died in total commitment to that love.  Jesus rose to new life in the power of that love.  You are worth exactly that much.

Thanks be to God.

Parched lives in a dry land...........

The first thing exercise gurus will tell you is to drink plenty of water.  You need it more than you think.  As you move and sweat and work you will need more.  Your body needs it even if your brain hasn't registered that fact yet.

Water.  A colleague tells of his foray into regular exercise as a Lenten discipline 10 years ago.....and he begins his story with water.  You need water, he was told; "rivers of it, here, drink deeply."


Then he asks the question,  "How often have we acknowledged how parched our lives are? How we thirst for God?  I had a sense that something was lacking in me, and I could tell you what it wasn't, but I needed a guide, a coach, a person of grace to tell me what it was."  Water?  God?  Both?

The psalmist writes, "O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water."  Ps 63

Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." John 4

When he has gathered his disciples, including Judas who would betray him and Peter who would deny him, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet ...." John 13

Then from the cross he says, "I am thirsty." John 19

The water that is essential to life is but an earthly reminder of the God who is essential to true life. Jesus taught us what we already know; then he lived and died in that essential relationship with his Father God.

Drink deeply.  Rivers of living water.

                                                                                                                      Many thanks to Pr. Craig Herrick for these images.

Torn, broken, alone

Beyond the imagining, beyond the horror and tears and pain is the desert of grief: that wrenching apart, the severing of community, the deformed lives that are left in the wake of the unthinkable.

Like teutonic plates capable of raising mountains or opening deep chasms, this moment of death has shifted the world.  It is not the same.  It never will be.

"Beneath the cross of Jesus..."

Let's talk about God....

The true God, the God who creates and gives life.  The God who loves first, unconditionally, always.  The God who is active in this world, today.

Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem.  In his crucifixion he will be revealing a dimension of God's interaction with this world that is mind boggling even today.  At the cross, we will encounter God.  Not an academic God.  Not a God who is far off.  But God who is one with the suffering of human life, in God's own body......and for the sake of the world.

The time is running out.  The cross is ahead and Jesus knows this.

So it is crucial to Jesus that our conversation shift from what we are doing, what we need to do, what we want to obtain......to what God is doing for us, how God is at work in this world, and the grand invitation God extends through Jesus for us to be a part of this adventure.

This is the focus of the text on divorce (Mark 10.1-15) and the story of the rich man (Mark 10.17-31) and now this request of James and John to sit on the right and left hand of Jesus in his glory (Mark 10.35-45).  Jesus pushes us to engage in a new conversation, a new possibility of who God is and how God is at work in the world. 

It's all about God; once you grasp this you are set free to live generously, graciously, with forgiveness, and joy.  This is the challenge we face these next several weeks: to make it about God and not us.  We are along for the ride and thank God that God has invited us in Jesus.