All In.

Mark 11:1-11

 Ever have one of those moments when you just know what’s going to happen next, and you’re like, “Uh, that’s not going to end well”? It’s as if you can hear the menacing music in the background as the unarmed girl wanders into the dark alley, and you're like, "DO NOT go in there!" Or there are those times when you can just foretell the future, or you have the gift of precognition. That mechanic is going to charge me too much, or this storm’s gonna knock out the power, or that predatory lender is going to get them into a hot mess of trouble. And yet, the girl just keeps walking into that alley, you let the mechanic do the work, you don’t charge your cell phone just in case, and you sign off on that loan anyway. Or you splurge on the new dining set you can’t afford. Or maybe you go for a run for the first time in months, and you can predict what it's going to feel like the next morning. Or you drink too much, but you’re having such a great time that you just keep drinking. You do the thing you know is going to lead you into trouble. Or you do the thing you know is going to hurt the next day. And you just do it anyway.  Dan and I do this with our kids all the time. It just happened the other night, as a matter of fact. Jonah and Levi were wrestling in the hammock, and Dan and I were pleasantly finishing our dinner. It was so nice not to have to get up to get them seconds or to get up and get them the salt or to get up and refill their water, or to get up and pour a bowl of cereal because dinner is just so “disgusting” that Dan and I just let the kids go crazy kicking each other for a few minutes. But, I swear, just as the words, “you guys are going to get hurt; this isn’t going to end well” came out of my mouth, Jonah cries out in pain, jumps out of the hammock, and there he is right in front of me with his finger at an odd angle and him telling me, “don’t touch it, it hurts!” Well. 

That was the end of dinner. Commence the next three hours consulting my hockey-mom-nurse sister and scrolling through websites to see if we, indeed, had to head to the emergency room. 

I’ve done this in job interviews. I just know that they are going to ask me about atonement theories or eschatology or radical inclusion, and I’m going to have to tell them the truth. And it’s probably not going to end well for me. But I just have to do it anyway. No matter how much I might have needed the job. it’s the right thing to do.

This is Jesus’s situation in our reading today. This is not going to end well. And he knows it. The first seven verses of our reading are about how he’s got this all planned out. And he has predicted his death to his disciples three times before this. He is stepping in it, and he knows it. He doesn’t want it, but he’s no idiot. A plus B equals C. 

This is an overtly political act. And it’s planned. And like the folks marching in Selma, or in Birmingham, or in the Black Live Matter Protests, or like the politicians who pick a fight with the NRA, he knows that it’s not going to end well, but he also knows that it’s absolutely the thing he has to do. Jesus sets up this whole parade in order to subvert the political and military parade that’s happening on the other side of the Temple. Pilot is processing in. 

And he has his soldiers and his chariots and his banners a-waving to remind the pilgrims into Jerusalem for the Passover feast that they may be celebrating their liberation from Egypt, but they have not been liberated from Rome. Rome is still in charge. Rome will remain in charge. Rome will allow you to have your little piddly celebration, but Pilot is here to make sure that all of that stays under control. He wants things decent and in order, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, through the back door, is Jesus arriving on the back of a colt. And he’s got the crowds all riled up. The Matthew account has them literally tearing the branches off of trees. This is no orderly, peaceful protest; this is pandemonium! They’ve pulled branches they’ve cut from the fields, they’re yanking off their cloaks, and they’re shouting “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!” Now. These are treasonous words. Jesus has this whole thing set up like a military parade, although a strange, subversive one, at that. Jesus is marching in to the city as if he is a victorious military commander showing off his strength and prowess and power. But he’s doing it on a young colt or a donkey, which is a symbol of peace, and he’s doing it surrounded by peasants, and he’s doing it through the back door. But this is still dangerous. To quote scholar Amy-Jill Levine, “when the crowds hail a new hero, they are also challenging Roman authority.” See, this parade, this celebration, this energy and bedlam and mayhem and anarchy, leads in one direction: The Cross. Jesus is stirring the pot, he’s ruffling the feathers, he’s poking the bear, he’s adding fuel to the fire, and he’s rocking the boat. This is Jesus’s crude middle finger to the powers and principalities of his time. 

And he knows where this thing is headed. He knows he has it coming. But he does it anyway. All throughout the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is commanding everyone to keep the truth of who he is to themselves. This even has a name. It’s called the Markan secret. But now, when it is absolutely the most dangerous time to do so, even when it absolutely makes no sense whatsoever, Jesus accepts and embraces his title. He’s let the cat out of the bag. He is the Messiah. He is the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. 

This is why it is so important that we celebrate the combination of both Palm and the Passion Sundays. You cannot separate the one from the other. Although the disciples are utterly shocked at the proceeding series of events, Jesus is not. 

He knows exactly what he’s getting in to. He knows exactly where this is gonna lead. And he does it anyway.

He doesn’t want to do it. And yet, he knows he’s called to it. He trusts that God’s going to do something with it. He hopes that God will make something out of it. So he hops on this unbroken colt and he lets the chaos happen and he knows it’s all downhill from here. Jesus willingly steps into the hard stuff because he knows that somehow, God is going to make lemonade and open the window and bear fruit out of the broken and dying seed. 

So what’s the hard thing we are called to do? Should we go down to Georgia and hand out bottles of water on polling days? Should we protest in the streets? 

Should we refuse to pay the same percentage of our taxes that go towards war and weapons of mass destruction? Or maybe it’s just the simple acceptance of where all of this, all of this accumulating and relationshipping and life living is going to lead. We are going to die. Our institutions are going to die. Even when we’re celebrating our victories, even when we’ve got the raise and we’ve won the election and we’ve landed that big account, we know that in the end, it’s all going to end. 

Jesus steps into this mess and this heartache and this predictable, inevitable suffering because he trusts. He hopes. He desires and he needs for the God of life to be true, to be real, to be him. Good has to come out of bad. It just has to. So he throws it all in. He throws all his chips in. He bets it all on God, he bets it all on who God has made him to be. 

I don’t think God asks all of us to be the gadfly on the “steed of the state.” I don’t think we’re all called to disrupt the powers and principalities in such a way as to cause chaos and pandemonium. Some of us are. But I do think God calls all of us to enter in to this hard thing of being who we were made to be, even if that means a death. Even if that means a sacrifice. Even if it means the heartache of trying and trying and getting it wrong and trying again until we finally get it right. We are absolutely called to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, no matter what the government and the newly passed voting laws have proclaimed. We are absolutely called to be our fullest and most complete selves, even if that doesn’t fit with what the magazines or Facebook or the movies tell us. There is a death in accepting that. But there is also real life. 

Jesus says, “Enter in, as you are, even if it means hard stuff. It will be chaotic and confusing and I know you know where this is all going to lead, but do it any way. There is life on the other side. 

And to that I say, “Hosanna,” “God save us.”

Thanks be to God. 

I-Thou, Subject-Subject, Sushi and Phineas and Ferb

 

John 12:22-30

This passage is such a hard one to get right. It’s a fine line between “let it fall” and “throw it into the ground,” between “let it burn” and “burn it all down.” Do we praise this seed that sacrifices itself for the good of others, or do we sort of romanticize this seed and begin to think that the only way out of pain is through pain and destruction? It’s such a fine line between the prosperity gospel and a resurrecting Gospel. Should we rejoice that the seed is dying, that our family members have passed away, that martyrs have sacrificed their lives because something good is going to come out of it? Do we rejoice that the caterpillar has to literally decompose into goo because a butterfly is going to come out of it eventually? Where’s the right place to land between sorrow and hope, between idealizing violence and resurrection? I mean, if God always transforms tragedy into triumph, why aren’t we all running out into the street right now so we can get hit by a bus, or entering war zones with flowers and our hands up? When bad stuff happens, why aren’t we just shaking it off and saying, “eh, no worries, it’ll all turn out right in the end”?

I think it’s because we all know, deep down, that sometimes, God doesn’t win, at least not right now, not right here where we really need it. Sometimes, God comes to us as weak and broken and nailed to a cross. Sometimes people twist and manipulate God’s word and people of Asian descent, or African Americans, or the poor or the sick end up dead. Sometimes we plant our seeds and they don’t grow. Toddlers get swept up onto the beach and kids live in cages and families spend their entire lives starving in refugee camps. Sometimes things just don’t work out. The thing we want most in the whole world just doesn’t happen. 

We try to come up with reasons why bad things happen. We try to find a way to understand it so that somehow we can find out what or who is to blame so then we can avoid it. That way, it’s your moral failing if you’re poor or sick or shot by the police. It’s easier that way. We don’t have to see the suffering other as us. We can distance ourselves. We can keep ourselves safe. In fact, we set up systems to promote these ideas. These structures and institutions reinforce that if we just get health insurance or study hard in school or grow up in a certain neighborhood or invest in retirement that it’s all going to be ok. If we plant the tulip bulbs in the Fall, surely, surely, they’ll come up in the Spring.

But we all know that when tragedy strikes us, it never makes sense. The first question we ask when it happens is “Why?” And we keep asking it ever after, even though we know that there will never ever be a satisfactory answer.

I do this with my kids all the time. Somehow, I think that if I tell them to “be careful” and then they choose not to be, then somehow it won’t hurt so much when they get hurt. I can just stand back and say, “See, I told you so. You should have listened to me.” But not only can I not predict and step in every time my child takes a risk that might result in some negative consequences, but when they do suffer from negative consequences, I end up hurting just as bad anyway. I think that finding someone or something to blame will make me feel better, even if it’s my kid, but in reality, it just doesn’t. And it never works if we rush in to see the “silver lining” or “the light at the end of the tunnel” or the “good in the bad” before we’ve let them really feel the pain of it all. There are some things in this world that I just can’t fix for my kids. All I can do is hold them. Hold them and cry, and let them cry and lash out and feel all the feelings they’re having. Jonah’s going through it right now. Lots of his close buddies are going to a different school next year. And he’s wrecked. And there’s nothing we can do about it. All we could do was try to mitigate some of the pain by ordering some sushi and letting him watch Phineas and Ferb on a school night, but, that pain, his pain, isn’t really going anywhere. It will come back. So we all have to deal with the hard things. I just have to let them experience whatever it is for themselves, as themselves. I can stand next to them. I can hold them. But I can’t take it away. It’s their life and they have to live it. I can’t keep myself safe from their pain, no matter how hard I try. 

So. Ok, I think to myself. Ok. Let’s just embrace the pain. If we can’t beat it, why not join it? God calls us to walk the path of suffering with Jesus. So let’s go. Let’s do it. Let’s sacrifice and feel the pain and believe that it’s through the pain that we get our ticket out of here. No pain no gain, right? The only way out is through, right? Just throw yourself down, and some “angels will lift you up with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” 

I’ve been struggling with this in my prayer times. In these Ignatian Exercises that I’m working on, we’re supposed to meditate on the Suffering Christ and consider in what ways we are being called to follow him all the way to the Cross. We’re supposed to listen to where God wants us to sacrifice, and “die to the self” so that we can participate in the suffering and then somehow, also participate the redemptive work of Christ. So I’m reading the Gospel of Matthew, the part where Jesus is tempted by Satan in the wilderness, and then I keep reading on to where Jesus is rejected by his friends and family in his own home town and almost thrown over a cliff, and I’m praying, “Ok Jesus. Teach me to be like you. In what ways do I suffer from temptations, how can I avoid temptation like you did, how can I take risks like you did, and how should I handle rejection, give me the boldness to confront even people I’m terrified will reject me, and show me show me show me how to be like you, Jesus.” 

“I’m listening for you, Jesus. I’m waiting. Look at me! I’m ready! Tell me what you want me to hear. Speak O Lord, your servant is listening!” I have my journal turned to a fresh page, and I have my favorite pen, and I’m ready to make a plan, Jesus. I’m ready to fall to the ground and break open for you, Jesus. I’ll buy the plane tickets to war torn Syria, I’ll sell all my my worldly possessions and become a missionary in the Congo, I’ll donate both of my kidneys, I’ll open my home to homeless folks struggling with addiction, just say the word, Jesus, and I’m there. I’ll do it. I’ll sacrifice because I love you so much and the grain of wheat must die before anything can grow and after the darkness comes the dawn, and after the storm comes the calm, and sometimes you need a forest fire before the pinecones will open up and release their seeds. I have the matches and the kerosene ready to go God, just tell me when.

And you know what I “heard” when I was so busy worrying about what I needed to do ? It was so faint, and I was so busy asking for what I wanted, and I was so anxious to hear God speak, and I wanted so badly to know what to do, and I don’t really think that God talks to me anyway so why trust it now, that I almost missed it. Something, somewhere, something, somehow, sent me a message. And you know what it said? It said, “Would you just listen to me?!” With a few more expletives than are appropriate in this particular setting added in. (I really should start coming to an understanding that when a voice speaks to me out of love and also uses salty language, it’s probably something I should really listen to.) See, I was so caught up in how I could learn from this, in how I must sacrifice for that, in what learning objective or metaphor for faith I could wrestle out of these passages that I totally missed it. I simply couldn’t be present with the struggle and the hurt and the pain that Jesus felt this whole time. I was ready to “get something out of it,” rather than listen, really listen, to Jesus, listen to his experience, listen to his hurt and his pain and the feelings of rejection, and how hard it was for him, simply because he was human. I couldn’t hear his pain because then if I did, I wouldn’t be safe. I might have to feel some pain. I might have to participate in who Jesus is, and well, who wants that? We want the get out of jail free card, we want the ticket to heaven, we want the easy fix and the plan and the answers. Too bad Jesus doesn’t give us any of those things. He only gives himself.

Do you remember your early grammar classes when you learned about subjects and objects? The subject of the sentence is the thing doing the action. And the object of the sentence was the thing being acted upon. The cat chased the dog. The cat is the subject, the one doing the chasing, and the dog is the passive object, the one being chased. 

I think, maybe, even when I haven’t intended it in any way, I’ve been the subject of my own life, and everybody and everything else has been the object. Martin Buber calls this the “I-It” relationship. We live in a world and in structures and systems that distill our experience into these kinds of subject/object, I-It relationships. I’m the focus of my world, and everything else is an object, a thing to serve, or to love, or to use, or to manipulate, or to even sacrifice for. It’s not all bad to live like this. In fact, it’s pretty important to have a sense of self. And this is more layered than “I’m just a selfish person,” but rather, I’m the actor, everything else gets acted upon. I can’t really know anyone else’s experience, I can only know mine, and out of that, I act.

Now, actually, this is pretty healthy. We want to be subjects. We want to have agency and be free to determine our own destinies and be our fullest individual whole selves. But here’s the challenge. So often when we do that, when we make ourselves the subjects, we turn others into the object. Jenn chases Jesus. Jenn sacrifices for Jesus. Jenn asks Jesus what to do. Jenn is ready to respond and see and understand and act. Jenn falls to the ground and dies so that new things can be born. Can you hear it? Even in my good intentions, even when I’m being my most self-less, Jenn is still the subject, and everything else, even Jesus, is the object. Everyone gets acted upon instead of being freed to act and feel and think however their true selves want to act and feel and think.

In other words, “Would you just shut up and listen, Jenn?” Would you just let me be me?

Would you just see that I am hurt? That I have pain? That I struggle and my soul is troubled? Don’t rush to the lesson. Don’t rush to how this affects you. Don’t try to make some sense of this so that you feel better. Just see me. Let me reveal myself to you. Let me drag you in to this awkward, painful, difficult space where there is nothing you can do to fix any of it. There’s no “right way” to be. There’s no perfect response. There’s just a You and a Me. A subject and a subject. Me as me. You as you. And we’re both seeing each other as full and complete and whole without us having to do anything to fix one another. It’s just me and you, Jenn. So just listen. You’re not an object. And I’m not an object. We’re both here, as we are, whole, present. Subjects. Nothing needs to be fixed. The pain is here, and you can’t take it away. So just feel it with me. Enter it with me. Listen to how it hurt and challenged and changed me. See me.

And I think that’s the thing. 

There it is. 

We are terrified of what this might mean. We are terrified of what this might ask of us. Because it means that I can’t control what another subject thinks or feels about me. I can’t manipulate them into liking or hating me. I can’t fix things for them or rephrase things for them or help them in some way so that they don’t hurt anymore. I have no control over who another subject is. I just have myself, my messed up, broken, revealed, wide open self that can do nothing other than order up some sushi and sit with you while we watch twenty minute episodes of Phineas and Ferb. 

We have to risk making each other the Subjects. Buber calls this the I-Thou relationship. It’s a place where I encounter You. Where I-my fullest “me”- meets up with You-your fullest, realest you. And I have to risk that maybe you won’t make me a Subject in return. We have to risk being our real selves accepting their real selves. And I think this is actually what all the dying seeds and dying to the self and rejecting the flesh and sacrificial language is actually all about. It's about taking the risk. But instead, I think we’d all rather be confirmed in what we aren’t than chance the possibility of not being accepted at all. So we pretend to be who we aren’t, which means we aren't really subjects in the first place, and we try to make everyone else an object, because deep down, we’re scared that we’ll be rejected. But Jesus invites our true selves into his true self. There is no rejection. Jesus is the great “I AM.” He takes the risk to be the subject. He takes the risk to invite others as their own subjects. He invites us, not to change, but to let ourselves be revealed, just as he reveals himself to us. 

“And now my heart is troubled,” he says. 

There he is. Showing up. His real, full vulnerable self. 

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” When I die, when I show up as my fullest self and you all reject me, that’s when you’ll be invited as your full self. That’s when you’ll see the me in the you. And that’s salvation.

“Father, glorify your name.” You be you, Jesus says. He doesn’t even make God into an object. Be who you are. Don’t let me change or manipulate you. Because when you are you, then I am free to be me, and when we are free to be ourselves, then so are they. This union, according to Richard Rohr, is “realized by surrendering to it and not by any achieving of it.” It’s not by achieving some object, but by surrendering to the Subject.

The Gospel isn’t about transforming or embracing pain. It’s not about nailing ourselves to the cross. 

It’s not about chasing down pain and embracing hardship and running out in front of busses. It’s not about glorifying pain so that something good can come out of it. It’s about listening. It’s about letting Jesus be the subject, even while you are also the subject. It’s about letting go of the self that wants to turn everybody into objects, and embracing ourselves and each other, as full subjects, with all the mess and the misunderstanding and the pain that that brings.

Maybe there is a rainbow after the storm, and maybe there is a heaven where everything is made right, and maybe God does “win” eventually, and we all get to escape this world of suffering through the power of the resurrection. Maybe bodies come back to life and justice is done and the persecuted will cry no more. But until then, there is a You and a Me. Subject and Subject. 

Thanks be to God.

Cicadas in the Dark: John 3:16 and the "Eternal Now"

READ! John 3:14-22

I have this series of really helpful commentaries. Many of you have probably heard of them. They’re called “Feasting on the Word,” and they’re this huge collection of lectionary-based reflections for each passage that is highlighted in the Revised Common Lectionary. I like to follow the lectionary, because it’s like getting an assignment - I have to wrestle with texts that are hard, texts that don’t make sense, and texts that have become so cliche that we’ve forgotten how very radical and life changing they can be. Dan gave me every volume of this commentary as an ordination gift, and it has been so helpful. What I like most about it though, is that they’re mine, not a library’s, so I write and scribble and underline and cross out right there in the book. I can desecrate these texts however I want because they’re mine. I mean, you’re welcome to borrow them any time, but they will come prepackaged with my questions, my doubts, my frustrations, my strange conspiracy theories, and my weak attempts to make metaphorical connections where there simply are none. It’s a place to test things out, and, since the lectionary cycle rolls around every three years, it’s also a place to go back to what I was thinking about and struggling with three years ago. 

Well. Three years ago, in the section marked John 3:14-22, I wrote, “God doesn’t talk to me.” And then I proceeded to scribble down quotes about doubt and belief and darkness from thinkers such as St. Augustine, Paul Tillich, Madeleine L’Engle, Mother Teresa, and Frederick Buechner. Three years ago was a not-so-fun year in my life, it was pretty dark; if you cut down the tree of my life and examined the rings, you would notice some definite disease and atrophy in one particular ring, and you could clearly label that ring the years 2017 and 2018. It feels so long ago, and yet I can bring particular horrible moments to the front of my mind as if they happened yesterday. Time is weird like that.

We’ve turned John 3:16 into such a cliche. We see it painted on bedsheets at football games, we slap bumper stickers with this verse onto the trunks of our cars, we use it as a scripture bomb to lob over to someone who doesn’t believe the same way we do so that we can somehow prove that our way is the best and only way. It’s become our get-out-of-jail-free card, our hall pass to get us out of the hell of first period wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

Just agree to this verse, logically assent to the series of propositions that it presents, and voila, instant heaven. That’s it. All of your worries about your regrets and your fears about what happens after we die, are, poof, gone. Simply agree to the veracity of this verse, and that’s it, you’re done; you’re heaven bound. Now you just have to suffer through the inconveniences of this life until you get to the end and then you cross over the rainbow bridge where everything is peace and light and perfection and halos and harps and angel wings. 

Three years ago, I was clearly not in the mood to acquiesce to a simple test to determine whether I was in or I was out, nor did I have the capacity to see beyond my own pain and my own darkness. I was in no place to accept an easy answer to put me out of my misery, or to at least say, “well, at least there’s heaven in the future.” Nor was I strong enough to wrestle with, come to terms with, and to find peace in my past. I was just in this middle spot. Maybe God exists. Maybe God is good. Maybe some kind of salvation is real. But all I have is right now, and right now, “God doesn’t talk to me.” 

I was in the middle of this process of healing my brain from all the damage my thoughts had caused over the last few years. I knew I couldn’t go back to my old way of thinking, I knew I had dug ruts to fast track me from one negative thought to the next, and if I went down that road in my mind, it would lead to no good. But I hadn’t yet formed new connections, linked new synapses, developed new thoughts with which to replace the old ones. I couldn’t go back. But I didn’t have the tools I needed to go forward, either. I was sort of stuck in the present moment, in the present thought, where the past was too painful to carry and the future not only didn’t exist yet, but was too amorphous to even imagine. My days consisted of taking one step at a time, one breath at a time, surviving from one minute to the next. I was living off of coffee in the mornings and sleeping pills at night. 

This middle place, this place of neither past nor future, was the place I needed to be. I needed to be present in the right now. In fact, it was the only safe place that I could be. I just tried to pay attention, to be here, right now, and when I couldn’t do that, well, I just went to bed. Life was in the now, not in the heartache of the past, and not in the unknown, formless future. 

So I just stayed there. I stayed there, and I healed. Or God healed. Or we healed together. 

See, I think we maybe get it a little bit wrong, or we miss something important, when we cast this very important verse solely into the realm of where we’re going to end up when we die. Does it bring you comfort about what comes after this life? Excellent. Do you hope for a heavenly state where you are reunited with loved ones and pain has ceased and you’re singing the praises of your savior until the end of time? Awesome. Hold on to that. Don’t give that up. 

But. Or, rather, and. 

There is an eternal life that is right here, right now, that we so often miss because we’re so occupied with the regrets of the past, or we’re so obsessed with escaping into the future. 

Paul Tillich calls this the “eternal now.” 

He says our existence is defined by time. We have a beginning and we will have an end. There was a time before we existed. And there will be a time after. And some day, even time will end. Just as the darkness was separated from the light and the earth was formed and the soil created and time began, so will the soil disappear, and the earth will fall away, and darkness collapse back into the light. There is a beginning. And there is an end. But, he says, the God who enters time is also the God who is also outside of time. Time will end, but there is an “eternity above time,” there is an “eternal as the ultimate point in our past.” And, likewise, there is an eternal as the ultimate point in our future. Or, stated a little more simply, time is just a construct, as we have just illustrated today when we some how “lost” an hour of sleep last night and suddenly the sun will stay out an hour “longer” tonight. 

There is something even beyond time, outside of time, that isn’t defined by a past or a future, but that just is. We call this reality, “God.” God, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. And just as we believe that God became flesh and entered into the temporal now of human existence, Tillich says that God enters into our own temporal nows, our own “right here”s. A sort of incarnational two-way bridge is formed, where the incarnated, fleshy, earthly, timely world of human existence reveals the ethereal, transcendent, timeless, eternal ultimate love of God. When this happens, the “temporal” now, and the “eternal” now overlap, and we encounter God. He says, “Not everybody, and nobody all the time, is aware of this ‘eternal now’ in the temporal ‘now.’ But sometimes it breaks powerfully into our consciousness and gives us the certainty of the eternal, of a dimension of time which cuts into time and gives us our time.” 

It’s in this eternal now, in this present moment that surpasses all moments, that we experience forgiveness, “belief”- whatever that is - and light in the darkness. It’s in the eternal now that God is present and “lives” and meets us where we are. But it’s not some escape, some other place, where we can leave behind the messiness of our lives. In the eternal now, the facts cannot be changed, what has happened has happened, but the meaning of what has happened can change, and when the meaning surpasses the pain of the past, that is forgiveness. The meaning of the past is changed, and that makes all the difference for our future. But that only happens in the time that we actually have, and the only time that we actually have is right now, in the present. The past is gone. The future’s not here. We just have right now. And it’s so fleeting, that the second that I say “right now” the present is gone, poof, never to be seen or experienced again. But there are those moments that seem to last longer, that seem to be more real, that seem to transcend time, and those moments are “eternal now” moments, those moments are encounters with God, and in those moments, we are saved. In those moments we are not perishing, but we have eternal life. 

Ok. I’m sure I’ve lost you with all this existential philosophizing. I apologize. I get all excited and I just can’t help it, and it’s really cozy and comfortable in the world of theory and thought and the hypothetical. John 3:16 is so much easier to handle if we just project it into our futures and make it all about an afterlife. John 3:16 is so much easier to handle if we keep it at arms length and simply say that it’s about belief and unbelief, or assenting to the right creed, or marking the “yes” or “no” box on the “Who gets in to heaven list." But, more and more, as I experience the healing force of being in the present, of being in the now, of being centered and mindful of what is right here, right in front of us, I am starting to believe that John 3:16 is more than a litmus test for believers; it is an experience of something more, of something eternal, even as it is a present “here-ness.” God so love the world that God entered into limited bounded realm of time so that everyone who believes may not perish in the right here, in the right now, but have eternal life.

This is all I really want to say to you today. God does talk to me. God does speak to you. God is with us, right here, in this eternal moment. This is eternal life. That’s the eternal life we can tap in to. Not some distant, far off, nebulous vision of us reaching the pearly gates and checking our names on the John 3:16 list, and forgetting about all the hurt we’ve caused and the pain we’ve suffered, but in the right here, in the right now, God, incarnate, present in this presence, in meaning-making forgiveness that God offers.

My spiritual director has been trying to get me out of my “head” for months now. Every time I try to experience God or have some kind of an encounter with God, every time I try to pray or meditate or try some contemplation technique, I jump into my logical mind. I end up asking all kinds of questions, I want to know the Greek, and I want to know the Ancient Near East Palestinian context and I have this sudden urge to dig out the commentaries and talk to scholars and head to the library. I want to check the boxes to make sure I don’t miss anything. I want to get it right so that I don’t need the forgiveness in the first place. 

But “no,” she says, "don’t do that. Stick with the image. Take the risk. Use your imagination. Experience what God is trying to say to you today.” Well, one day we were supposed to connect with Jesus in his childhood. We were supposed to listen and watch and explore Jesus as a young child. And as many of you know, we don’t get a whole lot about Jesus’s childhood in the Gospels. It’s all left up to our imaginations. Ugh. There’s not a lot to ask about when there’s nothing there, and I didn’t have any Greek to look up or context to fill in, there was just this vast expanse of time that nobody really knows anything about. So, instead of giving up, and instead of looking for another reference book, I took Jesus to my own childhood, to my own backyard, and to the overgrown lot next door. And I showed Jesus the best climbing trees and all the times we started building a treehouse but never finished. I showed him where we buried a time capsule full of Pepsi clear and a box of Runts and Lisa Frank stickers and a picture of Molly Ringwald. I showed him my swing set and the thin row of grass where I tried to plant a garden but the rhubarb was the only thing that survived and only Dad liked rhubarb. 

I told him about the time I fell off the neighbor’s shed and another time when I jabbed my elbow into the window well and needed rows and rows of stitches. We ate mulberries right off the branches. And then night came. And the fireflies started glowing. And we sat together on my front step. And we watched. I was listening hard for God to speak to me. But, we just sat. We just waited together. We weren’t even sure what we were waiting for. And I swear. I promise. For half a second. For a split moment that was beyond moments. For the briefest of time that was truly outside time, in the remembering of a hot summer night in the late 1980s, I swear, in that present moment, in my 42 year old body, in that eternal now, I could hear the cicadas singing.

Thanks be to God.

Mrs. Dowling Jesus

Read this! John 2:13-22

  Growing up, I encountered two kinds of authority figures, two kinds of teachers. And yes, they’re synonymous. I guess the people I consider bosses are also folks who know stuff and can give you grades. So, one teacher-boss-authority person was the kind you’d roll your eyes at when they told you to push your chairs in at the lunch table, the one you’d giggle about with your friends in a tight circle on the playground: this teacher’s ill-fitting wig, that teacher’s too-short pleated Dockers pants, that one time a bee flew up her skirt and she wriggled and danced and hollered like a little girl.  

And then there was this other kind. The pastory seminary prof who’s an expert in Hebrew, or the fiction professor in your reckless MFA days. This kind of teacher commanded your respect just in the way that he returned your stories with helpful yet critical notes in the margins, or made you parse Hebrew verbs again and again until they stuck to your brain like velcro. These teachers were quiet. They were patient. They were kid magnets and got you to do your best work. They were the folks you were terrified to disappoint. They were the Mr. Miyagis, the Yodas, the Professor McGonagalls.  She might give you your first C- in AP Calculus, but if it came down to it, she’d be standing right by your side, helping you fight off the dementors or lift crashed x-wing fighters out of the swamp.

These are the quiet authorities, the ones who didn’t have to give you detention or make you write lines or assign you extra homework in order for you to shape up. Just one disappointed look from Mrs. Dowling, my fifth grade teacher, and I was a puddle on the floor, a wreckage of shame and guilt, and ready to make it up to her, to do my best so as not to disappoint her again. 

I strove to show how much I loved and respected her by doing my very best - from memorizing my state capitals to studying for the spelling bee - I wanted to do all the things for Mrs. Dowling. And I don’t think this was simply out of fear. I think it’s because I knew she loved me. I couldn’t disappoint her because I knew that she really cared about me. She’d let me run home when I forgot my lunchbox, and let me spend my summer days “helping” her set up her classroom, and she didn’t rat me out during the lice outbreak of 1989. She had high expectations, and enough grace to match.

I like to think of Jesus this way. The one who held his authority quietly, who demanded respect, not because he could rain down asteroids from the sky, but because one disappointed look from him would crush you, would make you want to try again and do better, make you want to prove to him that you could be better. And then even as you tried and tried, he’d still be there, saying, “Jenn, calm down, I forgave you the first time!” 

But I’d still want to recite my times tables even faster for Him. Thirty years since I’ve been in the fifth grade and I still can’t seem to shake the Mrs. Dowling complex, still can’t seem to shake the shame-Jesus — even though there’s no such thing. And I guess there is reason for this. I mean, if I saw Jesus in the Temple, overturning the tables and knocking over the stacks of bird cages, I think I might mess my pants. I think I might duck and cover and wait until the rage had passed. It’d be like watching Mrs. Dowling rip up our trapper keepers and Lisa Frank unicorn folders, and break all our number two pencils into tiny pieces, it’d be that horrifying. I mean, those folks just got told.

But, on the other hand, if I think think of the blonde, wavy-haired, blue-eyed, meek and mild Jesus, he’s just kind of weak sauce. He’s sort of vapid and impotent. He’s static. The one frozen in oil pastels and iridescent watercolors. I mean, we love him, we hang pictures of that Jesus on our walls and invite him to our barbecues, but he’d never teach us long division, or how to diagram sentences, or save the galaxy from the forces of evil.

When we read the Gospels, we tend to rush past the exasperated Jesus. The annoyed Jesus. The frustrated and impatient Jesus. We don’t get very many images of a God who’s angry. And if we do, we write that God off as “the God of the Old Testament” not the God of now - as if there were two Gods, or as if God suffered from a split personality disorder. It used to be that that kind of god freaked me out. That god was primal, simple, and frightening. 

That god was the one you’d make live sacrifices to, or wear hair shirts for, or hang virgins from cliffs in order to appease their wrath, not a real God. 

That is, until I visited the Kali Temple in Kolkata, India. 

If you’re not familiar with her, Kali is one of the most terrifying deities in the whole Hindu pantheon. She is depicted with her tongue hanging out, with a ring of men’s heads strung like pearls around her neck, and in one hand, she holds a bowl of blood, she holds a guy’s head in another, a bloody sword in another, and - just to make sure you’re paying attention -  the sign of peace with her fourth hand. To top it all off, she is standing on top of a defeated man - usually depicted as the god Shiva.  Kali is a god you don’t want to mess with. She is terrifying and is all about getting vengeance. People sacrifice goats to her - the purer and blacker the goat, the better. 

Why on earth would anyone worship this deity? 

Is it simply out of fear? Is this just another way of looking at the god who wants us to be ashamed?

I don’t think so. When I watched Kali’s devotees entering and leaving the temple, they didn’t look particularly scared. They looked…peaceful. At rest. And they all looked poor, bedraggled, world-worn, but self-assured. Noticed.

For these Hindus, Kali is the god who is powerful for those who have no power. She is the god who stands up against injustice. All for the sake of the little guy, for the widow who has been abandoned by her family, for the child born with a disability, for the beggar who wanders the streets all night. People don’t worship her out of fear. They worship her because she is there to save them from the powers and the corruption and the world that has beaten them down.  She’s there to kick some ass and take some names.

She is there to destroy the powerful because they have exploited the weak. 

And I think Jesus is tracking a little bit of Kali in the upended tables temper tantrum story that we’ve read about today. Like Mrs. Dowling if she ever got wind that we were teasing Bethany during recess, I think Jesus is ransacking the temple for the sake of the little guy, for the ones who get swindled out of their savings for the sake of the temple tax and to “pay” for the forgiveness of their sins. Jesus is there to demand justice for the poor folks who have walked miles and miles out of religious devotion only to give their life savings away to some guys in purple cloaks waving incense and smearing blood over the altar. ‘Cause that’s what’s going on here. In the Temple System, the poor only get forgiveness through the offering of a sacrifice. And these sacrifices cost money, more money, perhaps, than these folks have. More money, perhaps, lining the pockets of the already rich Temple Tax Collectors. 

Jesus is angry because the poor are being swindled. And they’re being swindled in the name of God.  

And I think this is awesome. Way to go Jesus! Stand up for the little guy! Way to stick it to the man! Way to tear down those corrupt cages of consumerism and capitalism and bought “democracy.” I love being a Christian because my God is the God of justice for the poor and disenfranchised.  You get ‘em, Jesus! 

Until…I try to put myself in the story...

Because the folks sitting at the dove booth and selling the unblemished rams and exchanging the coins and collecting the Temple tax - they’re all just cogs in the system. They have been swept up by the whole thing, and for the sake of their own survival they have been dragged along by the current. They’re just the middle class, trying to do the best they can in a system they didn’t make.

They thought they were doing the right thing. They thought they were fulfilling God’s commands, in the most practical, sensible way. You needed the moneychangers to exchange the Roman coins with the picture of Nero on them for temple coins that did not claim that Nero was the “Son of God.” You needed the marketers to offer unblemished animals — people were coming from far and wide to offer sacrifices, and they couldn’t bring their animals with them - at least not and keep them “unblemished.” They were doing their part to keep the system going. And the system is good, they thought. It’s important. It’s worth our life savings. I mean, what else is there? Sure, they have been exploiting the weak. But not in huge, obvious ways. But in ways of quiet passivity.  Just by participating in the system, they supported the system.

I think maybe, what gets me about this passage is that it’s telling us that we’re all a part of keeping the shame-Jesus going. We’re all making small compromises that we think no one will notice, but when they add up, we’ve turned God’s temple into a marketplace. We’ve convinced others that they have to do or be or think something other than who they are in order to belong. We justify our choices in the name of convenience or finances or some sort of artificial morality.

One day you see that Walmart has apples for half the price of your local farmer, so you buy those. Another day you’re so hungry and your blood sugar is so low you’re shaking, so you stop at McDonald’s.  The clothes on the Macy’s clearance rack are cheaper than the Goodwill, so why not buy from there? Your baby falls asleep in his carseat, so you leave the engine running, air conditioner on, even after you’ve reached your destination. You need to save for retirement, so you put your money in a general 401k, and try not to worry about what large war weapons corporation is benefitting from your investment. You’re in a hurry, so you take your car instead of just walk. You forget your manners in the drive-thru. You bump up the thermostat instead of grabbing a sweater. You refuse to give the guy on the street a dollar because you might not approve of how he’s going to spend it.

You think the next guy is going to tip the barrista or hold the door open or write the letter to the senator. The other guy is going to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid single use plastics and learn about anti-racism and protest in the streets.

See, I’m the guy exchanging the Roman coins for the Temple coins. I’m the one who buys the dove to sacrifice on the altar for the forgiveness of sins and continues to support a broken system. I’m the one who thinks, “If we can just get a few more butts in the pews, we could keep this broken system going long enough for me to make it to retirement.”  I’m the one who is too hard on myself for not single-handedly overturning that same broken system that I didn’t start and am actually relatively helpless to change. So instead, I beat myself up for a weakness that I’ve been given and for a lack of whatever I’d need to deserve to be here, to live in a house, to drive a car, to let my kids overindulge in Doritos and violent video game screen time. 

It’s my table that Jesus is overturning. The table of my participation in a corrupt system, in a broken system where my abundance means someone else’s scarcity, sure. But also the tables of expectation, of perfectionism, and a lack of a false kind of strength that makes me think that I can single-handedly fix all those broken things. 

A God of vengeance is great — until we figure out that we aren’t the victims. We’re the ones Kali is trying to protect the weak from. We are part of a system, we’ve been swept up by the commercialism and the fear and the consumerism and we’re just treading water, trying to survive. We can be a part of something, and it can not be our fault, and it can be our responsibility to be a part of changing it, all at the same time.

I love what Jesus does, when the temple authorities question him. “Who do you think you are?” they ask. Give us a sign, prove to us that you have a right to do these things, to cause such a ruckus, to overturn this paradigm that we’ve set up for ourselves. “Give us a sign,” they demand. And Jesus doesn’t, really. He throws it back on them. He puts the responsibility for change back on them. “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it back up,” he says. 

You do it. Tear it all down. Tear down everything you thought you needed. Tear down your role in the system, tear down the lies that you’ve bought in to, tear down your participation in the oppression of the poor. Tear down all the things you think you need. Tear down your self doubt and the unfair sights you set for yourself. Tear down your shame-Jesus and your flowy acrylic peace Jesus. 

And then, he says, “I’ll rebuild it.”

“I’ll rebuild you.”

By overturning the tables and whipping the sheep out of the Temple, Jesus is pulling a tiny thread from the system. And this tiny thread is the beginning of the unravelling of the whole thing. This is a major paradigm shift. This is a radical step outside of anything these folks have ever known or imagined. 

And it’s terrifying. It’s terrifying because we don’t really know what should be built in its place. We don’t know what the Temple 2.0 is going to look like. We don’t know where, or if, we’ll fit in to this new system. And it’s terrifying that my participation in this old system has disappointed Jesus. That he’s going to look at me with that look. The look like when I forgot my homework, or my essay was rushed and too short, or I’m struggling in calculus so I just stop trying.

But maybe that look is just a remnant of shame-Jesus, the Jesus in my head, the Jesus that doesn’t even really exist. Maybe Jesus just wants to fight off the dementors with me - both in solidarity with the victims of this corrupt life thing, but also in solidarity with me, with you, we who are too hard on ourselves and have this ridiculous idea that if we just fix it, if we just expect perfection, we won't be weak, we’ll correct the corruption, we’ll hold back the shame-Jesus, and then we won’t need real-Jesus. 

But what are we going to do now? Will we tear down our old systems of oppression and dominance and achievement and manipulation and let Jesus build us up again? That means we will have to give up the peaceful pastel Jesus, and we’ll have to let go of of the shame Jesus. Neither of those Jesuses are going to work. Because they’re not really Jesus. We’ll have to find Mrs. Dowling. She can show us how to love us enough not to let us stay where we are. We’ll have to find the Jesus who does both, the Jesus who tears us down and builds us back up.

Do we dare shift our paradigm so completely that we knock down everything we thought we wanted and achieved and earned, and then wait those terrifying three days to see what Jesus builds back again? Do we shift our paradigm so completely that we let both pastel Jesus evaporate and shame-Jesus disintegrate, let them both dissolve into the ooze of the false expectations of ourselves and perfectionism and depths of guilt for things we really can’t control all that much? Let’s look for the Mrs. Dowling Jesus — the one who both made us tuck in our shirts and caught us passing notes, and gave us pizza party Fridays when we aced our times tables. Maybe if we do that, if we let real-Jesus, not shame-Jesus, turn over the tables, we'll find room to breathe, we’ll find grace for the day, and maybe even a little bit of justice for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized.

Let’s let Jesus overturn our tables. 

Then let’s wait and see how we get rebuilt. There will be room and enough for all of us.

I bet it’ll be amazing.

Thanks be to God.

The Mess We Choose

Mark 8:31-38

 I’ve been meeting with this couple every two weeks or so for the last year. They’re getting married in April, and they wanted to do some “premarital counseling” before the wedding. Now there are a thousand reasons why I am a terrible person to walk with them on this journey. But also, at least according to my therapist, there are at least a few reasons why I might be just the right person. So we’ve been meeting via Zoom, and it has been an absolute honor to be invited as a witness into their lives. I doubt I’m all that helpful, but I try to tell stories, I listen hard, I reflect back, and I encourage them to lean in, to show up, to keep going, just keep going. Sometimes, lots of times, we end up talking about things we’ve talked about before. And sometimes, they get a little bit frustrated that they can’t just solve their problems in concrete, sensible ways and then move on with their relationship. 

So one day I told them the truth: “Look guys,” I said, “Marriage is a mess. You’re never going to figure it all out. You’re never going to ‘arrive’; there’s no riding off into the sunset, no orchestral ending credits, no ‘happily ever after’, no matter how many fairy tales you’ve heard. Marriage is just a choice. It’s saying, ‘You’re the mess I choose. For the rest of my life, I choose you.’” 

It reminds me of this video I ran into on Facebook this week. It’s Disney characters in couples therapy. It’s really funny to me. There’s Ariel and Eric, Belle and the Beast, Snow White and the Prince, Aurora and Prince Phillip. They’re full grown adults now, with greying hair, a few laugh lines, and have put on a bit of post-fairytale weight, but they’re still wearing their dresses and bows and princely uniforms, which is quite amusing. They show them arguing with each other in front of their counselor about little annoyances like loading the dishes in the dishwasher, putting the toilet seat down, their quirky and repetitive habits, and how their romance has fizzled over the years. Some of it, I admit, is a bit inappropriate, but the overall point is both hilarious and poignant: There is no such thing as happily ever after, not even for Disney princesses with big hair and disproportionate physical features. They go through the horrible thing that makes it a good story, whatever that happens to be, and then they finally get what they want, and then the real work begins. 

Or reading for today is Peter’s “the honeymoon’s over” moment. This comes off of such an invigorating experience for him.

Just a few verses before he falls flat on his ass in our reading today, he gets the first question brilliantly right. Peter passes the big pop quiz. Lightning strikes, he’s won the Powerball, he’s pulled all cherries, and somehow out of sheer luck, he gets the BINGO. Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”  And Peter pulls an answer out of his rear and gets it right, “You are the Messiah.”

So, Peter thinks, “why not try again? I’m doing so well. I’m being so right. I’ve got this. I’ve said, ‘I do.’ It’s smooth sailing from here.”

This is a crucial turning point in Mark’s Gospel. 

Jesus goes from saying, “Shhh! Don’t tell anyone that I’m the Messiah!” -- this persistent Messianic Secret for the last seven chapters -- to proclaiming who he is quite openly, announcing that the Son of Man will have to suffer and die and be raised again. It’s a paradigm shift in Mark’s Gospel.  It’s the truth about who Jesus is and what his ministry is all about. Jesus came to suffer and die. There’s no walking happily ever after into the sunset -- at least not yet, at least not right now. The messiah is going to come, the messiah is here, right in front of you, and that’s not going to immediately turn everything around. The proclamation of eternal love and the magic true love’s kiss might eventually defeat the powers of evil, but first they’re going to bring even more heartache and more suffering and more evil witches out of the enchanted woods. And that’s hard for Peter -- and for us -- to hear. 

Peter goes from being the straight-A teacher’s pet to Satan himself. It’s a radical and difficult turning point for these disciples. The secret’s out: not that God has come to fix everything and make everything perfect and hunky dory and make things happily ever after. Nope. The answer is in the suffering. In the struggle. In the questioning and the doubting. The Messiah has come, not to conquer lands and sit on a king’s throne, but to be tortured, to die, to sit in the darkness for a bit. Things are about to get messy, and they’re going to get even messier. Reserve your therapist now, gather up your copays, you’re going to need it. 

This doesn’t end with a white picket fence, a golden retriever, 2.5 kids and a ranch in the suburbs.

And Peter says, “No!  This can’t be true!  The fairytale that I have set up for myself, the one we’ve always been taught, the perfect stories of a knight in shining armor riding in to defeat the dragon and save the day must be true. You’re the prince, Jesus. You’re the Messiah. You’re the one we’ve been waiting for to free us from the evil sorcerer and his fire breathing dragon!”

And Jesus tells him, “Get behind me, Satan!” 

Peter has gotten it so wrong. He failed the test. He’s defined his faith on a false storyline.

That’s not the way. The true way through is dark and messy and painful. But that’s the way. The way is uncertain and hazy and scary. But that’s the way. No amount of magical songs or fairy godmothers or talking mice is going to make this a happily ever after. There’s good coming, but like any marriage, it’s a messy good.

The real story of the Gospel is that it’s going to hurt. It’s going to require some sacrifice. Just as it is inherent in any long-term partnership, inherent in the Good News is a kind of death. 

There’s no getting around it. Once you give your life to something, to someone, to anything, that’s it, you’re forever changed. You’re never the person you once were. Even if you end up stepping away from the partnership. The true story of the Gospel is that Jesus is going to suffer and die. The true story of the Gospel is that it’s a journey of struggle and trying and failing and doubting and hoping and trying again. Sounds a lot like my own partnership, actually.

So the big problem, though, with how we’ve lived out this story, is that we romanticize this suffering. We hold on to suffering as a badge of honor, as a definition of true devotion, and even as an excuse to keep our most vulnerable stuck in their oppressive situations. How many women have been told by their spiritual leaders to stay in their abusive marriages? How many struggling, hungry, poor folks have been lifted up and honored because of their humility and acceptance? They’re the “salt of the earth” after all. How many people have pursued pain, or gone without what we really need, or made unnecessary sacrifices because we think that’s how we can experience spiritual awakening? How many have suffered physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in the name of Jesus only to be labelled “saints” after the fact? 

The answer is, too many. Far too many.

There’s this really interesting meme going around the social media lately, most recently highlighted by blogger and personal motivator Glennon Doyle. It’s this idea of “choose your hard.” She says, “For me: Pretending was the wrong kind of hard. Divorce was the right kind of hard. For me: Drinking was the wrong kind of hard. Sobriety is the right kind of hard. For me: Directness is the right kind of hard. Empathy is the right kind of hard. Speaking up is the right kind of hard. Being a fully human public woman is hard as hell but it’s the right kind of hard. It’s all effing hard. So maybe it’s just about deciding on the right kind of hard. What’s your right kind of hard?” And I’m really moved by this sentiment. It makes a lot of sense to me. It’s all hard, this life thing is hard, this gospel stuff is hard, the way of Jesus is hard, so what’s the right kind of hard? How can we choose our hard? 

But then, as it usually does, this idea got amplified by people of privilege. “Obesity is hard” they said. “Working out is hard.” Choose your hard. As if there's a "better" kind of hard and you're choosing the wrong hard. “Poverty is hard” “Working hard is hard” Choose your hard. Ignorance is hard. Education is hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Choose your hard. As if these kinds of hard are totally and completely our choice. As if one’s “hard” is just a matter of will and not a matter of racial privilege, socioeconomic status, mental capacity, physical and psychological health, and a whole host of other factors that are not completely in our control. 

So it’s that same kind of thing as “take up your cross.” 

“Take up your cross”, “choose the hard”, are really important words for us to hear if we are people of privilege, if we have the means to carry and the means to choose, and if it’s for the sake of the gospel, not for our sakes, not for the sake of our personal edification, not if we’re trying to win the award for being the most humble or being the best at suffering the most. 

These words of Jesus are for Peter and for the disciples and for those of us who have the capacity to choose, for those of us who have the agency to make decisions, for those of us who have the freedom to do without. Jesus doesn’t tell the blind man to take up his cross, but he does tell the rich young man to give up everything he has and follow him. Somehow, our society has made it acceptable for the rich young man to keep his wealth because he’s earned it, and for the blind man to suck it up, stop complaining, be grateful for the crumbs tossed on the side of the road, and to “carry his cross.” He tells Peter, who has walked with him all this way, who has seen all these miracles, witnessed all these healings, heard all these teachings, and gotten a couple of answers right, to take up his cross. The road ahead leads to suffering and death. But there will be life after three days. But first, Peter, the hard stuff. He’s one of the lucky ones. He gets to choose his hard. 

And we’re lucky, too. We get to choose our hard. We get to choose the struggle that we are going to take on for the sake of the Gospel. Because that's the key phrase here - for the sake of the Gospel. For the sake of the Good News. For the sake of freeing the captive and rescuing the oppressed and healing the broken and feeding the hungry and in that way, maybe even saving our own souls in the process. That’s the thing about suffering. It’s inevitable. It’s here. It will always be here. But we shouldn’t embrace it just because it’s there. We should choose the kind of suffering that will actually, you know, maybe, relieve some suffering. Jesus chose to walk the road to Jerusalem, but Jesus tried NOT to choose his cross. He asked God to take it away from him, but he accepted it, eventually, because it was who he is. Deep in his innermost self, this hard that he chose made him more…him. Exactly when he is denying himself he is, actually, finding himself, living in to his true self, being the most Jesus he can be. It’s God being the most God that God can be. 

So choose your hard. YOUR hard is going to be messy and difficult and hopefully you’re going to deny yourself for the sake of the other, hopefully for the sake of someone who doesn’t get to have that choice. But in that denial, you’ll find yourself. You’ll find the right kind of hard. There’s no riding off into the sunset, there’s no prince to kiss you awake or dwarves to do your dishes, there’s just the right kind of hard. It’s the mess we choose.

Thanks be to God.