Knitting a Conundrum

Fear of hell can, and in the past, has been an important motivator in why a person seeks out God. But it shouldn't be the only motivator that keeps us walking in the right.

St. John Neumann's act of contrition puts it well:

"O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen."

Yes, hell is a consequence of sin, one we dread. Yet like you said, it shouldn't be our ultimate motivation, although many might start there. But it is because of our love of Jesus, love of God that we want not to sin, because we love him and don't want to be separated by sin from him. We love him, those of us who follow him, to greater or lesser degrees, and it's because of that love that we are most motivated to do right.

But as a protestant teenager, fear of hell was a big motivator for me at about the age of 12, when I sought out baptism in the church I was raised in. Sometimes it takes time to get to be in love with God. It's a relationship which develops with time. But people who love don't want to be separated from their beloved by anything, and as we grow in our love of the Lord, that love makes us say, "I don't want to be separated from you, Heart of my heart!" and the consequences of sin as visions of fire no doubt fade as other emotions take their place.

My thought for the afternoon!

Labels: Following Jesus, Spiritual Growth

For a long time a personal slogan of mine has been based on Micah 6:8 -Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

To me, that is justice tempered with mercy, not just some sense of fairness or fulfilling the legal letter of the law, and it says do mercy that goes beyond that sense of fairness, beyond minimum requirements, because of the desire to be in relationship with God.

In I John 4: 16, John says: God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God. Love can be a hard road to walk. But on Holy Thursday and Good Friday, we are given the evidence of how much God understands just what he is asking. Jesus walked it too...he knows our weaknesses, how frail the flesh can feel, how deep anguish can go. First hand he has experienced how bitter the dust is when you fall, how it hurts to be wronged, the helplessness when a victim of injustice, how it feels to know people hate you, want to kill you, what it’s like to be lied about and tortured and slandered and killed for political reasons. He himself did what he asks us to do.

We’ll fall from his standard from time to time and again, but he will pick us up if we let him, and help us dust off, and get back up the road.

And he tells us to do the same with those we come in contact with. Teaching by example.

The love he demands of us isn't some spun sugar thing, hippie eyeglasses that see the world in rosy colors. The price he paid for this was heavy. The actions he expects of us are also heavy at times.

Love is seeing our fellow man as a child that God died to save, who has worth and value. Even if we don't like him, are frightened by him, or have been hurt by him. He showed us the way when he forgave the people who were putting him to death.

Love is forgiving, but forgiving doesn’t mean to abrogate your duties, to forget that the person you forgive for injuring you could be a danger, or a whole batch of silliness we seem to think love means.

Love means letting go of the hate. Love means to give up the reasons we use to treat our fellow as less than human. Love means to give up the prejudices, the hate chains we use to stop seeing a child beloved of God and create a lesser being.

Love is not necessarily an emotion, any more than forgiveness is. It is an act of will. It is forgiving because you were forgiven. It is being merciful, because God is merciful to you. It is responding as if we were doing things for Christ through the power of Christ because we love Christ, who first loved us.

Tonight, let us consider what he has done for us. And then in thankful admiration, pass on that gift wherever Christ leads us.

Labels: Following Jesus, Lenten meditations

It is the little touches that add up the most in life...saying the kind word, smiling at the lonely, helping someone know they are not alone that really let us show Christ's light in a daily way.

I read a quote today that says a lot: Mercy glorifies the one who receives it. Do-gooding glorifies the one who originates it.

When we do these things out of mercy, following Jesus, because we love Jesus, we aren't looking to toot our own horns. We are reaching out because of love. If we get into the do-gooding frame of mind, it's cause we want to look good, and that takes a big, noteworthy gesture.

Acting out of love, even if it seems tiny is worth so much more than doing a huge thing because it makes us look good. And we all have that within our means.

God is so good, to let such little things matter so much!

Labels: Following Jesus

The purpose of life does not consist in making money but in love and in truth, Benedict XVI explained during his Palm Sunday homily.

Addressing around 50,000 young people today, the Pope advised them "to not be satisfied with what everyone thinks, says and does. Be attentive to God, seek God." The youth were celebrating diocesan-level World Youth Day, held today.

The Holy Father began Holy Week with a procession of palms in a St. Peter's Square adorned with olive tree branches from the region of Puglia in Italy.

This procession, the Pontiff explained, "is above all a joyous testimony that we give to Christ, in whom the face of God is made visible to us and thanks to whom the heart of God is open to all of us."

Following Christ

"What does 'the following of Christ' mean concretely?" Benedict XVI asked in his homily.

"It has to do with an interior change of life," he answered. "It demands that I no longer be closed in considering my self-realization as the principal purpose of my life."

The Pope continued: "What we are talking about here is the fundamental decision to no longer consider utility and gain, career and success as the ultimate goal of my life, but to recognize truth and love instead as the authentic criteria.

"We are talking about the choice between living for myself and giving myself – for what is greater. And let us understand that truth and love are not abstract values; in Jesus Christ they have become a person. Following him, I enter into the service of truth and love. Losing myself, I find myself."

At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, the Holy Father greeted pilgrims in seven languages. In English he said: "May the great events of Holy Week, in which we see love unfold in its most radical form, inspire you to be courageous 'witnesses of charity' for your friends, your communities and our world."

Source:

Labels: Following Jesus

In a time where the family is constantly under attack, it is nice to see a reminder of Jesus' attitude towards the importance of the family. Father Cantalamessa did a great job of putting these things into a clear perspective:

Jesus, the woman, and the family
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Isaiah 43:16-21; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

The Gospel of the Fifth Sunday of Lent is about the woman surprised in adultery whom Jesus saves from stoning. Jesus does not intend to say with his gesture that adultery is not a sin or that it is a small thing. There is an explicit, even if delicate, condemnation of adultery in the words addressed to the woman at the end of the scene: "Do not sin anymore."

Jesus does not intend to approve the deed of the woman; his intention is rather to condemn the attitude of those who are always ready to look for and denounce the sin of others. We saw this last time in our look at Jesus' general attitude toward sinners.

As we have been doing in these commentaries on the readings for the Sundays of Lent, we will now move from this passage to expand our horizon and consider Christ's general attitude toward marriage and the family, as this can be discerned in all the Gospels.

Among the strange theses about Jesus advanced in recent years, there is also one about a Jesus who supposedly repudiated the natural family and all familial relationships in the name of belonging to a different community in which God is the father and all the disciples are brothers and sisters. This Jesus is supposed to have proposed an itinerant life like that of the philosophical school known as the Cynics in the world outside Israel.

There are words of Christ about familial bonds that actually perplex at first glance. Jesus says: "If someone comes to me and does not hate his father, his mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

These are certainly hard words but already the Evangelist Matthew is careful to explain the meaning that the word "hate" has in this context: "Whoever loves his father and mother ... son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37).

Jesus does not ask us therefore to hate our parents and children, but to not love them to the point of refusing to follow Jesus on their account.

There is another perplexing episode. One day Jesus says to someone: "Follow me." And the man responds: "Lord, let me go first and bury my father." Jesus replies: "Let the dead bury the dead; you go and proclaim the kingdom of God" (Luke 9:59ff).

Some critics let loose on this. In their eyes, this is a scandalous request, disobedience to God who orders us to care for our parents, a clear violation of filial duties!

The scandal of these critics is for us a precious proof. Certain words of Christ cannot be explained as long as he is considered a mere man, even if an exceptional one. Only God can ask that we love him more than our father and that, to follow him, we even renounce attending our father's burial.

For the rest, from a perspective of faith like Christ's, what was more important for the deceased father: that his son be at home in that moment to bury his body or that he follow the one sent by God, the God before whom his soul must now present itself?

But maybe the explanation in this case is even more simple. We know that the expression, "Let me go and bury my father," was sometimes used (as it is today) to say: "Let me go and be with my father while he is still alive; after he dies I will bury him and come follow you."

Jesus would thus only be asking not to indefinitely delay responding to his call. Many of us religious, priests and sisters, find ourselves faced with the same choice and often our parents have been happier for our obedience to Jesus.

The perplexity over these requests of Jesus arises in large part from a failure to take into account the difference between what he asked of all indistinctly and what he asked only of those who were called to entirely share his life dedicated to the kingdom, as happens in the Church even today.

There are other sayings of Jesus which could be examined. Someone might even accuse Jesus of being the cause of the proverbial difficulty in agreement between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law since he said: "I have come to separate son from father, daughter from mother, daughter-in-law from mother-in-law" (Matthew 10:35).

But it will not be Jesus who divides; it will be the different attitude that each member of the family takes toward him that will determine the division. This is something that painfully occurs even in many families today.

All of the doubts about Jesus' attitude toward the family and marriage will fall away if we take into account the whole Gospel and not only those passages that we like. Jesus is more rigorous than anyone in regard to the indissolubility of marriage, he forcefully confirms the commandment to honor father and mother to the point of condemning the practice of denying them help for religious reasons (cf. Mark 7:11-13).

Just consider all the miracles that Jesus performed precisely to take away the sorrows of fathers (Jairus and the father of the epileptic), of mothers (the Canaanite woman, the widow of Nain!), and of siblings (the sisters of Lazarus).

In these ways he honors familial bonds. He shares the sorrow of relatives to the point of weeping with them.

In a time like our own, when everything seems to conspire to weaken the bonds and values of the family, the only thing that we have not set against them yet is Jesus and the Gospel!

But this is one of the many odd things about Jesus that we must know so that we are not taken in when we hear talk of new discoveries about the Gospels. Jesus came to bring marriage back to its original beauty (cf. Matthew 19:4-9), to strengthen it, not to weaken it.

Source

Labels: family, Following Jesus

One of my friends, Mark at Dominican Idaho, wrote a wonderful piece about the Prodigal Son that ties into some of the current issues our culture is facing today. It is a good piece to think about. I am lifting a section that especially rang true to me:

The culture worships at the altar of TOLERANCE™, and one of the soldiers in the army of TOLERANCE™ is JUDGMENTALISM™. The idol of TOLERANCE™ is the opposite from true tolerance, as the goal is to impose by force on all that evil is not to be tolerated, but that evil is good, and that, in some cases, good is evil. Thus, those who oppose the empire of TOLERANCE™, by exercising the spiritual works of mercy and trying to help those enthralled by the empire of TOLERANCE™ to understand that evil is evil, and good is good, are labeled as intolerant, their crime being that they are JUDGMENTAL™, the exercise of the good, being placed under the head of JUDGMENTALISM™, the unacceptable ‘vice’ in the empire of TOLERANCE™.

For more on this, I highly recommend the article True and False Tolerance, by Philippe Beneton, from Crisis Magazine, 1996.

If we return to our two scriptures, you will note that both the Father and Jesus are equally guilty of being judgmental; the Father has absolutely nothing to do with the son’s abandonment; he can die in the pig pen, that is his choice; the Father would rather he return, but he is free to remain apart. Is this the Father’s will? Heavens no, and thankfully so. Does Jesus approve of the adultery of the woman? Heavens no, he tells her to go and sin no more.

Is it not odd that we go from these scriptures, to the culture, which has missed them entirely? If the Father had said, son, go back to your whores and pigs, would we be impressed? If Jesus had said to the woman, go back to your adultery, would we be impressed? Yet, why are we admonished to do just this?

Source: Dominican Idaho

The whole piece is worth reading. Read it!

Labels: Following Jesus

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

Lord, I know it's not my peace, for my peace is merely human, the absence of conflict. Your peace comes, unexpected, and unbidden, dropped like loving pearl drops of dew onto the hot and conflicted surface of my heart, the most precious of gifts, bringing new life whenever it touches me. Teach me, indeed to be a carrier of this peace, sharing it wherever I go.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Lord, I know it is my nature to desire an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or even worse, a head for an eye, a jaw for a tooth, but you have shown us, this is not the way. Help me, use me, whenever possible, to break those horrid and heavy chains of hate which bind us, the road of darkness which carries us on to more hurt and hate, by being a carrier of your love, even though it is so hard. Remind me of your forgiveness, even on the cross, when I long to strike out.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Thank you, Lord, for showing us the path out of hate after hate, hurt after hurt. By forgiving our brother, we can come before you, free from the endless cycle of hurt, and in doing this, we follow ever more closely in your footsteps, and become vessels of your light. Remind me, Lord, when I want to wallow in the dark pleasure of my injury, my hurt feelings, my harm, that I can be free from that by choosing to pardon, as you chose to pardon those who were there to take your life.


Where there is doubt, faith.

Doubt can be such a dark burden. Help me Lord, by my actions, my prayers, my choices, to show that there is more to the world than meets the eye, that loving and following you, even through the hard times is a joy and a blessing, and that even when I cannot see the way out, and am in the middle of the valley of the shadow of death, Lord, may what I do by word and deed, demonstrate that that certainty that You are with me.

Where there is despair, hope.

You are my hope, Lord. Help me share that hope each step of the way, in small ways or large, because the gift is so wonderful, I cannot keep it secret to myself. Show me how to see with your eyes those who need that hope, and open the ways for me to share it.

Where there is darkness, light.

You are the light of the world, Lord. Make me a lantern carrying that light wherever I go. As I walk with you, may this poor and dingy lantern become a clear crystal showing that light, not mine, but yours, which chases away all shadow.

Where there is sadness, joy.

O Lord, giver of all good gifts, your love is the true joy worth having. Let me be your vessel, a cup to share that joy, for you are our Bridegroom, whose living waters are the only wine that lasts, the only joy that sustains. As your vessel, use me to spread that to all whose lives I touch, instead of the bitter cup of me and mine.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

Labels: discipleship, Following Jesus

some more great words on fasting, this time from St. Peter Chrysologus (5th century bishop of Ravenna, Italy)

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.

Let this be the pattern for all men when they practise mercy: show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you.

If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry - what a wonderful phrase. This brings me back to a passage in Isaiah 58:

`Why have we fasted, and thou seest it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and thou takest no knowledge of it?'

Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers.

Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high.

Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a man to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a rush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the LORD?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?

(Isaiah 58: 3-6 RSV)

Going through the motions is meaningless. Fasting as a ritual is meaningless unless we have the right spirit. Fasting reminds us of what we do not have, and in turn should remind us of what our brother does not have. If our brother is in need, and we don't care, what good is it if we are depriving ourselves?

If you look for kindness, show kindness. Jesus told us very clearly that there is a reciprocal relationship here: If we are not willing to forgive, we will not be forgiven. If we do not reach out to our brother in need, we are not doing what we ought to do to Jesus.

May this time of prayer and fasting waken in us the awareness of what Jesus has done for us, what we are doing for Jesus, and the reality of what it means to suffer and love, so that we can learn to "show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you" for the glory of God.

Labels: Following Jesus, Lenten meditations, Spiritual Growth

Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:8-14 RSV

St. Paul weighs things in the balance: Everything he could have been - a major player in Jerusalem politics, an up and coming young rabbi whose name would have been passed down in the Talmudic tradition, powerful, respected vs. being an itinerant preacher for Jesus - not respected, often accused and dragged into court, beaten, poor, tired, but doing what he feels Jesus called him to.

And looking back, he sees everything that might have been isn't worth a hill of beans to what he is now - a follower of Jesus. He knows it is worth every suffering (for didn't Jesus suffer for us, and are we not linked to him in part by such things?), every striving, every reaching out for the goal of being a follower of Christ.

Total commitment. And if the world thinks it is worthless, it IS worthless to the world, because Paul's faith replaces reaching worldly things with reaching for God, for knowing him is worth all earthly treasure.

As I look around at my life, I know, like St. Paul, I am far from perfect. My commitment waivers, and the things of the world look so good sometimes, but like St. Paul, I want deeply to press onward. May the Lord make it always so, until my last breath. May such desire fill all of us who follow Jesus. Amen.

Labels: Following Jesus, Spiritual Growth

Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced in the Cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God's love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other. On the Cross, it is God Himself who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us. The Apostle Thomas recognized Jesus as "Lord and God" when he put his hand into the wound of His side. Not surprisingly, many of the saints found in the Heart of Jesus the deepest expression of this mystery of love. One could rightly say that the revelation of God's eros toward man is, in reality, the supreme expression of His agape. In all truth, only the love that unites the free gift of oneself with the impassioned desire for reciprocity instills a joy, which eases the heaviest of burdens. Jesus said: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (Jn 12:32). The response the Lord ardently desires of us is above all that we welcome His love and allow ourselves to be drawn to Him. Accepting His love, however, is not enough. We need to respond to such love and devote ourselves to communicating it to others. Christ "draws me to Himself" in order to unite Himself to me, so that I learn to love the brothers with His own love.

Pope Benedict XVI, from his Lenten Message, 2007

We are dust, shaped by a God who loves us, loves us enough to die miserably for us, to draw us, to cleanse us, to teach us the ways of love. Do we hear the voice of our Beloved calling us as he gives his all? In the Orthodox tradition, Jesus scourged and crowned is called the Bridegroom. Look what he has done to be ready for his Bride, to prepare his Bride for their life together...he gave everything.

Now is the time to look into our hearts and see how we should respond to that amazing love.

Labels: Following Jesus, Lenten meditations, Love

"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. " Luke 6:32 RSV

A radical view. If you only love those who love you, what credit is that to you?

If you only act lovingly to your family, your clan, your co-workers, the people in your village, the people like you and who you like, how are you different from anybody else? Jesus challenges, demands for us to be more. "If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you?" He asks. "And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you?"

He challenges us to love those we don't want to love, the unlovely, the low status, the mean-spirited, the ones who want to harm us. He challenges us to act kindly to those we will get no gain from, for who it is hard to care for.

His model for this is how the Father loves all of us: "Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish."

He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. But are we? How hard it is to be kind to the ones who make us feel like we should turn away! How hard it is to act with love to the ones we know want to hurt us!

Jesus never said it would be easy. His life and death shows us how hard it can be. But it starts by praying, like Mary, "Be it done to me according to Your word," and like Jesus, saying, "Not my will, but Yours."

Mother Teresa once said: "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." She also reminds us that "It is not the magnitude of our actions but the amount of love that is put into them that matters. "

Let us pray for tender hearts that are willing to act with love when we don't want to, to see the eyes of Jesus in the face of a person we would rather ignore, and be His peace to those whose lives we touch.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Lord, soften our hearts and teach us how to love, so we can be your light in the world!

Labels: Following Jesus, Love

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves; let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to edify him. For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, "The reproaches of those who reproached thee fell on me." Romans 15: 1-3 RSV

What a summation of how to live the Christian life! If loving God and loving one's neighbor is the core of how to approach life as a Christian, it has to start with us bearing with one another, living not for ME, but for God and neighbor.

Here's an example: choosing our clothes. It's the current custom in the US that women can wear whatever they feel like and men just need to deal with it. But if we follow St. Paul's advice, we would be careful to choose clothing that is not unwarrantedly distracting, because it hinders, not helps our fellow people (now I'm not talking about wearing burkhas here...more like covering up bear middrifts and not wearing overly tight or short clothes, especially to places like the office or church. )

No matter what way we feel called to dress or behave, we would do well to remember this saying from St. Francis of Assisi to his brothers: Preach the gospel everywhere you go, and if you have to, use words.

Our lives, by our choices in word, action, deed ought to reflect our Christian vocation. Remembering the parable of the servant who was forgiven much, but didn't forgive his fellow servant, we need to realize that these everyday things matter, and matter a lot. The outside world ought to be able to tell we are Christian because of how we live, how we act, how we treat our fellow men. We need to work on being Christ's light, not hidden under a bushel basket, but visible, open, and showing why it's worth being a follower of Jesus.

Labels: Following Jesus, Ways of Holiness

Jesus said to the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?"

Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." John 6:67-69 RSV

One of the things that mark the committed Christian is this reality: We believe Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God, the Second Person of the Trinity, Emmanuel God-With-US, and believing that, how can we go away? We know his words are the words of eternal life.

Every one who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon rock; and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it, because it had been well built. Luke 6: 47,48 RSV

Learning do to his words is the work we are here to learn. And his teaching is summed up quickly like this: "Love God with everything you have and are, and love your neighbor as yourself, because in acting with love to those in need, you are acting in love to Me."

Today, if each of us, all over the world, would do one deed of kindness, for God, through His power, because He asked it, the world would be transformed in ways we cannot imagine. But since I cannot get everybody to behave that way, I will make this promise: To remember how much God loves, and to try to show that love to someone who I don't want to, each and every day, at least once.

Labels: Following Jesus

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Matthew 10:24,25 RSV

We use the term to carry one's crosses sort of glibly, but let us take a moment to think about the context here. In Jesus' day, one would occassionally see an execution procession, where the victims were tied to the heavy crossbeams that would be used to execute them with, as they were marched to the place of execution where the uprights were placed permanently.

These were heavy beams, around a hundred pounds or so, and normally they would tie the victim's arms to it as he walked.

Here, we see Jesus saying, "Take up this load willingly. If you think you're going to save your life in the long run by running away from this burden, you will not, and you will lose. If you take it up and follow me, even though it looks like you are going, burdened, giving up, to a place of loss, you will find your life."

To repeat that, Jesus says:

Follow me if you want to live.

Deny yourself, and reject those things the world says are good, but God says are not.

Even if the world thinks you are burdened and a loser, you are not.

Those who follow the world will find themselves on the losing end.

Don't think it's just going to be a cakewalk. We're talking about giving up and accepting something contrary to the world's wisdom, and that can make it seem very heavy.

Jesus demonstrated this in a very literal way, by taking up his own cross, suffering and dying, and then rising on the third day. But one of the truths about being a follower of Jesus is being willing to give it all up for the glory and love of God. How we are asked to do that giving varies, but the giving is implicit in the relationship. If you are not willing to take up one's cross, you can't really follow Jesus the way he asks.

Labels: Following Jesus

"Why do you call me `Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you?

"Every one who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep, and laid the foundation upon rock; and when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house, and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

"But he who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation; against which the stream broke, and immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great." Luke 6:46-49 RSV

People like to make fun of the WWJD slogan that has been popular in some circles the last few years. Yet the basis of knowing how to do what we ought to do for a holy life is bound up in just that: knowing what Jesus might do, what his teachings say, about how to handle life's situations.
In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis declares: "Whoever desires to understand and take delight in the words of Christ must strive to conform his whole life to Him. "(I, 1).

Sometimes it seems that how we do this can be trite, driven by current social norms and ideas, like in the question, "Would Jesus drive an SUV?" which I have seen discussed. But no matter, it is still the direction we should walk in. "Follow me," Jesus says, and we need to study how to follow him.

Labels: Following Jesus