- Many people choose to give up something during this season as an exercise in self-denial. Might we not instead ask God what He wants us to take up.
I once heard a famous philosopher/apologist quote a poem. It so impacted me that I jotted it down word for word, memorized it, and used it incessantly in my public speaking. Then, alas, it lay dormant for some years from my sermonizing repertoire.
During that hiatus I lost the source of the poem and have looked for it, to no avail. While my recall might not be perfect after all this time, I nonetheless would suggest that these verses are powerfully prophetic in our Lenten run-up to Easter.
When a blight infant laughed with careless joy,
Sports with a woolen toy,
If the toy should come to life,
The child so direly crossed,
Faced with this actuality were lost.
Leave us our toys then, O Lord
And happier we shall be
As we can do with them, and play with them
As suits us best,
Reality would only add to our unrest.
We do but ask no more of You than is displayed
This death plaything in our own hands we have made
To lull us in our fears, and comfort us in our loss.
Leave us the wooden Christ, upon the wooden Cross.
The Cross, in other words, is too often a plaything for us. Perhaps more appropriately, we limit the Cross to jewelry worn around our necks, or something we post at the front of the sanctuary for meditative purposes. But what we don’t want is for the thing to become alive in our thoughts and lives; rather, just let it “lull us in our fears, and comfort us in our loss.”
The believer should consider the Cross in at least two ways. First, we have to die, spiritually speaking. Paul pointed the way in his letter to the churches in Galatia: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”
We must die – to our worldly affections, our vocational choices, our penchants to always get our own way – so that Christ might live in us. The implication of the above verse in Galatians seems to be that Christ can only wholly live in us if we are wholly dead. That will take a miracle; a miracle which, Scripture teaches, He wants to perform for us.
But another implication of the Cross is frequently ignored. “Deny yourself, take up your Cross,” says Jesus, and “follow Me.” Take up your Cross – what might that mean? Well, the Cross of Jesus was taken up that He might die to atone for our sins. Wonderful, indeed, and our Holy Week remembrances commemorate that sacrifice.
But Jesus’ Cross is not my cross. If Jesus’ burden on Good Friday was our sin, what should our burden be? What is God’s tailor-made burden for our proverbial backs, the ones to whom He wants us to bring the Good News? To what ministry has He called each of us, that we might bring hope to the poor, the disenfranchised, the hurting, the sinner? Lent is a season to contemplate with gravity and gratitude all the Christ bore for us and for our salvation. Many people choose to give up something as an exercise in self-denial. Might we not instead ask God what He wants us to take up, that we might extend His grace to others and build His eternal Kingdom?
