I saw Jesus the other day. She was walking down Calumet Avenue. I was stopped at the stoplight by AutoZone. She was crossing the street in the crosswalk. It was a hot, humid, sticky day. She was wearing a stocking cap. A coat. Maybe layers underneath. The shopping cart she pushed was full, its contents covered with a tarp. Her navy blue polyester pants were long, ragged. Her shoes did not match.
What would it have been like for her if I had carried her cross? What would it have been like for me?
I saw Jesus the other day. When I first saw him he was in his wheelchair in the Walgreens’ parking lot. He wore a baseball cap. His shirt was light yellow, short-sleeved, button down. His pants were brown. His face drooped on the right side, muscles slack, and his right arm sat limp in his lap. He was foot walking his wheelchair across the parking lot. Inch by inch. When I came out of Walgreens, he had just barely made it across the street to the CVS parking lot. About two hours later, I saw him at the front of Town and Country. The sun was scorching hot. The air was thick. A half a block. Two hours.
What would it have been like for him if I had carried his cross? What would it have been like for me?
I saw Jesus the other day night. It was 11:09 p.m. I was on my way home from the first Candlelight of the year, filled with deep joy, profound peace. She was stumbling down Campbell Street. She lurched into the brick retaining wall just past the Boys’ and Girls’ Club. She over corrected and almost fell into the street. She feebly tried to right herself, all the while not losing her grip on the brown paper bag in her hand.
What would it have been like for her if I had carried her cross? What would it have been like for me?
I saw Jesus the other day when I was scrolling through my newsfeed on social media. He was holding tightly to a small child with one hand, and clinging to the edge of a dinghy in the midst of the Mediterranean with the other. Fleeing war. Fearing for their lives. Seeking safety.
She was standing with dignity at the graveside of her murdered son.
They were seven and nine years-old, sitting in a detention center for undocumented immigrants. No one to be their advocates. Expected to navigate an immigration hearing on their own.
What would it have been like for them if I had carried their cross? What would it have been like for me?
In the Gospel of Luke, the first words of public proclamation that Jesus makes in his ministry are these:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.
He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor,
To proclaim release to the captives
To give recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free.
Everything that Jesus does flows from those words. Everything that Jesus says is a deepening of those words. Everything that Jesus is is a fulfillment of those words.
Later on in Luke’s telling of the Jesus story, Jesus tells his would-be-followers what they can do to be a part of that continued fulfillment. Hate father, mother, sister brother. Weigh the cost. Give away all your possessions. Carry the cross.
For centuries the church has theologized those words away. Hate doesn’t really mean hate, we have said. Jesus is simply telling us that we need to like everything or everyone else a little less than him, we have suggested. Give everything away - that’s just Jesus using the rhetorical tool of hyperbole, we have rationalized. And carry the cross, well that is merely a metaphor for discipleship.
But none of that is what the people who heard Jesus say those words would have thought. These words of Jesus were some of the most radical, offensive words that he ever spoke. After all, family was everything - identity, security, community. Possessions - they were the means by which one made one’s way in the world. And crosses - they meant one thing, and one thing only: a torturous, shameful brutal death at the hands of Rome, just because Rome could.
So, what does Jesus mean? Well, I’m with Richard Swanson who, in his blog, Provoking the Gospel, says unashamedly, “I don’t know.” But then he goes on to say, but let’s imagine that I do know, and he points us toward a real life cross-bearer in the Gospels. Not Jesus, but someone else.
Fast forward in the Jesus story, and when Jesus is weighed down beneath the weight of his own, physical, deathly real cross, we meet Simon. Simon of Cyrene, the North African, freshly into the city from the countryside. Simon is grabbed by the Roman authorities and compelled to carry Jesus’ cross. In those moments, Simon could have only thought one thing: he was going to die, and his family would never know what happened to him.
When Jesus’ cross shifted to Simon, nearly everything about what would happen next was uncertain. Unknown. Everything, that is, but one thing: Simon’s future was inextricably linked, bound up with the poor, unfortunate soul for whom the cross had become too heavy. Simon’s future was bound up with Jesus, and Jesus’ future was bound up with Simon’s.
That is after all, what Jesus’ whole life, death, resurrection, and even ascension are all about. When the weight of creation’s frailty, brokenness, condemnation, when creation’s cross became too heavy to bear, Jesus took that weight fully and completely upon himself. Henceforth, Jesus’ future was bound up with creation’s, and creation's future was bound up with Jesus.
It is true for you too, you know. Jesus has taken the weight of your frailty, your brokenness, your condemnation, the weight of your cross upon himself too. Amid whatever unkowing you live, this much you do know: Jesus’ future is bound up with you. Your future is bound up with Jesus.
That is why, week after week, as often as we are able, we gather around the table. There we feast upon cross-bearer fare. Bread and wine - cross-bearer food. Bread and wine - where cross-bearing becomes life-giving.
There, week after week, as often as we are able, looking out around the table, I see Jesus. I see Jesus in all of you and each of you, cross-bearers every one. Claimed. Called. Named. Cross-marked. Filled with the Holy Spirit
To preach good news to the poor,
To proclaim release to the captives
To give recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free.
AMEN
+Pr. Char
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