To Live Again

It only makes sense that my first post in bringing this blog back to life would be about dying.
It's been running through me for a few months now.

Somber, serious...
          Yes, it's been a deeply personal journey, but it's journeying with destination

and at the end of the road stands a cross.

The cross was a form of Roman execution outside the parameters of Jewish law because of its atrocity.  Even amongst the Romans, it was reserved for the worst of the worst.  It involved shame, humiliation and torture.  It was meant for people who were deemed as having no redeemable value.

Then Jesus told his disciples,  
               “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 
                                                                      -- Matthew 16:24-25

Even before He walked the road Himself, Jesus knew what true life cost.  
                             And He invited us to live.
                                                                            By dying.

In the Garden of Gethsemene, twice Jesus shows us what this means.  Twice He surrenders His will to the will of the Father.  In the very garden whose name means "oil press", we witness Jesus surrender His own flesh to be battered and crushed, so the work of the Spirit may be poured out.

As a result of this surrender, He was shamed, humiliated and tortured.  He was deemed irredeemable by the masses lest He prove Himself otherwise.

He didn't try to prove Himself.  He didn't try to explain.  He didn't shout out threats of judgement or promises of His return.  Not in that moment.  In that moment, He gave up hold of any last thread of repute. 

He endured in the confidence of His obedience.  He forgave.

                       He told us to take up our cross

                                                                     and follow...

We can sanitize His death with nice metaphors and treat surrender like it's simply an emotion that makes us feel holier, or that it's something we pray will passively happen to us.  However, Jesus showed quite graphically that surrender is an action we must take.  It's a soldier surrendering arms and any attempt to defend one's self, giving oneself completely in the care of the ruling authority.

Surrender is painful because we are giving up our rights, our complaints, and our desires.  We are saying that His ideas are worth letting ours die.  It is in effect, our last will and testament.

Jesus carried His cross down the Via Dolorosa, the way of pain.  But His footsteps didn't stop there because the suffering alone wasn't the point.  

His journey had a destination.  

He carried His cross all the way to Golgatha.  Only with death could there be resurrection.

And now, I am called to follow.
Am I willing 
              to let God show me what part of myself I've been hanging onto for too long...
                                                                                                                                 and let it die?
Are you?

Knowing full well it means:

• giving up the need to be justified, proven or vindicated
• forgiving the one who hurt you the most
• letting go of control
• taking time to talk to the one on the bus beside you when all you want is to sleep
• holding your tongue from speaking slander and gossip
• initiating conversation even though you're the introvert
• just listening instead of having to have the answer
• looking at the people around you, believers and unbelievers alike, through eyes of grace
• asking God's opinion on matters
• giving up your reputation for obedience

If we are really willing to let these things die, we need to stop feeding them under the table and hoping they just go away.  We have to choose to trust that He can handle it, that He can carry us.  We have to be willing to carry them all the way to the cross
                                          and leave them there
                                                                                with Jesus.

It's only in that death that resurrection can come in us.  
And in that, we accept His invitation to become more and more of the person He created us to be.  

In that, we find ourselves truly living.

I'm keeping it fresh and keeping it real with Bonnie and others over at Faith Barista.