It’s quite hard going, this Scriptural journey through Lent, isn’t it! Last week we were being encouraged to lose our lives to gain them. This week we have the surpassing folly of the cross. Whoever would have planned a religion around the public humiliation and execution of its founder? Whatever was God thinking of, to invite us on this journey? On this strange way? Did he really think we’d manage to join in? He knew how it was going to pan out...and yet this was the way he chose...It’s complete madness – not just the journey itself but the hope, the belief that it was a route we would have the courage to follow.
You see– it’s the kind of madness that we, even knowing how the story ends, are unaccountably reluctant to buy into. We SAY we will. We even think we mean it. All those babies whose foreheads I’ve signed with the cross – their egos crossed out by God’s love. All that drowning of self in the waters of Baptism. We WANT to be willing to go there but...really, it’s not wise is it?
As Martyn Joseph puts it in the song "Strange Way" that reflects on this “The world is too much with us”
We can’t really let go of the idea that this is all folly. Not wise at all.
Welcome to the strange strange way of the cross.
In Jerusalem, it has been tamed totally, the Via Dolorosa beautifully sign posted, with as many places to pray marked out as there are souvenir shops to sell you the aids to prayer. Even in January, 2 years ago, it was crowded with pilgrims, trying to make Christ’s story their own by following in his literal footsteps…They were sincere, we were sincere...We wanted to walk with him – we WANT to walk with him…but it remains so very difficult.
Strange way...
I wonder, really, how the institutional Church could ever find the courage to embrace it. Institutions aren’t supposed to take risks or be vulnerable. Benevolent institutions, like the Church, are supposed to be safe places yet maybe we, the Church, have just got too tangled up in commitments and expectations. We have people (like me) who depend on it for a roof over the head and food on the table, who rely on the survival of the many and complex layers of church life. That life includes so much that is good, so much that points towards God’s beauty and God’s truth...but it is hampered, too, by so much else besides.And now, thanks to Constantine, thanks to centuries of history, thanks to establishment and so many more twists and turns, we have entirely necessary management structures and strategic development plans and a focus on mission and growth – because that’s what any large organisation needs if it’s to thrive and flourish.
And none of that is BAD in itself...In fact it is eminently sensible. Wisdom that the Greeks would surely applaud. And though our sanctuaries may sometimes be a little crowded with traders doing business, we are certain they’re not there to cheat anyone...careful to ensure that there’s no illicit insider dealing that disadvantages those who can ill-afford to engage.
We’re doing our best in human terms – really we are.
But – I’m worried that isn’t enough. We PREACH Christ crucified – but we don’t live as if that is our calling too. I'm conscious of the colossal irony of my saying this, in my comfortable home, surrounded by things that I have gathered, knowing that income and even pension are reasonably secure. I'm not saying that as one standing outside the organisation, but as one well and truly bound up in it, in all its layers of well-intentioned trammelling. But I'm disquieted. Thoroughly disquieted. I think we've wandered off course. The very body that exists to model Christ’s self giving love seems, instead, to have created a complex structure to protect the world from the utter dereliction of the man on the cross and his cry “Eloi, eloi, lamma sabacthani”
Instead of taking the wild, heaven-sent risk of choosing life in all its fulness, we feel safer opting for the lesser good of comfortable words for now and the everlasting arms for later. And, of course, the truth is that those everlasting arms will hold us secure no matter what…We can rely on that. Jesus felt himself forsaken by God, but in making that journey he ensured that we would never have to face equal abandonment...because even in our darkest, most dreadful places, he walks before us.
So – we are protected even from our own urge to self-protection, because God loves us too much to allow our cowardice to separate us from him.
But nonetheless – we are less than we could be – the CHURCH is less than it could be – when we opt for what makes sense in human terms. God’s economy is not the same as the Chancellor’s – his investment in us is all reckless, profligate love with no guarantee of a safe return on the investment
This is not an economy of scarcity but one of ABUNDANCE.
Imagine if we dared to live in ways that spoke of that. To give and keep on giving. To sit light to everything but love. We might not feel secure all the time. We might not walk well-trodden paths, surrounded by cheering bystanders. We might have to give up things that seemed important to us. I think that’s what the way of the cross means, for most of us.
It’s about letting go of everything except that knowledge that we are wonderfully, non-negotiably loved by God and living that difference in everything.
Yesterday I was privileged to attend one of the most wonderful, joy-filled funerals I’ve ever been part of. Bex Lewis was a remarkable woman, a pioneer in Christian social media who had a genius for networking, and a yet greater genius for encouraging, building up, inspiring others. She was just 45 when the double-whammy of stage 4 breast cancer and covid claimed her exhausted, battered body, and the night of her death the hashtag #bemorebex was trending on twitter…
Her good friend, the writer, speaker and all-round encourager Andrew Graystone and his wife had bubbled with Bex during these challenging months of illness, - which were never, somehow about loss or decline, but simply about another hasthtag #busylivingwith mets. In his glorious, hopefilled address Andrew said
" to be more Bex? Embrace the life in all its fullness that Jesus offers. Fill every ounce of your flesh and blood with adventure and generosity just as Bex did. But realise that real life is not limited to space and time. There is a life that goes way beyond atoms, beyond digits, beyond days....beyond death itself. It's measured in love given and received."
It’s undeniable that Bex walked the way of the cross in her experience of cancer. It’s also undeniable that she remained vibrant, full of love and life and hope, right through to the end. Her faith was a constant – though she was never annoying pious...this was no Victorian heroine going gently into that Goodnight. She lived until she died – and now, with God, she lives for eternity.
No – she wasn’t a saint – at least not one of those pale, emaciated beings who look so utterly removed from our reality. She was nothing if not real - and so full of warmth and humanity, but she was also wise enough to grasp that God’s foolishness is always wiser, his weakness stronger than anything we could manage ourselves...and she found in her journey that the way of the cross really was, and is, and ever shall be the way of life and peace.
It’s a strange way right enough – but it’s the way Jesus invites us to travel. May he give each one of us the vision and courage, the faith and the grace to take that route and to follow it all the way home.
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