By Greg Jones
There are so many distractions. Don’t you feel them? So many things are shouting at us.
Maybe your job is shouting at you. Maybe your health. Your marriage. Maybe you’re shouting at people.
There are so many noises here in the streets of the world — it’s hard to focus on God.
The sky, the sun, the creation all cry out to the glory of God, but mostly we find ourselves on the busiest street corners of the cities of mankind surrounded by our own handiworks, and our works rarely tell of the mighty things of God.
Consider, the Grand Canyon, the Smokey Mountains in Fall, a starry sky at night in the countryside: these things witness to God, the living center of the universe and all else.
But New York? Washington? Kabul? These cities range from scary to great, but bear witness to humanity more than God. They tell of vanity, success, failure and pride, of July 4th or perhaps September 11th, but not eternity.
No, we live mostly in the city of Man, and the distractions shouting all around us are what we do. We make distractions for ourselves and others, which keep us unfocused on God, the center of all that is, was and will be, whether we know Him or not.
It’s hard — for us — to bridle our shouting tongues: either in town hall meetings, sessions of Congress, or in that raging inner forum of our minds.
It’s hard to focus on God: to hear, to listen, to obey. And, to be honest, it’s hard to even want to. Sometimes, most times perhaps, I’d rather fulfill my own needs, desires and urges than focus on hearing and heeding the Word of God.
Can you relate to that?
And that’s why Jesus died on the cross my friends.
They didn’t want to hear or heed God in the flesh, looking like Jesus did: all humble and poor. The Pharisees didn’t want that. The Romans didn’t want that. The disciples didn’t want that.
Nobody wants to focus on God that much, especially if God’s call to us costs us what we desire. Which is why God did it. Which is why God demonstrated how He is, by becoming what we are and living here.
Christ’s death upon the cross was and is still the center of that demonstration of who God is. And not only in Mark’s Gospel, where that clever writer put the first mention of the cross in the exact middle of the book (yes, 8 chapters into a 16 chapter work.) The cross is the center of the meaning of Jesus Christ, because it is there that Jesus fulfilled our very last bit of mortal reality: every pain, every hurt, every distraction of sin, and he conquered there these deathly distractions of sin not by force and power, but by mercy and power poured out for us.
Because of the cross of Christ, all the shouting in the world cannot keep us from the love of God, even when our focus on Him is so poor.
If you are at all glad to hear this — that God has relentlessly pursued us in passion and sacrifice — if this touches you at all and makes you feel any bit of gratefulness at all then rejoice! For Grace has indeed gotten through, and you have heard the song of the Cross that sends this message to all who need it — and that is all of us. The Cross has called to you in its passionate voice, and you have noticed, and Grace has tickled your insides, and now you must be asking yourself, “what do I do now Lord?”
And in this context, it makes sense to hear Jesus say: “If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me.”
None of us will succeed in denying ourselves and putting God first of all. But Grace will close the gap for we who respond to what Grace initiates within us, and the gap between our discipleship and Christ’s lordship will indeed be bridged by the cross-shaped bridge that the Lord has put there himself.
The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones (‘Greg’) is rector of St. Michael’s in Raleigh, N.C., a trustee of General Seminary and the bass player in indie-rock band The Balsa Gliders — whose fourth studio release is available on iTunes. He blogs at Anglican Centrist.