Take Up Your Cross

This weekend, we Christians joyfully celebrate the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ, after gratefully and solemnly commemorating his sacrifice for us. We remember how the Romans forced Jesus to carry his own cross to the place of his crucifixion. When the blood loss from the soldiers’ whips rendered him too weak to continue, a passerby named Simon was pressed into service. We know little about this man other than he was Jewish, he had two sons, and he came from Cyrene (a city in Libya, so tradition holds that he was black).

Simon didn’t freely offer. Probably in Jerusalem for Passover, he’d be seriously inconvenienced by this gruesome detour. But when the Romans issued an order, the only options were to obey or die. Would they have asked for volunteers before recruiting Simon? Would anyone have stepped up? I doubt it, given how Jesus’s closest followers had already deserted him and those who remained were women. To many in the crowd, Jesus was simply one more rabblerouser who needed to be removed—the sooner, the better.

Now, in hindsight, millions of Christ-followers would stand in line for the privilege of carrying Jesus’s cross. We would consider the task an honor. Do you suppose Simon of Cyrene ever understood the significant role he played?

None of us will ever have that opportunity, but Jesus told his followers something shortly before his death that is far more significant. In Luke 9, he said “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”

Obviously, Jesus didn’t mean picking up a literal cross and being crucified, although some have gone to that extent to prove their devotion. All they accomplish is drawing attention to themselves, hardly Christ’s intent. His use of the word “daily” also makes it clear he wasn’t talking about giving up something for forty days of Lent.

Taking up our cross involves a denial of self, a daily commitment, and a sacrifice (which always benefits someone else). Is everyone’s cross different? Can it change from day to day? What might a modern cross look like?

• Denying yourself a winter vacation to provide a better life for a child in a developing country?
• Setting aside beloved hobbies to provide care to an elderly family member?
• Forgoing some longed-for new furniture so you can help a single mother?
• Surrendering precious “me time” to volunteer in your community or church?
• Trading a week at the resort for a week-long mission trip?
• Settling for a used car so an under-resourced person may have one too?
• Taking a smaller salary that more closely matches that of your employees?
• How about simply serving your family day in and day out with meals, clean clothes, and a healthy place to call home—without grumbling?

Did Jesus’s definition of “cross” here include shame and humiliation, like his cross surely did? If so, maybe it looks like speaking out against popular ideologies that go against the grain of dying to self. Or choosing to keep one’s mouth shut when the temptation to defend looms.

Is your cross the thing that will eventually kill you, though you might feel you’ve already died a thousand little deaths every day? If your cross does kill you … look at what awaits on the other side! Resurrection. Eternal life. Glory. Living in the embrace of your Savior.

Could it be that, like Simon of Cyrene, we don’t understand the significant role we play when we willingly take up our cross every day to follow Jesus?

Lots to think about. Happy Easter!

Why God’s Grace is More Amazing than Yours

You may have seen the story circulated on social media. An elderly woman accidentally breaks some dishes in a store. Embarrassed and ashamed, she begins gathering the broken pieces. While other customers observe, she frets over how she’ll pay for the merchandise. The store manager comes along and tells her not to worry. Insurance will cover the loss. He orders his staff to clean the mess. The woman goes free, filled with gratitude.

The story is intended to give us a picture of God’s grace toward us when we blow it. It warms our hearts, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

John 8 tells about the woman famously caught in adultery. Religious leaders catch her in the act (although her partner in crime somehow escapes their grasp). They throw her at Jesus’s feet, reminding him the law stated such a woman should be stoned to death. Jesus shows her mercy, advising the accuser without fault to throw the first stone. You’re probably familiar with the passage. I heard a sermon on this where the speaker invented a backstory for this woman in which she was sexually abused as a child. This may have been accurate; we can’t possibly know.

This version immediately incites our compassion for her. It places us on the woman’s side, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

In the Old Testament, God instructs the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute and to cherish and pursue her no matter how often she returns to her former ways. God intended Hosea’s marriage as an illustration of his love for his people, Israel, despite their unfaithfulness to Him. In a popular Christian novel based on Hosea (also recently released as a movie), the prostitute is a sex-trafficking victim since childhood. This premise makes her a sympathetic character, a smart move for an author to make—any author who understands human nature and how a good story works. (It also doesn’t hurt that she made the character beautiful.)

This assertion causes us to root for the character and cheer when she finally submits to love, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

What if the old woman in the store was a rebellious teen who deliberately broke the dishes and defiantly spat in the manager’s face, but he still let her off the hook? We wouldn’t love the story nearly so much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if the woman caught in adultery had been a man who chose an affair out of boredom—but Jesus still let him off the hook? We probably wouldn’t tell the story much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if Hosea’s wife came from a place of privilege? What if her character in the novel was a pimp instead? We’d hate that story, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

Before we mortals can root for those who receive mercy, we want to understand why they did what they did. It was an accident. They were victims. They were trying to fill the empty hole in their heart. Those scenarios make God’s grace so much more palatable to us. Our sense of justice is too strong to cheer for a defiant scoundrel.

Until, of course, that defiant scoundrel is us.

That sense of justice we all share exists because we were made in the image of God. He is a God of justice. He demanded it.

And then he provided it. That’s what Good Friday is all about: Jesus, taking the blow for the thief, for the adulterer, for the pimp, for you, for me. Though each of us is free to reject it, God’s grace came first. In case you’ve forgotten what we’re celebrating this weekend.

Happy Easter.

 

The Ultimate Superhero

Ever wish you could be the caped hero who swoops in and fixes all the ills of the world? Who magically zaps people and heals their diseases, repairs their hang-ups, makes them good? Who wipes out evil and famine and war? Or who, at the very least, helps one hurting person climb out of their self-imposed sinkhole and stand on their own feet?

If you have, you might make a great counselor.

If you have ever sought and received professional counsel for your life and relationships, you know the process can be both encouraging and difficult, but worth it. Taking time to root around beneath the surface exposes emotional rubble we don’t always want to look at. And we all have our rubble.

Whenever I look at mine, one of the most overwhelming and recurring impressions I’ve received has been the staggering size of God’s heart. My hurts and disappointments may be minuscule compared to what others have suffered, but when you multiply those hurts by the billions, for every person who ever breathed, all with our pain and scars, one question surfaces. If God truly sees it all, how can he bear it?

We hear on TV about abused or malnourished children and we want to change the channel because our hearts cannot handle it. The atrocities of war fill volumes. Hunger and disease run rampant. The age-old question about why God allows all the misery crops up easily. It leads many to conclude he may be loving, or he may be all-powerful, but he certainly cannot be both.

And then our protest is silenced by the shadow of a cross.

If the Bible is true, not only does God see it all, but he loves each hurting individual with a love we can only imagine. How can his heart stand it? His capacity for pain must be at least as great as his capacity for love. God’s heart breaks for the abuser as much as the abused, the perpetrator as well as the victim. And on some level, we are all both.

Jesus died on the cross not only for the sins you’ve committed but also for the sins done against you. Not just for forgiveness, but for healing. I don’t claim to understand this, but Isaiah foretold it: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”

It’s been said that if you can comprehend God, your god is too small. As you celebrate Easter weekend, may God grant you a fresh picture of his heart. We simply cannot put him in a box, understand, or explain him with our little human hearts and brains. We cannot fully appreciate the battle at Calvary, when all the forces of darkness rallied everything and hurled it all at my hero as he hung there. Every vulgar thought, every loathsome deed, every emotional or physical wound ever inflicted. All of it, flung at him as though he committed it all himself.

The suffering will one day come to an end. We have the ultimate Hero. He took it all. He paid the price. It is finished. We win!

Happy Easter.