Eternal Leap: Death by Cross

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/021116.cfm

DT 30:15-20

LK 9:22-25

I can’t remember who first used that term when I was a child. “It’s my cross to bear." Whoever said it followed with a long, drawn out sigh. It might have been my mother or one of my grandmothers. Definitely a woman. I can’t remember who, because I’m pretty sure all I could think of is which cross I’d have to bear. All three of them certainly said it at least once. I’ll tell you about my Grandma Annie, and her cross to bear.

She was a smoker, was ruthlessly dismissive of her quiet husband, Ralph, and collected ceramic figurines of frogs. I cleaned her woodwork a couple of early Springtimes when I was a teenager, wiping down wood trim, wood doors, wood mantel, wood shelving, wood wainscoting and finished off with the wooden dining table and chairs. I think she made me use Old English oil, but that may be wrong. It was similar to that, though. I used rags torn up from grandpa’s old shirts and underwear. After that, I took down all the window screens and washed them thoroughly outside with the hose. That job wasn’t so bad. If that was a cross to bear, it didn’t last long. Grandma played the radio while we worked. She liked the old tunes, and I learned to like them too.

I think she said Grandpa was her cross to bear. And her heart. She constantly complained about her heart. Her cross was also her oldest son, a classic California alcoholic. I say classic due to his flamboyant lifestyle, which looked so enticing, until in the end he died in a run down apartment surrounded by so many empty bottles that today you’d have thought he was a recycler. Grandma was not a happy camper about Grandpa, her heart, or Ralph Junior.

Why did Grandma collect frog figurines? Frogs lived in grimy worlds, and ate flies, but they could leap from predators and nosy parkers in a magnificent display of disdain, transporting themselves completely out of reach. Something about their dismissive behavior, and ability to fly away attracted Grandma. She had a disparaging word at the ready for each of life’s inconveniences. But she had never left the hard scrabble life God had handed her. She was faithful. Scornful, but faithful.

Grandpa and I would pee into the laundry room sink rather than go in the bathroom in the house. I’m not sure why that was important to him, but she’d yell at the both of us while we’d stand there and pee. “I can never use that sink for anything, now!” Peeing in the laundry sink had been going on for decades. My uncles and dads peed in that sink with Grandpa. Grandpa dutifully kept the water running and after we were done he sprinkled some innocuous cleaner — Borax, maybe — on our marked territory. That satisfied his understanding of reasonable follow through, as if the sink was now appropriately ready for whatever Grandma wanted it for.

They exhibited their rough edges in their confrontations. My loyalties to my grandparents were constantly challenged. Do what Grandma says or Grandpa? Peeing in the sink may have been the only time, though, that Grandpa stood his ground with Grandma, so to speak. That and his daily shot of whiskey in the morning and the evening, and whenever anyone came over. “He’s the reason Toad is a drunk,” Grandma would say.

Yes, Grandma called her oldest son Toad. The unimaginable connections between her frog collection and the name for her oldest son, weighing in a young boy's mind the differences between a toad and a frog, has kept my head spinning for a lifetime.

She was kind to me. I never had the notion that “I” was her cross to bear. My mother said that about me once, but quickly apologized. Well, it was a couple of years later, actually, but I knew she regretted it the moment she said it. Still, I imagined often being that very burden of the cross that she had to carry. I did much to cause her grief.

Commentators on today’s reading from Luke, copied pretty closely in both Mark and Matthew, seem to all agree that Jesus was not talking about this life’s burdens as the cross we must bear if we follow him. Our cross is not some physical defect, fear of heights, family tragedy, aging husband, wayward son, or failing heart. Those things certainly feel like crosses, but that’s not Jesus’ point. Jesus is talking about his execution, on a cross, the symbol of an excruciating criminal death. And if we follow him we also take up the cross. And then ....

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
What profit is there for one to gain the whole world
yet lose or forfeit himself?” LK 9:22-25

As in everything written about Jesus, this has a whole lot of stuff going on packed into three succinct verses.

First he says we must deny ourselves. That is a crucial starting point. My Grandma wanted her woodwork properly oiled up, but behind her need to preserve her home, she wanted me to do something outside of my self. The time spent with any of my grandparents, or even my parents, included a continual string of reminders to keep my focus on Jesus, and not on myself. Their wisdom on that matter went deeper than the need to get the lawn mowed, the dishes put away, and the wood oiled.

The daily world of their lives centered on what they understood as a public humiliation — doing Catholic things. We must take up our cross daily, Jesus said. So, we went to Church, said the rosary, and got smacked in front of everyone if we swore out loud. Following Jesus in my youth meant being a Catholic, and all that came with it. We were taught to deny ourselves during Lent, forgo meat on Fridays, go to confession, and get dressed in uncomfortable clothes for Church. Little things that spoke to all of us, young and old, that sacrifice was good for you.

I thought for a long time that the boy scout oath said it clearer than the Baltimore Catechism. “On my honor, I will do my best. To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.” Daily sacrifice may sound trite, scrupulous even, but the practice of the straight and narrow should be a well worn path. Grand parenting, or plain parenting, wisdom that we should walk the walk. While denying myself and doing my best takes a well-formed conscience, it’s the daily work of taking up our cross that seals the deal, says Jesus. 

Jesus talking about a cross carrying thing in a physically real way goes beyond sacrifice. We carry more than just a burden. The notion of a cross means that we carry the very instrument of our execution. Our cross is the way of life that God hands us, not the life that we manufacture for ourselves. Our life may eventually kill us, but in a strange and wonderful analogy this existence is a muted version of our eternal life. What will destroy us here, living faithfully, daily, with conviction and concentration upon the will of the father, will our the daily joy for all of eternity.

Jesus wants us to walk toward a death led by him, because we are walking right into the Kingdom. Following Jesus is integral to discipleship, because we're walking through death right into life.

What did the cross represent in Jesus’ time? Death by public humiliation and incomparable pain. “Bearing our cross,” literally, means carrying the instrument of our execution, while facing ridicule. If we are willing to follow Jesus, he said, then we give up our plans for this life for what he has in mind for us.

Practically speaking, this life ends, so a significant part of what Jesus says is purely logical. This life is temporary.

Both of my grandmas, and my mother, have passed away. They lost their lives painfully, struggling for months in their final days. There was no doubt that each of them had other plans for their lives than what was handed them. Grandma Annie loved her boys, but staying with her husband was not her personal preference. She longed for something other than an auto mechanic. Something better than a house in an ever changing neighborhood, set upon by one gang of immigrants just passing through after another. She expected a grandson who came by to see her more often.

And yet, because of the words in Deuteronomy today, “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the Lord, your God, heeding his voice, and holding fast to him.

The strange logic of choosing life and dying to this life, means we must accept death by living this life with steady, daily willingness. It may feel like drudging, look like the behavior of frogs, but we are leaping into the Kingdom. Choosing life means that this existence, however much we value it, holds no future, and yet every movement we make takes us to the Kingdom.

Joanne and I visited Grandma Annie the night before she died. She was in a dank, dreary hospital room out of the worst that Los Angeles could provide. The waiting room down the hall was full of her relatives. And yet, she was alone when we went into her room. She had been reduced to an immovable stick of her former self, a cruel stroke that failed to finish her off. Her sore heart kept her alive, though, and the only movement was one eye that watched me as I stood fuming about the conditions of the place where she might certainly die.

I held her hand and told her that she didn’t have to stay here. That it was up to her. Her eye held me. She was bearing her cross, watching her grandson act like a fool, but she was telling me she loved me, faithful to the end. There was a smile in that eye, not fear. 

Most of her own sisters and brothers were gone, her parents and her grandparents, too. I think I said that they were waiting for her, or some similar statement that the better life she wanted was right there for her taking. It was OK for her to go. I think I said the words because she was telling me that it was OK for her to go. 

She died that night, hopped out of this world like a majestic one-eyed matriarchal frog. She was finally able to dismiss this life and follow Jesus into the promised land. She had faithfully heeded God’s voice, and held fast to him.

Grandma is a constant reminder to me that though following Jesus is the right thing to do, it is fraught with peril to the very end. The promise, though, is clear. If we keep our hearts turned to Jesus, if we listen to him, we will not be led away to adore and serve other gods. As we return daily to the well worn path of our Father's will and Jesus' leading, we will have a long life to live on the land in the Kingdom that the Lord swore he would give us.