Love and Death
01/02/12 07:48 PM
Jesus said that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another. The popular image might be stepping in front of a bus; literally giving one’s life. That’s fine if it’s called for but what he was talking about was lying down one’s life every day, day after day, year after year, for others in your life. That takes effort, sacrifice. And it’s what we have to do as long as we live.
So much of what Jesus talked about, according to analysis of the Gospels, involves the verb tense of continuing action which was very common in ancient languages like Aramaic and Greek. Being “born again” has nothing to do with the “once and done and then do what you want” baloney peddled by “victorious life” Christians. It has to do with taking a fresh look at faith every day; of looking at your faith as the way of rediscovering God’s will over and over again, in every moment and every need, and then doing something about it. It has to do with giving one’s life to God’s will over and over again. It is laying down one’s life in the service of God’s love for the lives of those around you.
Jesus said that others will know his true disciples by their love. By their love. Not their “holiness” or their “righteousness” or their eagerness to take over judgment that is reserved for the Lord alone. By Their love. So many people who call themselves Christians claim a “personal” knowledge of Jesus and in so doing, they subjugate Him to their own agendas and their own ignorance. They claim that they have “come to have a personal relationship with Jesus” and that this is necessary to have righteousness, and that this righteousness gives them authority over other’s faith lives. It lets them off the hook, so that they can be free to judge everyone else. It lets them off the hook from what Paul described as his own struggle to see the truth but “only through a glass and darkly”.
They aren’t giving their lives for anyone. They are the Pharisees thanking God for their superiority over others, while the real faithful quake in the back of the Synagogue asking only God’s grace and forgiveness. In the 2012 election, in his zeal to celebrate Rick Perry’s "God-given right to be president", a baptist minister dismissed Mitt Romney as a non-Christian “cultist”. A cult is a group that demands uniformity of thought among its members to the exclusion of any variation. That minister’s arrogant dismissal of Mr. Romney as a ‘cultist” was, ironically, a very cultish thing to say. Lording one’s style of belief over others isn’t faith.
It is fascism.
And it bears nothing of the love and the sacrifice that Jesus calls us to. Jesus calls us to a life of faith and trust in Him, not in place of Him. It is not a faith in human institutions, it is faith in Him. Voltaire observed that “sects are everywhere different because they come from men; morality is everywhere the same because it comes from God”. That is an inconvenient truth for those who need their sect to be superior to all others. Another powerful leader noted that “it is lucky for rulers when men do not think.” True indeed. That was Adolf Hitler. We need to think. We need to follow God’s will, not man’s, and we need to do it over and over again, every day. We need to lay down our lives, our interests, our agendas, our own lust for control, for Him and, in His name, for others.
It is not about us. It is not about superiority. Jesus laid down his life ultimately, but along the way, he laid it down over and over and in many, many ways. He was and is Lord, but he NEVER "lorded" over anyone. Men, and particularly leaders of the typically male-dominated religions love to pull out Ephesians 5 as evidence of their “God-given” superiority. Ephesians 5 calls wives to be submissive to their husbands. Ooh, good stuff. So far so good. Then there is the throw off line; the Bible’s full of them and they are generally ignored; … “and men love your wives as Christ loves the church”. Yeah, sure, okay. But wait a minute, that means love your wives with your whole life, in every way, every day, no matter what, whether or not it is welcomed, whether or not it is appreciated or even acknowledged, and with complete disregard for your own interests and desires. Jesus was God on earth, but his defining nature and His call to us, was to be a servant of all. He could have it all. He could have our fidelity by the force of his might, but he instead chose to be a servant to all. Why? Because that is the nature of God. God is not just power. First, God is love, and love has no self-interest. If we want a part of that, then we have to try to be the same. We have to let go of our life. It no longer exists. It is dead and gone. Dying to the past means thinking ahead to the future and serving another’s needs. It means doing it even when the help is not desired or appreciated, just as Christ loves us, even when we assure him that we are fine on our own. It means dying every day in the sense of disregarding our interests for the sake of another.
Laying down one’s life for another. It not always dramatic, but it is always heroic. It is heroic like the single mother working two jobs, or the grandparents being there for grandkids in need, or poor people helping poorer people, because after all, we are all poor at some level. It is healthcare workers giving their time in free clinics or Covid wards, or elderly church members keeping a church food kitchen going year after year, or a thousand other kindnesses flying under the radar. It is dying as a way of life…as a way to life. The more bound we are to this idea of dying for others, the freer we are for what really does matter. Life.
