How to Lay Down a Life

Delivered at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Benson, MN. Easter 4B – “Good Shepherd” Sunday
Texts: Ac 4.5-12; Ps 23; 1 Jn 3.16-24; Jn 10.11-18

I once heard a story of a father and his two children who were hiking in the mountains late one autumn. They were caught in a sudden storm and were forced to seek shelter in a small cave. With no way to make a fire and the temperature falling rapidly outside, the man knew they would all freeze to death if he could not find a way to keep his children warm.

The wind was howling and the mouth of the cave, though small, was letting out precious heat. So, the man curled himself up in the opening to block the wind and the rain. The two children slept through the night, and in the morning, the family was discovered by a search and rescue team, but during the night, the father had frozen to death protecting his children from the fury of the storm outside.

As Christians, we are accustomed to talk of sacrifice. We are very familiar with the idea of giving one’s life for the benefit of another out of love. This is the primary narrative that we use to understand Jesus’ action on the cross: Jesus took the punishment that should have been ours for our sinfulness and died so that we might live. Just like the story of the father and his children caught in the storm, this story stirs in us the image of a God who will stop at nothing to love us and save us, even to the point of dying for us.

What’s really interesting is that this is not in our reading today. Nowhere in John’s gospel does Jesus talk of being punished on our behalf or of dying so that we might live. What he does say is that “God so loved the world that God sent the Son so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3.16) and “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

I think it is important that we ask ourselves just what it does mean to lay down one’s life. Jesus talks about laying down his life four times in this short section of John we read today, and our reading from the first letter of John mentions it again. We hear that Jesus lays down his life for us, and that this is why God loves him. Jesus says later that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15.13), and we hear that we, too, ought to follow his example and lay down our lives for one another.

Clearly, I cannot forgive anybody’s sins or grant everlasting life if I die for somebody else, and yet the authors of John’s gospel and letters writes that we ought to lay down our lives just out of love as he did. Our actions imitate Christ’s.

The community that wrote, collected and recorded John’s gospel and letters did not regard Jesus’ death as what saves us. Jesus himself refers to his crucifixion as his glorification, not our salvation. In John, it is Jesus’ life that saves us, not his death. Did you hear what Jesus just said? “I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” Jesus died so that he could come back from the grave, and in so doing, prove that even death is no match for God’s saving love and power. Easter morning is God’s definitive answer to our question, “Where is God?” God is right here next to us, breathing on us, eating with us, being mistaken for the gardener or the store clerk or the window washer. God is alive, and because God lives, so is our hope, and so are we.

This is the power of Easter. This is the extent of God’s love. The amazing thing is not that Jesus died for us, but that he lives for us. This is why we celebrate Easter! Instead of dying for our sins and leaving it at that, Jesus came back for us. He broke the lock and smashed the door of death, leaving it hanging askew on its hinges waiting for us to follow him through.

So, in light of Jesus’ resurrection, just what does it mean then for Jesus to lay down his life for us, and for us to lay down our lives to one another? Normally, we have taken these words to mean that our lives should be lives of sacrifice, lives lived for the good of others, even when it means suffering for ourselves. Certainly, this is true, at least to a point. Christ himself endured shame, suffering, and death on the cross to rise for us. But this idea has justified wars and violence as we strive to assert our will over others “for their own good,” has been used to condone abuse and shame as we believe that our suffering is how we “take up our cross and follow.”

There is so much more to the idea of laying down one’s life than simply dying. When we are encouraged to lay down our lives for one another, we are being asked not to die for one another, but to live for on another, just as Christ did. Sometimes, this means following in Christ’s path, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for the sake of proclaiming the gospel, being willing to die for what is good and right.

But sometimes, it means recognizing when God is calling us to stand up  and refuse to be somebody else’s doormat. Sometimes love requires us to deny others instead of enabling them. Sometimes, we are called to care for ourselves because nobody else will.
You see, we all have moments when we need to put our own desires aside and help those in need, times when we need to empty ourselves to fill somebody else. In those moments, we embrace hardship to promote peace and fullness. But there are also moments when we are the empty ones, when others take away our power and our dignity either willingly or unconsciously for their own benefit. There are times when we are victims, when we are the lost sheep.

It is in these moments of powerlessness when the gospel of Christ and the joy of Easter are a message of empowerment. With Jesus, we proclaim that nobody else has the right to take our lives from us. When we suffer from a loved one’s addiction, when we bear the brunt of an abusive relationship, Christ bids us not to come and die, but to drink and live.

“I came that they might have life,” Jesus says, “and have it abundantly.” (John 10.10) The love Jesus commands us to have for one another—God’s love—always seeks this abundant life, and always strives to change us for the better. Sometimes that love calls us to endure pain and suffering in order to bear out that love to another, but sometimes that love calls us to rise up and take power for our lives back from those who have taken it from us. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, has done both of these. He has proven the extent of his love for us in his resurrection, not his death; he has laid down his life in service to us, not in suffering.

So how are we to know when “laying down our lives” means suffering and when it means refusing to suffer? Listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, seek after Jesus’ example. When love brings abundant life and changes us and others for the better, that love is worth dying for; more than that, it is worth living for! But love that offers no abundant life but only pain and shame instead is no substitute for the love of God. To those who know this kind of destructive love, Jesus himself opens for us a way back to God’s love that is not blocked even by death itself.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. In calling us to lay down our lives for one another, he asks no more than he himself has done, which is to abide in the love of the Father. “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly,” Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. I lay it down—nobody takes it from me—and I take it up again.”

God’s Audacious Love

Delivered at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Swift Falls, MN. Lent 5, Year B.
Texts: Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:1-12; Heb 5:5-10; Jn 12:20-33

Have you been keeping up with the news lately? In Toulouse, France, a terrorist named Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish school children in a series of shootings which he hoped would, in his own words, “bring France to its knees.” He himself was killed in a police standoff on Thursday. There is still violence in Syria where President Assad is waging war against his own citizens while the international community dithers about if and how and when to intervene. On March 11, a US soldier in Afghanistan killed 16 civilians, including women and children; and just this week, in our own country, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida by an over-zealous neighbor just for being black and looking “suspicious.”

And the saddest part? This has been a fairly typical news week. Such atrocities are common place in our world; headlines like this fill our newspapers and search engines every day. I have to confess that each time I sit down to write a sermon about the love of God and the salvation that comes through the cross and the grace of Jesus Christ, I can’t help but think about the state of world around us and I begin to wonder, “So what?”

Where is God in all this nonsense? What good news does the Church have to offer a world in such dire need of deliverance from this meaningless violence? Sometimes I think that the Church offers no answer to this question. I think that is why people, especially young people, are leaving: because even while we claim that Christ is our savior, sent to rescue us from sin and death, the world continues to crumble around us. To the rest of the world, we look like a bunch of deluded idiots. The world isn’t looking for a savior who promises us residence in some kingdom in the clouds with streets of gold; the world is looking for a savior who can stop the madness that meets us on the streets and in the headlines day after day after day.

Throughout the season of Lent, we have been reminded that this madness is the result of Sin. Not our sins—the misdeeds and failings that we commit every day despite our best efforts—but Sin. Sin is the corruption of humanity that spoils our best intentions and twists all our actions towards evil. We call it many different things—human nature, evil, Murphy’s law—but whenever we say, “nobody’s perfect,” or “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” we’re talking about Sin, that pervasive force for evil we simply cannot overcome.

This is what the Psalmist meant when he cried out, “For I know my transgressions, and my Sin is ever before me… Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” Sin is the source of all our trouble, the origin of poverty, bigotry, hunger and hatred. He knew that Sin is what separates us from God and causes us to harm one another. He knew that from the moment you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye, Sin had its claws in you. Even the best among us, the most noble and valiant and kind, are as trapped by Sin as the Hitlers and the Bin Ladens of the world.

This Sin permeates us, down to the very core of our being. It infests us from the inside out, and there is only one cure: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”  This is the good news: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;” the Psalmist writes, “wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Because of Sin, we are powerless to fix ourselves, but God is not. Only a total overhaul from the inside out can get rid of Sin at its root, and only the God who created us has the power to replace what is inside us. If God takes away our Sin, it will truly be gone. That is where Jesus comes in.

What if I told you that Jesus Christ was not sent here to die? One way we understand Christ’s death on the cross is that he was punished for our sins so we would not be. This is a helpful metaphor, certainly borne out in scripture, one that is rich and meaningful to many of us, but it is not how St. John explains Jesus’ death. According to John’s gospel, Jesus died not because he was taking our whipping, but because he loved us.

“For God loved the whole world so much that God sent God’s only child, so that everyone who trusts him and believes what he says will not die, but live forever.” God’s love is so radical, so extreme, that it has the power to change the world, to overcome this idiocy that threatens to swallow us up. God’s love has the power to cut out that old, rotten and stinking heart tainted by Sin and replace it with a new heart, a clean heart, a heart made only for love, inscribed with God’s law.

God doesn’t accomplish this through surgery. Unlike Adam, we will not fall asleep and wake up to find a hole closed up by flesh. Instead, God accomplishes this Sin-ectomy through the sheer, brute force of God’s love, the love that created the world, that brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, the love that saved David from Saul and rescued Israel from the exile in Babylon.

That love was written on our hearts when Jesus willingly gave up his honor, his ministry and his life in obedience to God and for the sake of God’s kingdom. Knowing that the cross lay ahead, he did not pray “Father, save me from this hour,” but instead trusted in God’s love to accomplish its goal, regardless of the cost to himself. This is why he says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

When we seek after our own benefit, when we run the show how we think it ought to be run, when we strive to get ahead, Sin causes us to fail. So, Jesus says, instead of looking out for number one, you should disregard, even despise, your own gain, your own reputation, your own well-being, even your own life for the sake of the gospel and God’s love, and in doing that, you will find death; but see, death is no longer in control—God’s love shown in Jesus’ death on the cross conforms even death itself to God’s will, transforms death into life. Just like a grain of wheat that must first die in order to sprout, our lives corrupted and consumed by Sin must first end before we can experience life in God’s love.

So what does this have to do with the headlines, with Merah and Martin and Assad and all those murdered Afghans? They are the result of Sin, the result of people and governments and organizations and factions all acting out of self-certainty, self-reliance, and self-interest. All these sins are committed by people doing what is right in their eyes, but their sight is infected by Sin, blind to true goodness.

God’s love cuts through the murk of Sin and greed and selfishness, allowing us to love with reckless abandon like God loves, even though it may cost us our livelihood, our respect, our friends and family, even our lives. When we survey the wondrous cross and see the amazing love of God poured out for us, mindless of the cost to both Father and Son, we see the truth—that love conquers all, even Sin and death.

Sin is the disease, and Love is the cure. God’s love promises that those victims of violence and oppression are not neglected by the creator of the universe, and that same love stirs us to respond, spurs us to audacious action in the name of Christ to protect and to comfort and to heal, mindless of the cost to ourselves. In the love of God poured out on the cross, we are transformed into God’s lovers of the world, a force to contend with Sin itself. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but when it dies, it bears much fruit. This is how the death of one man in the shame and misery of the cross can change the whole world, one heart at a time.

Porch Light

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Morning (Sunrise), Year A
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; Col 3.1-4; Matt 28.1-10

This week, we have walked with the disciples of Jesus as they went from Sunday’s joyful entry into Jerusalem, through the anxiety of Maundy Thursday and the fear and anguish of Good Friday into the despair of Saturday. Jesus, sent to be Immanuel, God-with-us, had been killed and sealed in a tomb. Even as the disciples have sunk into despair over the loss of God-with-us, we, too, grieve the absence of God and God’s promise in our lives.

Too often, our world is a dark and lonely place. Every day we face trials and difficulties: addiction, contention, disappointment, abuse, scandal, shame, death, and grief are part of our lives. The situation in the rest of the world is much worse. Life is poverty, oppression, genocide, exploitation, war, famine, and unrest. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this. We cry out to God for an answer, and We long to see God’s promise of reconciliation and healing fulfilled. We begin to wonder if God can see what is going on.

I remember when I was a kid and we used to go visit my grandma. We’d be all packed and ready to go as soon as Mom got off work on Friday evening. The four of us would pile into the car and drive the five hours from our home in Great Falls to Grandma’s farm outside of Nashua, MT. Northeastern Montana is kind of like northern Wisconsin, only without the trees. If you are not in a town, it’s a pretty empty, desolate place. There are no people for miles at a stretch, nothing to remind you of civilization except the highway and the barbed-wire fences that run alongside it. Because we left so late and had to drive so far, it was always dark when we got there. Because there are no people around, if the stars and the moon were not out, it could be absolutely pitch black.
Grandma had this single, sunflower yellow light bulb on her porch. Most of the time, it wasn’t lit, but when company was coming, she would always leave it on. As we traveled, we’d drive through the darkness until we turned down the quarter-mile driveway to the farmhouse. Once we got close enough, we could see that porch light. In the midst of the emptiness of the Montana plains, amid the darkness all around us, when we saw that unmistakable yellow light, it was a sign. It was the promise of love and hospitality and cheerfulness inside that tiny little farmhouse alone on the giant prairie.

This is what the resurrection is for us: a porch light, a reminder of God’s presence with us and love for us. As we travel through the darkness of this world, this small light pokes a hole in the blackness and the emptiness to remind us that there is a real place and real love that lives there.

For most of our lives, this tiny light is far off and distant. We remember God’s promise only in terms of a distant future when we will be with God in heaven. But on Easter, this small, yellow light explodes into brilliance and warmth, fills our being and for a moment, all of Heaven stoops to kiss the earth and we find ourselves in the presence of the real, living, God.

When the disciples needed Jesus the most, when they were at their lowest and had no idea where to go or what to do next, he left the tomb and found them, gave them a message and a mission. He told them to go back to their home, to Galilee, and that he would be waiting there for them. And that’s exactly where he was.  Christ’s resurrection is living, breathing, walking, talking proof that our God is not a dead God sealed in a stone building, locked up in a musty book or even trapped in a distant paradise. On Easter, in the midst of the darkness around us, Christ breaks into our world and gives us the living promise that we can see and hold onto, that we can taste and eat.

On Easter morning, Jesus is once again Immanuel, God-with-us, both in death and in life. The empty tomb is proof that we do not have to wait until we die to see God, that God is with us here, waiting for us at our homes. In the resurrection, Jesus finds us, greets us, and sends us with a mission. In midst of the despair and suffering of life, Jesus invites us to be light for the world, invites us to be God’s porch lights to a people in need of hope and healing. Jesus is the living promise that God has heard the cries of the people, just as God heard the cries of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt. God has heard, and God is acting.

The resurrection is not a one-time event. Jesus’ walking out of the tomb was only the beginning of God’s continuing action of renewal in our broken world. Just as on that first Easter morning, God is still with us, beside us and within us. We celebrate today because Immanuel is here, because God has sent healing and rescue to this place, because Jesus Christ lives and breathes, and God is at work.

Peter says in Acts that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power;” that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) This is how we know that Jesus is Immanuel, and how we know that God is still with us. Jesus Christ still goes about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the forces of evil in this world. In our baptism, we have been buried with Christ, and this is the morning in which we are resurrected with him. The living, moving God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and of Jesus is living and moving in us, to do good, and to heal the oppressed.
Last weekend, we lifted our voices with the crowds of Jerusalem, with people all over the world as we cried out, “Hosanna!” which means, “Lord, save us!” Save us from danger, save us from hopelessness and despair, save us from complacency while others suffer, save us from oppression and war and famine, save us from genocide and poverty. As much as we need that blessed assurance of a future in God’s presence, God’s people need rescue from death in our world today even more.

Today, as the risen Christ meets our eyes, our cries of “Hosanna” become shouts of “Alleluia!” which means, “Let us praise the Lord!” We say this word in our worship nearly every week, and it has little meaning to us, another Greek word that is foreign to us. We speak it, and it is grey, it has no color. But today on Easter, of all days, we truly see the color of “Alleluia.” It is the color of the tears that rolled down the women’s cheeks when they saw their Lord on the road. It is the color of the sunrise on the morning of the third day. It is the sunflower yellow of that porch light. Let us not just speak, but shout and feel and dance with Alleluia today, for our God is alive, our God is with us, and our God has come to rescue us. Jesus Christ as emerged from the grave to be light for the world, a light in the darkness, a light which the darkness cannot over come. Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia!

This is the Night

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Vigil, Year A
Texts: Gen 1.1-2.4a; Gen 7.1-5, 11-18, 8.6-18, 9.8-13; Ex 14.10-31; Ezek 36.24-28; Zeph 3.14-20; Rom 6.3-11; John 20.1-18

Tonight we gather in solemness as we reflect on the crucifixion of our Lord.  With Jesus in the grave, the evil and sin of the world seem to press down on us more than ever, tonight we feel the weight of death on our shoulders. And so we come together in the evening, huddling together as in a tomb, and we share stories with one another about how God has been with our ancestors and has saved our people throughout history.

We share these stories to remember that even as we gather in fear and sadness, God has proven God’s love and faithfulness for us. God has saved us time and time again from whatever threatens to destroy us. Through the waters of the flood, God blotted out evil in the world. When Israel was hard pressed by the armies of Egypt and about to be slaughtered, God led them through the waters to safety and swallowed up the might of Pharaoh behind them. As God’s people languished in exile, God once again promised through the prophet Ezekiel to purify the people with water so that they would be clean in God’s sight, free from idols and evil.

Tonight as we gather in fear to mourn the death and defeat of our Lord Jesus, we recall the promise made at our baptism, the promise that we have been baptized into his death. Tonight we gather in the tomb with Christ, and we recall God’s power to rescue us from every kind of evil and danger and hardship. Tonight we gather and we recall that God’s promise is to rescue us even from this grave. For, as Paul writes, if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a life like his.

Yesterday, Jesus hung forsaken on the cross. But his promise remains that on the third day he will rise again. It is for this reason we come here tonight, even in the midst of sadness and grief, we have a glimmer of hope. As God has delivered us before, we trust in God to deliver us again through the resurrection of Christ.

Tonight, we recall God’s mighty deeds of power, of God’s saving love, of God’s all-transforming goodness: the goodness that can transform the waters of chaos and uncertainty at the beginning of time into all of creation, which God saw was very good indeed; the goodness that can transform a terrible and destructive flood into the purification and sanctification of the whole world; the goodness that can transform an sea into a path and a terrible army into a harmless puddle; the goodness that can take simple water and words and make them into the seal of Gods’ promised salvation in baptism.

Tonight, we hear these stories and we gather in anticipation of God’s saving action in the world. God has promised that in the morning, Christ will rise, opening the way for all of us to new life, abundant life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Tonight, we recall God’s glory in times past and we trust, we expect, we yearn for God’s glory to be shone on this world again in the promised resurrection. Tonight, we sit in the tomb with Christ, and in the morning we rise with him. This is the passover of God from death in to life. This is the night!

The Cross is Obedience, Not Suffering

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Lent 2, Year B.
Texts: Gen 17.1-7, 15-16; Rom 4.13-25; Mk 8.31-38

Over the years, Christians have devised many various and imaginative ways to hurt themselves. There’s the cat-o’-nine-tails, of course, a whip with nine ends, usually with knots or barbs on the end, for whipping oneself while in prayer. Then there’s the cilice, a belt of metal barbs to be worn around the arm or thigh to induce pain. Some have even gone so far as to nail themselves to crosses for periods of time. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I mention this because it is the verse we hear today about taking up our cross and following Jesus that we use to justify and even encourage practices like these. We feel that there is some redemptive aspect to suffering, some purifying and cleansing way in which suffering makes us worthy of God’s grace or helps us to atone for our own sinfulness.

However, though some might find some purifying aspect of pain, this idea that our own suffering can be redemptive is not only false, it is blasphemy and heresy. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “It is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Heb 10.10)” Christ suffered and died on the cross for sins not his own so that we would not have to pay for those sins. To suggest that we, as ordinary people, can purify ourselves or make ourselves worthy by suffering when Christ, the Son of God, could not, is only blasphemy and idolatry of ourselves.

And yet, verses like this one are used to justify everything from spiritually punishing our bodies, to staying in an abusive relationship. For years priests and pastors have counseled battered spouses to stay with their abusers, and to “suffer with Christ,” that the abuse is their “cross to bear.” In order to see why this is wrong, let us examine what Jesus means by these words.

Immediately before telling his followers to take up their crosses and follow, Jesus tells them that they must first deny themselves. We think of denying ourselves in terms of giving up things or avoiding pleasure, but this is not what Jesus says. He says we are to deny our SELVES, and he says this in response to Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ prediction of his passion and death.

Jesus knew that he would suffer and die for bringing God’s message to humanity. He knew that there could be no other outcome because our broken, sinful world, this adulterous and sinful generation, is hostile to God and to the gospel, which is God’s message of love to us. To avoid death, Jesus would have had to either hide or recant the gospel, neither of which would have served God’s purpose in sending him. Even though Peter was speaking out of love for his teacher, out of fear for his safety and well-being, Peter’s mind was set on human things: preservation of life, saving Jesus’ honor, victory over their opponents. Jesus rebukes him because he does not have God’s bigger picture in mind.

When Jesus asks his followers to deny themselves, he asks us to put God’s will ahead of our own goals, our own ambitions, our own plans. Peter’s human way of thinking told him that in order to win, Jesus had to survive and continue to preach. God’s plan had Jesus being true to his message and bold to the end, being completely obedient to God and faithful to the gospel no matter what, in the end proving that human authorities, this world, even death have no power over God and God’s children.

To deny ourselves, then, we must put aside our own concepts of right and wrong, of victory and defeat, of good and bad and trust completely in God’s will and in God’s ways. We must throw these perceptions and attitudes away like the dung they are, for they are constructions of this adulterous and sinful generation, habits and practices and ideas that we have learned from living in a broken world. It is only then that we can truly follow Jesus.

When we deny ourselves, when we allow our actions and our attitudes to be governed not by our own wants and desires and appetites, but instead by God and the gospel of love, we will find that in order to follow God’s way, we are often forced take up a cross, just like Jesus did. The cross does not refer to any and all suffering, but the hardship and opposition and shame we face for not being complacent in this world, for not simply following the herd, for marching to the beat of a different drummer, one pounding out a heavenly cadence.

God does not want us to suffer, either at our own hand or at the hands of others; any such suffering grieves the heart of God. Nor did Jesus did die on the cross because God wanted him to die. Jesus died on the cross because the powers and the systems of this world, because humanity, demanded it; because we could not bear the message of Christ’s gospel: that God loves the world and everyone in it so much that God sent the only Son to be present with God’s people in this adulterous and sinful generation and to proclaim to those broken people that they are the Beloved of God.

You see, when Jesus warns us about being ashamed of him and his gospel, he is not warning us about the consequences of not “witnessing” to everyone we meet, he is warning us about not realizing that even at our dirtiest, wickedest, and evilest, we humans are the Beloved of God, that though we deny and nullify our worth to one another through our sins and our evil ways, God has deemed each of us worthy enough to send Jesus to take us by the hand and teach us the way of God, even when that meant that God would have to endure the death of God’s only begotten Son.

In verse 37, Jesus asks, “Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?” What is there that is worth our individual lives? What is each one of us worth? Even as the Son of God asks this question, God the Father answers, and that answer is Jesus himself. Jesus died on the cross by our hands for sins that were our own, and in that very act, God, instead of seeking retribution and justice upon us, forgave us our sins.

So, you see that taking up our cross is not about suffering in solidarity with Christ or even about gladly bearing any and all pain in this world. Denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following Jesus is about living out our lives as a response to what our Creator has done for us in sending the Son to give us the gospel, God’s love letter to humanity, signed in the blood of the Lamb. As we live our lives in response to God’s love letter, we can do nothing but acknowledge our own worth and the worth of everyone around us in the eyes of God. By submitting to cruelty and injustice, by allowing others to abuse us and shame us or anyone else for no reason, we are dishonoring the Beloved of God, we are cursing the creation, and by extension, the Creator.

Because Jesus has shown us the extent of God’s love for us, we will stand up boldly and declare for all to hear the all-surpassing value that God has assigned to all people, and we will gladly suffer any shame or derision or pain which comes upon us for bringing that message to the world. God wants all humanity to know that we are loved, and that God wants our love in return, and not even death will keep that message from being told. Even if we must endure the shame, the suffering, and the humiliation of the cross, we will follow Jesus and proclaim this message to the world: God loves you this much <stretch out arms as on a cross>.