It’s been a difficult week. Our Organist and Music Director, Ray, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and is in the hospital. He had a pacemaker put in and one of the leads was dislodged as a nurse used a little too much of his body weight to apply the pressure bandage. It’s been a rough week for him and his family, yet he has a calm and certainty about his situation. I have a deacon who is battling brain cancer and the chemo-therapy makes walking a difficult task, yet he came with me to the hospital today to bring our music director communion.
Robin and I have made several trips this week to the University of Florida Veterinary Hospital in Gainesville because our cat, Sailor, had an ulcerated eye. It was so severe that he needed to have emergency surgery to have the eye removed. We will be getting up in the middle of the night for the next 10 days to make sure he gets his medications. We will dose his remaining eye with medications for the rest of his life ensuring that he does not have problems with it. I have now renamed him “Popeye the Sailor Cat.” We have had this cat since he was 6 weeks old. Now, I realize our cat’s problem does not compare to congestive heart failure or brain cancer, but it’s all part of life in a corrupt world.
The question I am asking this week is, “how many times you have heard someone identify some difficult circumstance as, ‘The cross I must bear...’ Here’s the thing; I don’t think it’s appropriate to describe all bad or hard situations as “cross-bearing.” Most of the things we encounter in this life come because we live in a fallen world. Did we do something stupid that created our problem? How does this situation have any bearing upon the cross? In other words, how can we know whether a particular issue or problem relates to our Christian calling?
Be honest here. Suffering belongs to the Christian faith. With that in mind, we can begin to reflect on how suffering relates to what is going on in our life. True Christians believe that in and through Christ’s crucifixion God the Son substituted himself for us and bore our sins. He died, in our place, the death we deserved to die in order that we might be restored to God the Father and adopted into his family.
While it is one thing to confess this truth, it is quite another to live it. So what do I mean when I talk about being honest with ourselves? We first have to admit that we aren’t ready to jump up and down with excitement when we think about carrying our cross. Why? Because we know that bearing the cross of Christ means suffering and pain. You don’t need to experience a great deal of suffering to know that pain is difficult and uncomfortable. Rooms with padded walls are constructed for people who think pain is the way to go.
In seminary, I was introduced to a concept which was called the “upsilon vector.” This vector traces the trajectory of Jesus’ life in terms of his apparent defeat (dying on the cross) before ascending three days later in victory (in the resurrection). Upsilon is a Greek letter represented by the lowercase “U” and a vector is an arrow pointing to something. We are all called to turn our lives around and to point to Christ. He suffered, died, and rose again that we may have eternal life. Still we are all part of the corrupt human situation. We may be redeemed, but we still get sick, have pain and go through trials and eventually die.
We have all seen a certain TV preacher/evangelist telling everyone that God doesn’t want us to have sickness and disease. We must claim healing which is what God desires for us. I wish that were true, especially when I struggle to maintain a healthy body weight while taking a diabetic medication that is known to cause weight gain. The health-and-wealth gospel is flawed because it fails to understand the cross of Jesus. It fails to recognize that the cross was not only an instrument of torture on which God the Son died; it’s also the pattern to which our lives must be lived.
Every time we look at the cross think about this, “He hung there because of our sins. He bore them on our behalf. He suffered and died the death we deserved.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. Again be honest; all of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness. It’s called “ego”...until we are confronted with the reality of the cross. It is at the foot of the cross that we shrink to our true size.
The cross instills brokenness and humility. It’s heavy and it’s rough, yet we are supposed to bear it by faith, patiently waiting for “the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23-25). And just when you expect to drop dead beneath its weight, God provides grace. As Paul the Apostle wrote to the church at Corinth:
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body…. Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2 Cor 4:7-11; 16-18).
For what it’s worth, this is what I think about whether a circumstance really belongs in the category of “cross-bearing.” I ask this question: How does this trial present opportunity for me to advance the gospel?
Our response to trials is what matters, seeing them not so much as hurdles which must be cleared but as catapults that propel the message of Christ forward. Suffering is cross-bearing when it serves the cross; when our strength is diminished and God’s power is made perfect. This is how the world sees the reality of Christ. In our weakness He is strong.
Be a Cross bearer,
Bishop Ian
