Co-laborers with Christ

“To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Jesus has graciously prepared the way for this word by speaking first of self-denial. Only when we have become completely oblivious to self are we ready to bear the cross for his sake.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

For the doubting Thomas types, these next three days of the Church calendar ask quite a lot of us. They put belief to the test. “Believe” is a word I don’t entirely understand. I can believe that the sky is blue because I can see it and that the ground is cold because I can feel it. “Belief” as I was taught implied a degree of certainty that now seems somewhat contrary to faith. I can’t believe that you love me. I can’t know for certain. Love is love partly because it might not be at some point and because it happens in spite of all logic. Love isn’t tangible. It’s mysterious. We can’t see it or touch it. It's something we do and our experience of being “in love” causes us to trust and to hope in it. “Hope” and “trust”. Those are the words I choose. God is love, says the scripture, thus implying that our relationship to God is much like our relationship to love - mysterious, intangible, unknowable, illogical, and one of action, of doing.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer in The Cost of Discipleship, keenly observes that the very first and last words Christ spoke to his disciple Peter were, “follow me.” Action. [Notable also perhaps is what Christ doesn’t say, “believe me.”] And Peter did it. He followed Christ, it seems, without knowing or believing anything. An illogical, mysterious choice he made. This wanderer wonders: if Peter had known the ultimate cost of following Christ, would he have done it? And while Peter was absent on Good Friday having walked away and denied Christ in his hour of need, later he too was crucified (although upside down - He didn’t feel worthy to die in the same manner as Christ). The cynic might ask, what “good” did following Christ get Peter other than his own crucifixion? When one looks plainly at scripture and sees the cost of following “the Way” (the earliest Christians were known as Followers of the Way) it certainly doesn’t seem like a “good” choice.

Faced with the reality of what following Christ gets us, I can empathize with Peter in his denial. Merely believing something about Christ? That's a much easier road to walk. In my senior Social Justice and Public Policy class, most of the questions posed by my students are questions of belief. What do I believe about their ideas? issues of injustice? how we repair a broken system? But also questions about the nature of salvation, the character of God, and what it means to follow Jesus. What is a Christian? There was a time when those questions were easy for me to answer, when the formula of Christian faith added up. The list of beliefs was neat and tidy, and I simply needed to say “yes” to each of them. Believe this about God, that about Christ. That's everything I was asked to do. That was the beauty of grace after all. Jesus had already “paid it all.” Grace and the Cross, as I understood them, exempted me from eternal separation. In some ways the grace I was taught also exempted me from the hard work. Who wouldn’t choose an eternal salvation that requires little of them over the alternative which costs their life?

I don’t think eternity is the salvation the Cross calls us into.

In saying that, trust that I don’t deny the central importance of Christ's crucifixion, in all its historical and spiritual truth and significance for our eternal future - lest someone call me a heretic. But I do think our eternal future is beside the point, perhaps entirely beside the point. I have found that the Cross’ power rests not in its veracity - what it might do for me at some point in the future, but in its mystery - what it calls me into and who it calls me to be for others, now. If the cross is viewed, as I once viewed it, simply as the vehicle for eternal salvation, I fear it is stripped of its true power - the power to heal, the power to transform, and the power to raise dead things to new life.

Today, we are invited to consider the Cross’ implication for our own lives. Will we be mere admirers of Jesus or will we follow him? Will we unite with him in his crucifixion and die to ourselves? step down from our positions of power? become indifferent to all things and surrender completely to God’s will? Christ’s death on the Cross represents a complete and total surrender and an invitation to us to empty ourselves and enter into a partnership with God. Tony Campolo, professor of Christian Theology at Eastern University says it this way, “there isn’t much difference between a stick in the mud and a flute, except that the stick is full of itself. The flute however has been hollowed out, giving it the ability to make beautiful music.” Herein lies the salvation promised to us by the Cross. A salvation from self absorption, selfishness, of being self centered and getting ours while others go without. It’s an invitation to hollow ourselves and become agents of transformation with God, to heal broken people, broken communities, broken systems, and a broken planet. This is the paradox of the cross, an instrument of death and yet our willingness to pick it up and to bear its weight has the power to bring life.

Many of us get frustrated with God, whom we have mistakenly viewed as our handy-man on speed dial. The one we call when we are in a pinch or we have a problem to be fixed. Why doesn’t God do something about all the evil in the world? Why doesn’t he end poverty and injustice? Why doesn’t he stop wars and heal the environment? Fair questions. But when my students ask me, I simply respond in the same way as one of my favorite authors and Christian activists, Shane Claiborne does, “He did do something to end poverty, injustice, violence and destruction - he made you.” Can God heal injustice alone? Yes. But for some mysterious reason he doesn’t want to go at it alone. He wants us, he wants me, to co-labor with him in establishing his Kingdom on earth. He believes and is certain I am up to the task.

That is the salvation I hope for and trust in on this Good Friday.

Author: Michael Riemer, Community Service & Social Justice