Jesus has said two seemingly contradictory observations. The first in that his yoke is easy. The second, pick up your cross and follow me.
Hmmm...
That whole cross thing doesn’t seem to be something light, does it? I mean, the beating, the embarrassment, the struggling with its physical weight or too, its psychological weight, the crucifixion and mocking, while being nailed to it. Nope, definitely not light. Even so, this carrying one’s cross is seemingly expected of Jesus’s followers.
Man is not by nature inclined to carry the cross, to love the cross, to chasten the body, and bring it into subjection....Resolve then, as a good and faithful servant of Christ, manfully to bear the cross of your Lord, who was crucified for love of you....Be assured of this, that you must live a dying life. And the more completely a man dies to self, the more he begins to live to God. [1]
This cross we bear has been described in various ways through the centuries including perhaps most importantly, being disparaged or lied about, or for being a disciple of God. More recently, the cross has been defined as the hard parts of life including extended caregiving of a disabled partner and I suppose all these could be included. But are these what Jesus meant?
Maybe.
Let’s look at Jesus before settling on an answer. What was Jesus’ cross? It was nothing less than emptying himself for the purpose of doing the Father’s will. He was insulted, beaten, and killed not for healing people per se, not for raising the dead per se. Those are not crosses. Well, they're not the cross we’re looking for. No, he was killed for nothing more than being faithful to God. In fact, his death was an example of his desire to do “your will, not mine.” His cross was emptying himself not just of God-privilege, but of ego in relation to the work, the life of God on earth. It is the emptying and denial of self in deference to the desires of God that is our cross.
Our cross may involve being fed to the lions, or drowned in a cage by Isis, but it doesn’t need to be. It might include years of care-giving for a disabled and cantankerous partner, but it doesn’t need to. It may be not being promoted or even being fired for holding certain beliefs and principles, but it doesn’t need to. The hardest thing it seems for us humans to do is to set ourselves aside in our faithful following of God – for whatever reason. This is what makes caring for that cantankerous invalid our cross. It isn’t the difficulty of the thing; the endless duration of the thing; the persistent exhaustion of the thing. It is the inherent denial of ourselves that is our cross.
The thing we are called to do, to endure, to die from gains its worth from our emptying, our denial of our egos, and our too often desires to please ourselves. It is in becoming the image or the icon of God as lived in the life of Jesus that we carry our cross. So the cross we are called to bear is our own dying life as we – in whatever circumstance – empty ourselves for others as our God does for others and the world.
When Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me, the cross to which he refers is you and me – ourselves. The good news? That once we die to ourselves we come to life, real life. But that’s for another time.
How can you; how do you need to die to yourself this week?
[1] a Kempis, T. (2004). The Inner Life, Shereley-Price, tr. New York: Penguin
Photo by Halanna Halila on Unsplash
Hmmm...
That whole cross thing doesn’t seem to be something light, does it? I mean, the beating, the embarrassment, the struggling with its physical weight or too, its psychological weight, the crucifixion and mocking, while being nailed to it. Nope, definitely not light. Even so, this carrying one’s cross is seemingly expected of Jesus’s followers.
Man is not by nature inclined to carry the cross, to love the cross, to chasten the body, and bring it into subjection....Resolve then, as a good and faithful servant of Christ, manfully to bear the cross of your Lord, who was crucified for love of you....Be assured of this, that you must live a dying life. And the more completely a man dies to self, the more he begins to live to God. [1]
This cross we bear has been described in various ways through the centuries including perhaps most importantly, being disparaged or lied about, or for being a disciple of God. More recently, the cross has been defined as the hard parts of life including extended caregiving of a disabled partner and I suppose all these could be included. But are these what Jesus meant?
Maybe.
Let’s look at Jesus before settling on an answer. What was Jesus’ cross? It was nothing less than emptying himself for the purpose of doing the Father’s will. He was insulted, beaten, and killed not for healing people per se, not for raising the dead per se. Those are not crosses. Well, they're not the cross we’re looking for. No, he was killed for nothing more than being faithful to God. In fact, his death was an example of his desire to do “your will, not mine.” His cross was emptying himself not just of God-privilege, but of ego in relation to the work, the life of God on earth. It is the emptying and denial of self in deference to the desires of God that is our cross.
Our cross may involve being fed to the lions, or drowned in a cage by Isis, but it doesn’t need to be. It might include years of care-giving for a disabled and cantankerous partner, but it doesn’t need to. It may be not being promoted or even being fired for holding certain beliefs and principles, but it doesn’t need to. The hardest thing it seems for us humans to do is to set ourselves aside in our faithful following of God – for whatever reason. This is what makes caring for that cantankerous invalid our cross. It isn’t the difficulty of the thing; the endless duration of the thing; the persistent exhaustion of the thing. It is the inherent denial of ourselves that is our cross.The thing we are called to do, to endure, to die from gains its worth from our emptying, our denial of our egos, and our too often desires to please ourselves. It is in becoming the image or the icon of God as lived in the life of Jesus that we carry our cross. So the cross we are called to bear is our own dying life as we – in whatever circumstance – empty ourselves for others as our God does for others and the world.
When Jesus says, pick up your cross and follow me, the cross to which he refers is you and me – ourselves. The good news? That once we die to ourselves we come to life, real life. But that’s for another time.
How can you; how do you need to die to yourself this week?
[1] a Kempis, T. (2004). The Inner Life, Shereley-Price, tr. New York: Penguin
Photo by Halanna Halila on Unsplash
Wow amazing
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