Have you ever been unable to finish something that you started?
Apparently, I have a personality trait that likes to start projects but I tend to go on to new projects before finishing the first project and on and on and the result is a life cluttered with unfinished projects. You don’t know anybody like that do you?
Now there are those things that once we start there is no going back, like sky diving or going into labor.
Faith in Jesus.
Are we able to finish what we start? Or is it one of those things that once it starts there is no going back?
Count the cost, Jesus tells us, pick up his cross, and carry through.
What kind of redemption does Jesus bring?
The redemption that comes from a suffering messiah? A crucified king?
Is Jesus a superhero? Appearing out of nowhere to fix all our problems?
Or is the cross, that costs God everything, more than a fix it?
Too often we do treat Jesus like a cosmic fix it man.
We skip over carrying the cross.
What if Jesus isn’t about fixing all our problems?
One definition of being human is to suffer, to carry pain.
Not to worship suffering or to seek it out, but to cope with the inevitability of it.
What do we do with suffering?
The Cross. God entering our suffering, embracing it, carrying God down into the hell of our futile rage over the pain.
God is met and known in the dark and painful places of life, making suffering a holy thing, not because it is desirable but because God meets us there, in the bad stuff. That is where we find God, life itself.
The life of faith is about finding life itself, communion with the holy, in the dark places. x2
What kind of redemption does Jesus bring? This holy place where God is found in the pit, in our secret hells, in pain?
Suffering is inevitable, will we find God there? God brings resurrection and abundant life out of the darkness of death and hell.
So to carry the Cross of Jesus is to find God and life and hope in suffering, especially in carrying the suffering of others.
Not to worship suffering or to run away from it or self-inflict it but rather to embrace it where it is found.
That is the cost.
Will we give up our idol of the God who fixes all our problems and worship the living God, who is crucified? Will we find life itself in the dark places?
Oscar Wilde wrote that “A cynic is a person who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Our consumer culture teaches us to be cynics, knowing the price but never the value. God finds infinite value in human life. Jesus is the infinite love that embraces the world in all its messiness.
Jesus bids us to count the cost, to carry his cross, to find God and the resurrection of life in the dark places.
I suspect this is one of those things that once it starts there is no going back.