For a period of time, my mom did a lot of traveling. She was the director of a group she called the Friendly Center at my home congregation. Between taking groups from the Friendly Center on trips in the US or around the world and traveling on her own to find out whether a place would be good for her older adults to go, she was on the road a lot.
Before Mom would leave on one of her trips, she would call and say, “Now if anything happens while I’m gone, my important papers are in the desk in the little room.” This little room, which had been my sister’s bedroom for a while, was her office space, but really it was a converted closet. I would assure her that nothing was going to happen but, just in case, I knew where to look.
Almost twenty years later after she had died, we were going through Mom’s papers when we came across a file titled Trips. Opening the file, we found a letter from mom. It read, “Dear Jamie and Peter, if you are reading this letter, then something has happened, and I have died. Know that you are loved and that you always have been loved.” The letter went on to say where her important papers were and some other stuff I won’t bore you with, but she had left that letter there for us to find for a long, long time. Even with the humps and bumps of living together, with the little spats that arise, and the momentary angry words spoken, she didn’t want us to ever think that we weren’t loved.
Well, today’s text is sort of like that love note my mom left for my sister and me. Jesus assures us we are loved and valued just because God has created us. In this highly competitive world we live in, there is a need to break records, to have a better life than the previous generation. We try so hard to run faster, jump higher, be smarter than those around us. Today Jesus tells us to relax; take some of the competition out of our lives. Life is hard enough without trying to be more than the one who loves us. It is enough to be like that person.
Jesus tells us to not be afraid even if people demean the head of the household and it spills out over us. We are to hang on to the essential gift of life, that is, the spirit of life that has come into us from God’s holy breath, and not question whether we have value. Love does not necessarily mean peace, but it means that we can be confident of that love even when we argue the problems of the world and the issues of faith.
The next part of this text goes beyond love and value to worthiness. If we have to argue whether or not we are worthy, we aren’t worthy. Instead Jesus assures us that God’s love is enough to fully enter into the human condition and die for us so that we might be saved. Our worth and worthiness does not come from what we do, or who we are, or whether we are successful. Our worthiness and beloved state comes from God who created us, and God loves us because we are God’s own creation. This relationship is more important than our relationships with our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and the families we might marry into.
So, finding value in ourselves through our own works is nice, but it does not save us. Worthiness is not what we can gain on our own, but something that is given, bequeathed, to us through the divine relationship we have with God revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
This whole passage is part of the commissioning instruction from Jesus to his disciples covered last week where Jesus sends us to do his mission: cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. We are able to do these things because we are God’s creation, loved and valued. Beyond that, God gives us worthiness.
Now the language changes from assurances to bearing the cross. When we are able to act in the world like our teacher, when we can give our lives over to our master in a way that reflects our master to the world, when we can know that our worthiness comes from Christ’s work for us, we are ready to bear the cross.
To bear the cross is to claim our identity, an identity that sends us out into the world and sustains us throughout life’s way in Christ to a death that leads to resurrection living. Our cross-bearing identity leads us into new ways of knowing the kingdom of heaven. It is not only something we enter into after death, but something we proclaim in our daily living. The cross we bear is the empty cross, the symbol of the resurrection, so the cross-bearing that we are called to do is about life and living not about burdens and death. As long as we are bearing the cross, life in the kingdom of heaven is proclaimed. It is when the cross bears us that life gets problematic.
When we give up our lives to live in Christ’s body, that is in Baptism, then, in that relationship with Christ, we are assured of salvation. In that cross-bearing identity with Christ, we are freed to live into new relationships with all of God’s people. Indeed, we are always loved. Let us go live and love in Christ’s name. “Speak it in the light, …proclaim it from the housetops” that we are loved and commissioned to love others.
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