Before
you get the scissors out, though, let’s think about what we’re doing. We follow
the Crucified and Risen One. We’re not going to be able to follow in his Way
without death and a cross. Let’s make sure that we understand what Jesus is
calling us to do here.
First,
there’s Jesus’s call to deny ourselves. As a woman, I know the harm that can be
inflicted by telling someone that God wants them to give and give until she has
nothing left. Women, people of color, and others without power in our world are
often told by our culture that their job is to serve, to give, to stay
invisible. They are told by those in power who they can and cannot be. In that way,
they are shoved into a box, a box that tries to hide who they truly are: beloved
children of God. As some of us have been reading in Bishop Curry’s book, we are
each made in the image of God, each deserving of love. Curry talks about a time
in his youth when he felt ashamed of his blackness. He later learned how
oppressed people internalize their own oppression. Instead of hating the oppression,
they come to hate the self.[1]
Before they can be free from oppression, they must come to love themselves
through God’s eyes, through the eyes of a God who calls each of us to become our
true and beautiful selves.[2]
Clearly then, Jesus is not calling us in this Gospel to submit to abusive people
or circumstances.
What, then, must we deny? I had a call to the
priesthood when I was sixteen-years-old, yet I didn’t start the ordination
process until I was forty-five. For thirty years, I told myself that women
couldn’t be good priests, and that I especially was too nerdy and shy to break
through the stereotypes. Before I could become who I was created to be,
I had to set aside the self that my society had molded in me. I had to deny the
messages that had boxed me in. Before I could follow Jesus, I had to renounce
and disown the powerful voices that dictated who I could be. It sure took
me long enough, but by God’s grace I was given lots of “second chances.”
Sometimes, to free our God-given selves, we have to deny the false priorities in
which we are imprisoned.
The
other mistake we make is to think of Christian self-denial in terms of a call
to live empty and barren lives. Some people imagine the Christian life like a
perpetual Lent, full of false piety and void of joy and celebration. When
you watch Babette’s Feast for our movie discussion on Wednesday, notice
how people are living on that desolate coast in Denmark. Theirs is a faith that
preaches salvation through self-denial—even to the point of refusing to enjoy
the taste of delicious food and drink. Before the arrival of the mysterious
Babette, theirs is a sad existence indeed. Jesus is not asking us to live
without joy and beauty. He is not telling us in this Gospel that we must
renounce all earthly pleasure.
Make
no mistake, though. The call to deny ourselves is still difficult, even if it
doesn’t mean self-abasement and austerity. When Jesus calls out, “Deny yourselves,”
Jesus is asking us to put the Way of Love ahead of our own priorities; to put
Jesus’ purposes ahead of those assigned to us by the power structures of our
world. “Let go!” Jesus is calling. “Follow me into vulnerability, into a
life in which you are no longer in control, into a journey for which only God
holds the map.” Why? Because our vulnerability is what opens us up to
relationship. Vulnerability is the path to joy and fulness of life.
And
then there’s that looming Cross, the one that he says to carry on our backs to
the place of execution. Here, too, we often misunderstand. What are the crosses that we are asked to
carry? Are they made of life’s misfortunes that God expects us to haul glumly
around on our backs? My father suffered paralysis from a stroke at a fairly
young age, and I still remember hearing my mother tell her friends with a sigh,
“Well, I guess his illness is just the cross that I have to bear …” When the
school counselor told me that my mother was wrong in her assessment, that God
did not place that cross on her, I remember being confused. I could see the
weight on her slumping back just as plain as day. The counselor was right,
though.
When
Jesus asks us to carry our cross, he is not referring to the various burdens that
we human beings carry throughout our mortal lives: sickness, loneliness … or even
global pandemic. God does not wish any of these things for us. A cross is more
than a heavy load—it was a shameful instrument of execution meant for criminals.
To carry my cross is to carry all that condemns me: it’s to carry all of the
unpleasantness of my humanity, including my mortality. It’s to carry all the
things that I normally try to avoid seeing or touching. To carry my cross is to
take up my sin, my failures, my shame, my mortality—all those things that I can’t
bear to see within myself—and follow Jesus on the Way of Love. To carry my
cross is to be vulnerable to the consequences of faithful living.[3]
It’s to put all that I am, entirely in God’s hands.
I
heard about an image this week that might help us to understand our difficult
Gospel. This image also speaks powerfully to our lives as we continue to deal
with the effects of Covid-19 in our world. Think of the pandemic as a
riptide.[4]
Have you ever been caught in one of those mighty currents in the ocean? A
riptide pulls your feet out right out from under you, doesn’t it? You’re doing
your thing, swimming along just fine, and then all of a sudden, the current is
carrying you out into the depths, where drowning is a real possibility. You
lose control over your movements, overcome by the power of the waves. Do you
remember what to do if you are caught in a riptide? What you don’t want to do
is to try to swim back to the spot on the shore where you first started. In
fighting the current, you’ll exhaust yourself, and will likely die. But if you
give yourself over to the current, if you relax and try to get your bearings,
you can let the tide carry you to a new place further down the shoreline, to a
place of safety.
This
image is a warning to us as we respond to the effects of Covid on our church
and our lives. If we exhaust ourselves in a futile effort to “get things back
to the way they were,” we just might drown. But if we stop trying to control
the tide, trusting God to bring us along to a new place, we just might find the
fulness of life for which we are longing. This image also can help us to
understand today’s Gospel. Jesus and his disciples are also caught in a
riptide, a riptide more deadly even than the Covid-19 pandemic. They are caught
in a riptide of Evil, of powers and principalities that seek to destroy the
beloved children of God. If Jesus had fought evil with evil, worldly power with
worldly power, as Peter implored him, he would have been caught in the undertow
of war and empire. Only by responding with the power of divine Love--the Love
that no cross of shame can dim, the Love that no death can defeat—can Jesus
bring us life. If we are to follow him on this Way of Love, we too must
renounce our false selves and purposes. We too must make ourselves vulnerable
to one another. We must stand up to evil by “being true to who [we] are and
what [we] believe, and what [we] stand for,” come what may.[5]
We too must travel on the divine current to unknown destinations, both
dangerous and life-giving.[6]
And there, on that new shore, where God plants us, we will find life, love,
and the gift of beloved community.
[1]
Michael Curry, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times (New
York: Avery Press, 2020), 106.
[2]
Ibid, 95.
[3]
Dawn O. Wilhelm, quoted in Phyllis Kersten, “Lectionary Column for Sunday” in The
Christian Century, March 4, 2012. Found
at Lectionary
column for Sunday, March 4, 2012 (christiancentury.org).
[4]
This image comes from Helen Svoboda-Barber, “The Pandemic as a Riptide,” video
found at https://www.facebook.com/stlukesdurham/videos/332831514784945.
[5]
Barbara Harris, quoted by Michael Curry, 109.
[6]
Kersten.
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