Today’s passage from Matthew* has often been understood as a call not to life, but to resignation: suffering is all, and the proper response is gritting teeth and bearing pain proudly to pay God back for God’s love. Fake it if you have to, imitate, but keep your joy at bay. As my father was taught by the nuns at Catholic elementary school, “Life is to be endured, not enjoyed.”
I beg to differ, and if I may be so bold, I’m pretty sure Jesus would, too. I wonder how he would respond to those nuns, pious and well-intentioned as they were. Would he gently correct them with a parable? Would he nudge them with a paradox? Or would he would rebuke as he does the disciples a little later in Matthew: “You faithless and perverse generation!” (Matt:17:17)
While suffering is certainly part of our lot, the belief that we ought to live day-to-day in the shadow of our Savior’s worst moment on earth is, to my heart, a tragic misreading of his Gospel life. It ignores the great joy that he lived as well: The transformation of water to wine; the celebration of children; the quiet ecstasy of the desert; our aloneness with God and all Creation.
To take up your cross is to embrace every place where the Divine has entered your life – which is to say, The Eternal Now. Sometimes God enters through pain; other times God enters through joy. The point is that it’s not one or the other. It never is with God, and it never was with Jesus. To remember him only in his crucifixion is to blaspheme God just as much as it is to remember him only as a carefree hippie. Both ignore the fullness of his life, and limit our own imagination and action. Jesus’ life ran the gamut, as ours do when we allow God to enter. Jesus loved and he raged, considered the lilies and flipped the tables when the temple was turned into a market. He admonished his friends and consoled complete strangers, tricked princes and wept with paupers. He followed God unconditionally.
His willingness to die so that God’s love would echo through the ages to us is a gift, but we don’t owe him back for it. Suffering is not a currency with God, for God works not in money but in Love. As Christians, we are not required to imitate Jesus in order to pay God back; instead, we are called to live as Christ within each moment we’re given. For Jesus never told us to carry his cross; he told us to carry ours.
–Kip Dooley, 8th Day Faith Community
Kip serves as Moderator at 8th Day, which recently confirmed its new leadership council and membership structure. He came to C of S in 2018, after years of reading Inward/Outward as a high school teacher in Massachusetts and Minnesota. Born Christopher Dooley, he comes from a long line of Irish Catholics.
