The eCrozier

We’re in the shadow of the Cross on Good Friday. So, we should have no lingering presumptions about our selfishness and self-centeredness. If we have presumptions, then they’re at best half-truths. To be sure, we aren’t always selfish and self-centered, but we are all too often to deny the truth. In our Prayer Book confession, we admit: “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts.” Thus, God’s decision for the Cross overturns any pretense we might have about justifying ourselves based on a claim of our own righteousness. And yet, we persist, don’t we?

We seek to prove to God, to others, and, maybe most of all, to ourselves that we’ve earned everything. Whatever we’ve achieved in the world, we’d like to believe it comes from our own hard work and cleverness. That’s the line we’re given by our culture and we put our faith in it. We work hard in school, start a career, and do all the things our culture expects. We strive for success, pursue the American Dream, all the while, as David Brooks points out, we’re engaged in “reputation management,” worried about what others think of us, how we rank among them, and try “to win the victories the ego enjoys.” All this striving operates under the mistaken notion, again as Brooks points out, that “I can make myself happy. If I achieve excellence, lose more weight, follow this self-improvement technique, fulfillment will follow.” Many people commit their entire lives to chasing this assumption, daily grinding away in this false promise, expecting they’ll receive an appropriate return on their investment.

For those of us, however, who’ve been given a bit of Divine Luck, we’ve learned that chasing after such applause, or seeking the approval of others, or achieving “success” is, as St Paul writes, nothing but “rubbish” (Philippians 3:8). Such an epiphany can come seemingly out of the blue or it can result from a hard experience: a huge professional failure, a personal humiliation, or a life-threatening illness. However it comes, if we’re divinely lucky enough to perceive it, then we’ll see it for the gift it truly is. Whatever illusions we had before about life’s purpose will seem so unimportant. We’ll recognize the promise our culture makes is false. It’s in this “breaking” of our illusions about what life is meant to be that we can then live the “abundant life” Jesus promises (John 10:10).

If grinding out success, seeking the applause of others, and needing to justify ourselves is about, as Brooks notes, “building up the ego and defining the self,” then this “breaking” I name is, again in Brooks words, about “shedding the ego and dissolving the self.” When that happens, when our life is turned upside down (see Jesus’s words to Peter in John 21:18), when our illusions about ourselves are mercifully shattered, then we’re finally ready to sit at the foot of the Cross, trust in Jesus, and see him as he truly is; the savior we so desperately need. That’s when we’ll know it’s also time to get up from the foot of the cross and bear our own (Matthew 16:24-26). We can do that, because even though it’s Friday, we know Sunday is coming when He is risen!

+Scott