Jesus invites us to take up the cross

Jesus invites us to take up the cross  

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most, said my friend.

It is when the path is darkest that I’m sure the light is there.

It is when I let go that I receive.

It is when I stop guarding myself from God, when I start trusting God, when I step out in faith, into the night, that I find my way.

That I find – his way.

It is not really my way at all; it is his.

If you would follow me, you must deny your self – your life, your inmost being; you must take up your cross and prepare to die with me; you must follow me.

But! You are the Messiah. What is going on here? 

It is necessary…

Is it? 

Get behind me, Tempter! For your thoughts are not God’s thoughts nor your ways God’s way: if you try to preserve your self you will lose your self, if you lose your self, you will gain life.

It is when I am not sure that I feel God the most. 

It is when I let go and trust, 

when there is nothing to turn to, 

and no light on the way, 

that I know I am homeward bound.

There is a breath in the midst of the darkness, 

in the absence a pregnant pause:  he is listening; 

the world is listening, it knows he is coming.

It is when I find no purpose inside myself, 

and no hidden inner resource, 

that I am most thrown back upon God, who is faithful. 

When the promise is impossible, then it is kept.

When I no longer try to keep it to myself, I fully receive it.

I am most receptive to God’s leading, when I am least sure of my own.

When I am not sure where to go, what to do, where he wants me to go, what he wants me to do, 

it is then that I feel God the most.

It is when he is absent that I know he is here. 

It is when I give up my self, preserving my own life, my way, 

that I find my way, gain my life, and receive my self.

(When I am most fully myself is when I am least full of myself!)

When I chose this passage from Genesis 17 for an ordination anniversary Eucharist, last summer, I was remembering the promise: I will make you ancestor of a multitude – of many who receive the blessing, who share in the faith; who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.  

Abram and Sarai are newly called in to covenant as parents of the promise, as parents of the faithful. They are faith-parents to faith-children; those who live in faith all are their descendants.

Our children are children of faith,

Our legacy is a legacy of hope,

Our mission is a mission of love.

The mission is the message: faith and trust and hope abide; and end in love, as they began – in Christ, in the bearing of the cross, love’s redeeming work is done.

Jesus invites us to take up the cross.

Second Sunday in Lent * March 4, 2012 

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38


Jesus invites us to become his true disciples: to take up the cross and follow him

The Judge Must Be Crazy

In the beginning God … created the heaven and the earth.

In the beginning … was the Word.

In the beginning there was … no sin. Was there? Then Adam bit into it – and the world was changed. Adam, – Adam meaning the man, the archetypal human being, – distrusted his Creator and took his own way in the world. That meant he learned about death, and sin, and folly, and loss.

And yet, God sent his own Son, to take the form of a human being, to take the form of Adam – that archetypal human being, and, as the Son of Man, he became the new archetype, the new model of what a human being can be – and is.

God sent his Son not to condemn the world but to redeem the world. We do well to remember that judgment was vindication, to the poor, the innocent, and the oppressed, the ones that Jesus came to, and he was their Judge – in the sense that he was their vindicator and defender.

It all reminds me of the worst play I ever saw… well, second worst, if you count the musical version of Major Barbara I sat through in college….

The Caucasian Chalk Circle: The Musical – put on by students at Carlmont High School. Oh, brother.

One of the best plays I ever saw was – The Caucasian Chalk Circle, by Bertolt Brecht, put on by Arena Stage. In it the story of the judgment of Solomon is changed: a rich woman has abandoned her child, a poor woman has taken it as her own and raised it – and now the rich woman wants it back. Azdak, the judge, who has a habit of judging in favor of the poor and oppressed, comes up with a test:

A circle of chalk is drawn and the child is placed in the center. The true mother, says the judge, will be able to pull the child from the center. If they both pull, they will tear the child in half and get half each. The test begins but the poor woman refuses to pull, as she cannot bear to hurt the child. The judge gives her one more chance, but again she cannot pull the child. The judge then declares that the poor woman is the true mother, as she loves the child too much to be able to hurt him.

The judge appears on the stage not to condemn the innocent but to save them: he is the vindicator of the poor and the oppressed. How crazy! How just.

Later, Abraham could have chosen to depend solely on his own efforts – to be a self-made man. “If Abraham was justified by works he has something to boast about,” as the apostle Paul says. But Abraham depended on God – and it was his faith that made him right in the eyes of God. He was a brave man, he worked hard, and he took risks we would hardly dare to take – today would you walk from Baghdad to Cairo and back to Jerusalem? But he depended on God. His life was in God’s hands and it was safe there.

Adam was disobedient and faithless, left the Garden in shame, under a curse. Abraham was obedient and faithful, left the land of his fathers in hope – headed toward promise, under the blessing. Jesus, the son of Adam, is even more the child of Abraham, bringing to us the fulfillment of the promise – that ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Nicodemus, a member of the council, is a leader of his people: responsible, brilliant, resourceful, powerful; yet, there is something missing – and he comes to Jesus by night. Being born from above, being born again: this requires becoming vulnerable again, beginning again. He knows he must expose his soul without the carapace of power if he is truly to live.

And then, Jesus tells him: the wind – the spirit, the pneuma, the breath of God – blows where it chooses, and you do not know where it comes from or goes. You have no control over the Spirit.

How can these things be? How, asks the accomplished and prominent member of the council, can a person – with all my advantages and achievements – give it all up to start over? How could he so humble himself? Could he give up all he has, all he has acquired and accumulated, for this one great thing – the gift of life?

He will have to give up his position, won’t he? Or at least admit that what he has based his life on is all wrong, and make the consequences? Take on a new life, based on a new reality?

It seems unlikely – it’s way too hard. It’s asking too much of a man, to start fresh.

And yet later Nicodemus, along with Joseph of Arimathea, is there to receive Jesus’ body in his arms when his body was taken from the Cross. (John 19:39-42)

Something changed for him – something in Jesus’ message, that day, long ago, when he was the vulnerable one. He had been born anew.

His life has found its meaning – his inheritance as a child of Abraham has been fulfilled; he becomes an heir to the promise as he based his life on faith.

He has been born into the promise of Abraham at last; he has received the vindication of God’s justice, and he is saved, not by his own accomplishments and advantages, but by his faith, as innocent and dependent as a newborn child, in God, “the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” (Romans 4:17)

***
ALent2
Genesis 12:1-4a
Psalm 33:12-22
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17
JRL+

Johannine ‘double-words’:

Nuktos (night)
Semeia (signs)
Anothen (again/above)
Pneuma (spirit/wind/breath)
Hupsao (exalt/lift up)