I-YOUniverse

Grunewald’s Crucifixion

Friday March 21, 2008

A Meditation for Good Friday

Part 2

Jesus said, “”If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23 (NRSV)

Keener than a brain surgeon’s laser Jesus’ Word divides between soul and spirit. He begins with intention, not deeds; and the intention is following him. A popular school of thought associates sacred with sour and suffering. (My mother was principal of the school.)

But Jesus, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,” will have none of that carping, pharisaical spirit. Following Christ isn’t psychological masochism, “bearing your cross,” nor parading down the street beating your back raw. I can’t imagine a Jesus who didn’t run down country roads, breathless and joyous in the grace of a young man’s muscle. Who didn’t show off the day’s catch of fish to competitive brothers. Who didn’t polish fine carpentry for love of cedar.

Intention: “if any want to become my followers.” It’s incredible who Jesus called “evil-doers,” a pet term of some politicians today.

“Lord, Lord,” people will protest on the last day, “did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?” Preaching, casting out demons, doing deeds of power-evil? Then I have more to answer for than I figured.

The Father’s will isn’t a saint’s death (my fifteen minutes of fame), but a saint. Saints, at the least, are people who belong to God.

After identifying the intention of the daily cross-follow me!-Jesus next identifies two friction points. You’re 15 ½ years old, in driver’s ed behind the wheel of a manual transmission, parked facing upward on a slope, and the instructor’s blabbing about the friction point, the position of the clutch at which the car won’t roll backwards, but if you give it a little gas will begin rolling upward.

You find friction points-where the gospel meets resistance-immediately, in yourself. Jesus said, “Deny yourself.” In our sales pitch and appointment books we like to minimize this part of the gospel. And that involves a half truth (which has the half life of half a banana).

You can’t pour anything out of an empty cup. If it’s utterly empty, it’s a vacuum; it sucks into its void whatever it can. In The Screwtape Letters CS Lewis depicts demons as cannibals who feast on each other, when they can’t get human flesh.

Rather than face the anxiety of being made in God’s image, we semi-saints like to leapfrog over God’s intention that we be a self, define our likes and dislikes, become the work of art created for good works (Eph. 2.10, NJB). Instead, we say, “let Moses do it.” Let him face the fire on the mountain, let him tell us what God wants.

Jesus, however, spent 30 years becoming and being a self, ten times longer than in ministry, although I doubt he made the distinction. After Joseph’s death he managed a brood of brothers and sisters, ran the carpenter’s shop, debated Torah, listened to God. I doubt he made clay pigeons fly. But he felt adolescent hormones, smashed his fingers with loose beams, perhaps tangoed with a bossy elders. His love of all things everyday evident in the parables-yeast, the lost coin, the farmer sowing seed-suggests how deeply he invested himself in Nazareth goings on.

Psychology concerns our becoming mature, authentic selves, and (to the extent that we can) our discarding fake self-indulgent narcissistic selves. Spirituality concerns surrendering both fake and authentic selves to God-not throwing self away in humiliation, but simply opening your hands and offering whatever you hold to God. Sometimes God takes what lies on your palm, sometimes God does not.

Another friction point-here it is-”take up your cross daily.” Those of us who dodge the daily cross may not even recognize when Gabbatha and Golgotha arrive. The cross casts its shadow in Peter’s rebuke, the concerned church official’s advice, the empty pew and lagging budget offering, the subtle and not so subtle pressure of society to conform or at least be still. Paul speaks of the stumbling block, the scandal, and the folly; the author of Hebrews, the shame, of the cross. Those feelings, the foe friend’s confidential advisory, the group’s stolid inertia should set off the alarm: Calvary’s at hand, come, follow.

We preachers all know where the cross is: it’s where your career is buried.

Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down your life for your friends” (John 15.13) You find crosses motivated by love of country, neighbor, truth everywhere. They don’t belong exclusively to church-goers or even Christians. Whistleblowers know about crosses. So do soldiers, aid workers, journalists, college students and teachers, the suffering and the aged.

Real followers of Christ always face the cross one way or another. This week the body of Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul Monsignor Paulos Faraj Rahho was recovered. Kidnappers also killed his driver and two bodyguards.  The Catholic agency PIME reports 47 Christians were killed in Iraq in 2007.

Shortly before his murder, Luis Espinal, a Latin American priest, wrote:

The faithful do not have a vocation to be martyrs. When they fall in the struggle, they fall with simplicity and without posing….Life ought to be given by working, not by dying….And if the day comes when they must give their lives, they will do it with the simplicity of someone who is carrying out one more task. (Gustavo Gutierrez, We Drink from Our Own Wells [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002], p. 117.)

Jesus said, “Follow me.” When we do, we’re never alone. We live in solidarity with all who have followed through the ages.
 

Tags: cross

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Bible, Spiritual life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.