nullus extra cruem

A battle-tested

A saint is not someone who is good but someone who experiences the goodness of God.

-Thomas  Merton

What is it or who is it you will forsake in order to follow Jesus? 

If it’s not everyone and everything—you are in the same boat as the young man who was stuck on his possessions.   The young rich man didn’t need Jesus when you get down to it.  It wasn’t just his money he was holding on to, he was plenty content with himself and his own good works—the young man was happy enough and could live his life without Jesus.  Those of us who follow Jesus—well, we decided the time had come to give up on our plans to live without Jesus. 

Unlike the self-suffiecient young man, we didn’t decide to follow Jesus because we were so smart, wise or even good.  We were in need and Jesus came to us and we figured nothing else had worked.  The assumption that we were so willing to forsake all else was challenged the moment sin came knocking on our door and we succumbed—the notion that we were so smart was shattered the day we put our hope in something other than Jesus—and the idea that we were so wise was dispelled the moment we followed the crowd rather than the Savior.  And if you can’t relate, follow Jesus a little while and you will.

If we but turn to God, that itself is a gift of God.

-Augustine 

The evils of being dependent on foreign oil have flooded the airwaves and dominated much of the discourse between this years two political parties as their presidential hopefuls square off.  With gas prices continuing to escalate it won’t be too long and the annual cost of fueling a car to get from point A to point B will soon equal that of sending a son or daughter off to an Ivy League college for an entire calender year.

The praises of self-sufficiency are as prevelant as ever.   We here in the States preach the virtues of self-sufficiency.  To be dependent on anyone other than ourselves is to be weak, or so we are told.  Contrary to what feel-good television preacher  Joel Osteen might have to say—you can be sure that Jesus-followers aren’t to be a self-sufficient people.  And I know that trusting God and throwing off any and every hope that we can change, redeem and save ourselves doesn’t set too well with us proud people, but the writers of Holy Scripture never did ask for our contribution—the gospel message is to shape our opinon instead.

As he watched him go, Jesus told his disciples, ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is for the rich to enter God’s kingdom? Let me tell you, it’s easier to gallop a camel through a needle’s eye than for the rich to enter God’s kingdom.’

The disciples were staggered. ‘Then who has any chance at all?’

Jesus looked hard at them and said, ‘No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it.’ (Matthew 19:23-26, The Message Bible)

The moment we are born we need air that we cannot provide for ourselves, and in the days to follow we will need care, food and shelter—and much more if we are to grow up healthy.  God’s design has never been that we become self-sufficient, it’s that we become God-dependent.

The doctrine of self-sufficiency is a myth after all. 

None but the Lord himself can afford us.  The more clearly we recognize how we dig our own wells in search of water, the more fully we can repent of our self-sufficiency and turn to God in obedient trust.

-Larry Crabb

Our independence day was the day we turned our back on ourselves and trusted Jesus—and that is our challenge each and every day.  The account of the young rich ruler can be heard in many pulpits on any given Sunday. Jesus tells of a young man he bumps into who was much like many of us—content with himself.  Essentially, Jesus rains on the young man’s feel-good-about-himself parade and tells him to go and sell all he has and give the money to the poor—that meant giving his cash to those who hadn’t worked nearly as hard or been a tenth as smart with their money as him.

The problem many of us encounter in our reading of the account of the young rich ruler is to take it as a call to forsake ourselves and then go and bury our heads in the proverbial sand. Make no mistake, Jesus brings a sword to life as we know it. But that’s not all he does, he calls us to follow him once we have turned our backs on ourselves.  And what seems to be the end of of our lives turns out to be only the beginning. 

The point in Jesus’ telling of this story isn’t to show that the man loved his money too much (we can be sure he did, just like many of us do)—the truth we must grasp here is that following Jesus is life.  When we choose our money—or anything including anyone else for that matter over following him—it is him we miss out on. 

 That was the last thing the young man expected to hear. And so, crest-fallen, he walked away. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and he couldn’t bear to let go.   (Matthew 19:22, The Message Bible) 

When we stick with anything other than Jesus we always walk away sad.

The sin that held a good many of us captive and still keeps a good number from following Jesus is rooted in relying on themselves—we can be a self-sufficient people. Few of my friends if any won’t make it into heaven for being ax-murderers—instead—it’s an overblown belief in themselves and the idea that stealing a candy bar isn’t enough to land them in jail with God that is their undoing.  

A true understanding and humble estimate of oneself is the highest and most valuable of lessons.  To take no account of oneself, but to always think well and highly of others is the highest wisdom and perfection. Should you see another person openly doing evil, or carrying out a wicked purpose, do not on that account consider yourself better than him, for you cannot tell how long you will remain in a state of grace. We all are frail; Consider none more frail than yourself.

-Thomas a Kempis, Inner Life

I can remember sneaking around our dark-musty and damp basement as a kid one fall day looking for some of my Christmas presents that my parents had went out and purchased a little early that year (I had inside information).  Looking back as worse as I can remember, I don’t feel so bad about my doing the bad deed as much as I do about dragging my younger sister into the shame of it.  After not too much rummaging around, I found it, the jackpot—what looked to be a sleeping bag—and a nice one at that.  I couldn’t fully open it as it was already wrapped and seeing I’d have to put back together any unwrapping job I did to keep my mischeviousness under wraps—I wasn’t able to decipher exactly what brand or color it was.

Not too long after, Christmas day rolled around.  And was I jazzed.  I had been waiting months for my new sleeping bag.  When it finally came time to open up the thing I ripped it open as I was fond of doing and blurted out without an ounce of hesitation—I thought it was blue the first time saw it! 

I was cooked, the thing was hunter green. 

Many times what we think we see isn’t even close to what we think it is.  No where is this more evident than in the way we judge one another.  One of the most horrendous things we can do is look down on and greatly mischaracterize one another.  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me may be repeated on playgrounds, but you won’t read the words in Scripture.  We shred one another with the the words we whisper without ever picking up a pair of shears.  We size one another up by what we say and by what we don’t say, by the the things we do or don’t do—or most of the time—what we think was said or done.  Essentially, we save our harshest judgements for the way things look.

I call it guilty by speculation.

Jesus instructs his disciples:

It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this I-know-better-than-you mentality again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your own part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.   (Luke 6:41-42, The Message Bible)

Often, what our assessments of one another are built on is what we have heard—based on someone elses’ selfish and twisted agenda. When we gossip, we are not re-telling the truth to get the story straight—no—we are telling it most often to verbally crucify someone or make ourselves look or feel better.  

God help us.

In a Christian community, everything depends upon whether each individual is an indispensable link in a chain. Only when even the smallest link is securely interlocked is the chain unbreakable. A community which allows unemployed members to exist within it will perish because of them. It will be well, therefore, if every member receives a definite task to perform for the community, that he may know in hours of doubt that he, too, is not useless and unusable. Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the fellowship. 

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer   

Where I grew up it was expected that us kids be outside every waking moment—it took a tornado sighting or a monsoon to get us to budge when it came to going back into the house for the day.  If you were a boy, it was seasonal sports you played.  My favorite was baseball and I’d do my darnedest to get everyone together in early spring not a day later than the last snow had melted—even if it was to forty degrees out—the beginning of another season couldn’t wait.  And I’d be sure to see it that we played well into football season come fall.  I was what you might consider the ring leader, not to mention the annual home run champ most campaigns.  More times than not I was one of two captains charged with the high responsibility of putting together a championship caliber team for the day.  And as most captains are fond of doing—I never failed to pick the strongest and most talented players first.  Most of us are taught as kids that winning isn’t the most important thing—having fun is.  Well, some of us young competitors knew better.  Losing isn’t much fun as an adult or a kid.   

The ex-cons (and even those still incarcerated), divorced, singles, disabled, terminally ill, elderly, marginalized, under-employed and the unemployed all have a place in the family of God that is just as important a spot or moreso as the spot occupied by the most learned, well heeled or highly respected member.  God’s family isn’t a business or a sports team, as it is neither a club for high rollers.  It is a family.  I don’t know about your family, but in my family each of us children are valued not for the size of the contribution we make, the depth of our pockets, or the talents we possess—we are valued because of the love that has been unconditionally showered upon us by our parents and one another.    

 1 We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves. 2 Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. 3 For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, ‘The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.’    (Romans 15:1-3, ESV)

The people we like to put on the bench, God puts on the field as starters, and often times these are the very people who are God’s greatest representatives as they know first hand what it is to need and depend on God.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.   

-Herbert Agar

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a martyr, was executed by hanging at the young age of thirty-nine for his opposition to the terrible mass-murderer Adolf Hitler and his regime (it is reported that Bonhoeffer was stripped naked  for the occasion and strung up on a  meat hook by piano wire—the wretched process takes about thirty minutes to kill someone).  A German pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer knew a thing or two about following Jesus and in the end it cost him his very life.  His book The Cost of Discipleship is a modern day classic.  

Bonhoeffer wrote:

When the Bible speaks of ‘following Jesus’, it is proclaiming a discipleship which will liberate mankind from all man-made dogma, from every burden and oppression, from every anxiety and torture which afflicts the conscience. If they follow Jesus, men escape from the hard yoke of their own laws, and submit to the kindly yoke of Jesus Christ. But does this mean that we can ignore the seriousness of His command? Far from it! We can only achieve perfect liberty and enjoy fellowship with Jesus when His command, His call to absolute discipleship, is appreciated in its entirety. Only the man who follows the command of Jesus without reserve, and submits unresistingly to His yoke, finds his burden easy, and under its gentle pressure receives the power to persevere in the right way. The command of Jesus is hard—unutterably hard—for those who try to resist it.

The last several years have meant time and occasions for some serious reflection for me personally.  And while I haven’t completed my project yet—I have made some re-discoveries in terms of just what it means to follow Jesus.  Over the last twenty years in particular I have spoken with several professing Christians and a good number have given me the impression that they somehow believe they can have Jesus as someone of peripheral significance—sort of like a mistress if you will.  Unfortunately, for any of us who have the idea that we can be part time Jesus-followers, God doesn’t negotiate the terms when it comes to following his Son. 

 Then another said, ‘I’m ready to follow you, Master, but first excuse me while I get things straightened out at home.’

Jesus said, ‘No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God’s kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.’    (Luke 9:61-62, The Message Bible) 

It’s not enough to have Jesus in the passenger seat of our car, and besides—Jesus drives the car or he walks. 

A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, is worth nothing.   

-Martin Luther

Two of my best buddies upon graduation from high school decided to head on down to local recruiting office and sign up to be proud soldiers in the service of the United States—one opted to go with The U.S. Marines and the other with The U.S. Air Force.  We were raised during a time in which many considered patriotism to have been at an all-time low (post Vietnam), only to see a dramatic turn around during the Reagan years as we grew older.  By the time my friends and I escaped high school it was the tail end of such an era, and if you ask me, it was also the end of a climate in which the president of these United States was honored by a good portion of it’s citizens despite ones political party—you didn’t refer to the president as Smith, and if you did, you were quickly reprimanded by your parents or your teacher and told to correct yourself and say President so and so.  

When you sign up (or are involuntarily told to sign up) to enter The U.S. Armed Forces some things are explained to you.  To go off to boot camp you are doing more than going away for so many weeks on some grueling survival of the fittest, you will be  changing everything just short of changing your name.  You become property of the U.S. Government.  You sleep where they tell you, eat what they feed you and get to slide on the underwear they provide for you.  Your vacations are planned around a schedule other than your own and any enemy of the United States, you are to treat as such.  Essentially, you are no longer your own person, you are subject to being told your every move and nothing can come between you and your new identity—not to mention a code of conduct that demands utmost attention.  And when it comes to your own family, if they aren’t kosher with any of that, they have a choice to make—either your family lives with your new life or they move along.  

It gets me to thinking—following Jesus isn’t up for debate—we don’t get to make our own deal.

A soldier on duty doesn’t get caught up in making deals at the marketplace. He concentrates on carrying out orders. An athlete who refuses to play by the rules will never get anywhere. It’s the diligent farmer who gets the produce. Think it over. God will make it all plain.  (2 Timothy 2:4-7, The Message Bible)

Maybe us Jesus-followers ought to take a page out of an officers manual the next time we need some advice.

The society in which we live suggests in countless ways that the way to go is up. Making it to the top, entering the limelight, breaking the record—that’s what draws attention, gets us on the front page of the newspaper, and offers us the rewards of money and fame.

The way of Jesus is radically different. It is the way not of upward mobility but of downward mobility. It is going to the bottom, staying behind the sets, and choosing the last place!

-Henri Nouwen 

For some us, our stage is a stage—while others of us have been hand selected to serve behind the scenes and unseen enemy lines.  Either way, the thing that every last one of us has been called to do is to serve others. 

My dad’s pals down at the local homeless shelter or my mom’s friends over at the crisis pregnancy center who are slaving away for Jesus aren’t doing what they do to make a name for themselves—and they are doing a pretty good job of remaining undecorated.  These folks could surely go out and do a better job of selling and raising more money.  They could certainly put on quite a show considering just what it is that they do.  The beauty is that neither is doing what they do for money or fame.  The folks I know who serve Jesus best don’t do it for monetary or temporal purposes—they are serving Jesus and making a name or a fortune for themselves isn’t on their list of things to accomplish.  

Then those ’sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’    (Matthew 25:37-40, The Message Bible)

It could be pointed out that while Mother Teresa’s life as a servant has been held up as model to follow, thousands of others like her have served the destitute and gone practically unnoticed by a good majority of us  self-enamored  Americans while Jesus hasn’t missed a thing. 

How could he?

It’s Jesus they have been waiting on all along.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

-Augustine

The gospel really is quite upsetting for the vast majority of us.  I caught one of those warm and fuzzy commercials a few weeks back as I was watching my Detroit Red Wings win another Stanley Cup (yes, they do play hockey until June).  The spot features hockey player tough guy Stu Grimson.  Grimson is shown still donning his jersey after coming off the ice, in his skates, and drenched in sweat as he dials up his daughter—it’s kind of cute really.  The big-bad-burly Grimson gets caught by his teammates singing her the Itsy Bitsy Spider song and the moral of the story is one that I’m guessing is suppose to motivate us to reach for the virtues of better living.  It’s put out by The Foundation For A Better Life—whoever they are?  

I suppose there is a place for feel good television commercials—I’m not about to throw stones at whoever is behind a message designed to inspire us to be more thoughtful, with all of the mindless and degrading stuff that finds its way to the airwaves I’d certainly pick on some other commercial if that were what I was attempting to do. 

The Foundation For A Better Life may not be an enemy of the message of Jesus, but I am afraid there are many messages that we take as gospel truth that are not, and some times I get the feeling that we fall into thinking that just because we ascribe to good morals or promote wholesome movies that must mean we are Christians.  You can send James Dobson and his Focus on the Family all of your income and then some, but that makes you no more Christian than the Aflac duck. 

 I can’t believe your fickleness—how easily you have turned traitor to him who called you by the grace of Christ by embracing a variant message! It is not a minor variation, you know; it is completely other, an alien message, a no-message, a lie about God. Those who are provoking this agitation among you are turning the Message of Christ on its head. Let me be blunt: If one of us—even if an angel from heaven!—were to preach something other than what we preached originally, let him be cursed. I said it once; I’ll say it again: If anyone, regardless of reputation or credentials, preaches something other than what you received originally, let him be cursed.    (Galatians 1:6-9, The Message Bible)

Any other message is foreign no matter how good it makes us feel—the devil never packages his message in a black jump suit and pitch fork, he’s more likely to use an apple.

The gospel is Jesus replacing our utter darkness with his glorious light.