Within the Christian Church there is a fascination with Easter. The resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the notion of Eternal life are often seen as the centre of the Christian good news. As a result, the stories and events that lead up to Jesus’ death on the cross are often glossed over in our excitement to get to the celebration of Easter. And yet, the secret to people having resurrection experiences, that is, tastes of eternal life here on earth, is tied to the pathway that Jesus followed that led him to the cross. I think this is why Jesus stressed to his listeners, “If you want to become my followers, you must deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). But what does it mean to take up the cross and follow Jesus? What does it mean for Jesus to die for the sins of humanity so that humans can experience Eternal life? In this blog, let me share a different response to what has often been taught in churches. The theological term “cross” is one that is used a lot in the church. The Christian Church throughout history has often stressed that the cross points to the death of Jesus on the cross, but many of the scriptures in the New Testament don’t use the cross in that way. As is evident when Jesus preached to the crowds, “If you want to become my followers, you must deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me”, the term cross has a totally different meaning, since is Jesus alive and well and has not died on the cross yet. So what does the term cross mean in this context, and many other places in the New Testament? The cross, as I have come to understand it, is a symbol that points to the pathway of death, but it is the pathway of spiritual death, not physical death. As Jesus suggests in his teaching above, the pathway of the cross involves a denying of self, or the dying of the egoic self. Furthermore, Jesus says, if we want to be one of his followers, then we have to take up this cross just as he has. In other words, the cross points to the pathway of many egoic deaths that Jesus experienced leading to his spiritual development and maturity as a human being. How I wished we knew the details of Jesus’ life between the age of 13 when Jesus was presented at the temple for his Jewish Bar Mizpah and the age of approximately 30 when Jesus began his ministry as a prophet/healer. The Bible is silent about those years, and little can be gleaned with certainty from other historical sources. All we know is that when Jesus suddenly appeared out of nowhere for his baptism and began his ministry, the crowds responded to his wise teachings, healing abilities and powerful spiritual presence. (There are lots of theories about where Jesus was in those missing years and how he became this wise spiritual teacher/healer.) What is clear is that when Jesus began his ministry, he was already travelling the journey of the cross. He was already practicing what he preached. He was already denying himself, dying to his egoic self, and walking the journey of the cross. But what does it mean to die to one’s egoic self? What does it mean to travel the pathway of the cross? So often the focus of the cross within the Christian Church has been on the suffering of Jesus, how Jesus had to suffer for the sins of humanity. While there is some truth to that statement, it is also very misleading. It misses totally the motivation behind why Jesus experienced this suffering. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. For those of us who are parents, what happens when our children make a mistake, like when my son as young adult caused an auto accident? We suffer, don’t we? Now why do we suffer? Is it because our children have made a mistake, sinned? No. In fact, the “sin” piece has little to do with it. The reason we parents hold the suffering of our children is because we love our children. We don’t like things happening to them that may cause them to suffer whether it is due to mistakes/sins they have made or simply the negative realities of life like losing a job, illness or potential death. The very nature of love means we suffer when the people we love suffer. The more we love others, the more we are willing to hold the suffering of others. This is a story in John’s gospel in the Bible where we see this connection between love and suffering highlighted in Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has just arrived to the home of his good friend Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha. Upon learning Lazarus has died, we read that Jesus was moved deeply and then he weeps. This is how the gospel writer John describes it: ‘When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”’ (John 11:32-36). While the pathway of the cross is often seen as a journey of suffering, it is really a journey of learning to truly love. The more deeply we are able to love and hold the suffering of others, the more we have learned to die to ourselves and follow the cross, just as Jesus did. This is what it means, I believe, when the church teaches that Jesus had to die for the sins of humanity. Jesus had to die to his egoic self so that he could truly experience and hold the sufferings of those he loved, which in the end, including loving everyone. Jesus actually taught that the spiritual path of life is all about love. He summarized the religious path down to two commandments about love: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31). This is why Jesus invited his followers and us too to follow the way of the cross. Jesus wanted us to learn how to love as he loved, a love that is unconditional like God’s love. In the past month, I have been reading the book “Being Ram Dass” (2021) which is an autobiography of Ram Dass’ life. Despite him being a prominent spiritual teacher for the last 40 years, I actually knew little about him. In his book, he describes compassion in this way: “Compassion is seeing others as ourselves, expanding our identity to include the other person. When I sit with an AIDS patient, I know it could be me. With I sit with a dying person, I know that I to will die. Sitting with the women in Guatemala, their suffering was also mine. Behind our suffering, we share love” (315). When we have compassion for someone, which is a form of love, our sense of self expands allowing us to sense and experience to some extent the experience of those we love. I often describe this love as the relational field that can potentially arise when two people meet and interact with one another. This is very true in the therapist’s office if counsellors have learned to hold and work within this relational field. When our client feels sadness or anxiety or anger or hatred or depression or powerlessness, we, as their counsellor, can also sense these experiences in the field. The experience of the other becomes part of our experience. Due to our ability to love, our sense of self will expand so that we are able to hold and thus feel the experience of those we love. For us to love in this deep way like Jesus did, with an expanded sense of self, requires us to travel the pathway of the cross that Jesus walked everyday during his three years of ministry up until his death. So, how do we practice this pathway of the cross, this journey of self denial and dying to the egoic self? To be honest, it is not easy. This is the reason why Jesus described this journey of the cross as narrow, a path that few people want to travel (Matt 7:13-14). I suspect this is one of the reasons why many churches skim over the teachings of the cross and the tragic events of Good Friday so they can get to celebrating the blessings of Easter and the resurrection. However, Easter, in many ways, is a celebration of what happens when love is embraced fully, when the way of the cross is lived to its deeper levels. Recently, I have also been reading Matt Licata’s book “A Healing Space” (2020). Licata is a psychotherapist, poet, and writer who I deeply value for his wisdom in integrating spirituality with psychotherapy. He has helped me see how the cross is connected to the resurrection. In his book, he does not talk about the cross but he does describe the process of dissolution, the dying of the egoic self. He connects the process of dissolution to the process of rebirth. He writes: “In the face of this dissolution, the question isn't so much how can we be reborn, but will we participate in death fully, and with an open heart, paving the way for new forms to emerge, trusting that rebirth will take place.... In times of transition, our tendency is to rush to rebirth, back into the known, in an urgent attempt to cure, maintain, or heal that which is dying, that which longs for transformation [within us.] It is so natural to resist falling apart in our need to put it all back together. But it is only from the core of the womb of death – a death tended to consciously - that rebirth can come into being” (https://mysticmeandering.blogspot.com/2019/01/death-and-rebirth-matt-licata.html). Three things in this quote capture my attention. One is that the process of rebirth in our life is determined by how much we “participate in death”. In other words, our ability to travel the path of our rebirth is dependent on our ability to participate in our spiritual dying process fully. The deeper we learn to die to our egoic seld, the deeper our rebirth or resurrection experiences will be. This is what Jesus meant when he stressed to his listeners, “deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me.” Two, Micata highlights that there is huge temptation for us to rush to rebirth, to return to the known, in the hope of curing, maintaining or healing what is dying within us. Therefore, it is no surprise that many churches rush to celebrate Easter. This is what our western culture wants, a quick path or fix that allows us to hopefully experience rebirth type experiences in our lives without having to experience too much dying or experiences of the cross. I suspect this is a reason why the path of the cross has often been reduced within the Christian Church to believing in Jesus’ crucifixion on the cross or that “Jesus died for our sins.” We are looking for a quick answer to deal with the suffering we experience in our lives. However, such mental beliefs don’t lead people to the egoic deaths and kenotic moments that are necessary for people to travel the journey of their spiritual rebirth. The reality is that “we have to die” to our egoic self over and over again in a similar way that Jesus died continuously to his egoic self. And third, this process of dissolution, what Christians could call the pathway of the cross, is a journey that requires an open heart. It is a journey of love. The more we are able to go through the process of dissolution by dying to our egoic self, the more we are able to be reborn with the ability to love beyond ourselves by holding deeper the suffering of those we love. The more we die to ourselves, the deeper we are able to love. With these thoughts about the cross in mind, I invite you this year not to skip over the stories that teach about the journey of the cross, especially the stories that happen during Jesus’ last day on earth. It is in these painful stories of love that we see Jesus living the pathway of the cross, even when in the midst of his dying process. There are key events during Jesus last day of life where Jesus lived out the pathway of the cross by expressing profound love to those he cared for. Contemplate how Jesus lived love when he discovered that his disciples were unable to stay awake and pray with him as he was struggled in prayer with what his future held (Mk 14: 32-40). Meditate on how Jesus struggled with what it meant to love when he wrestled in prayer with God in the Garden of Gethsemane, “please take this cup of suffering from me, yet not what I want but what is required of my life for your greater purposes of love” (Mk 14:36). Consider how Jesus practiced love when he realized that one of his beloved faithful followers would betray him (Mk 14:18). Deliberate on how following the cross of love helped Jesus resist the temptation of supporting one of his disciples who wanted to fight and use violence to stop the Roman and religious authorities from arresting him (Matt. 26:51-52). Think about how Jesus practice love when he looked into Peter’s eyes after Peter had denied knowing him three times (Lk 22:61). Consider how Jesus embodied love fully when he, dying on the cross, looked out over the soldiers and all the people, some who were taunting him, and said, “God, forgive these people for they don’t realize what they are doing” (Lk 23:34). Contemplate also how Jesus experienced the pain of love when he cried on the cross, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Mk 15:34). Finally, just before Jesus died, Jesus cried out to God, "“Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46). Consider, in the end, how Jesus realized God's love in following the pathway of the cross. Those events in Jesus’ last day provide a glimpse into how Jesus personally took up the cross of love in his life, how he denied himself and died to his egoic self. Because he participated in the dying process fully throughout his life, he experienced many rebirth experiences that transformed him and made him into a wise spiritual teacher, healer and prophet. Ultimately, it led him to his experience of the resurrection and Eternal life.
But these stories and teachings of Jesus also provide a roadmap for us on our spiritual journey. This is why Jesus taught his disciples, and all those who seek to follow in his footsteps, “If you want to become my followers, you must deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). As you approach this Easter season, may you discover the blessings that arise as you walk the cross of love in your life. Questions to Ponder:
Gord Alton MDiv RP CASC Supervisor-Educator
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