Good morning, SaMoNaz -

I wanted to do something a little different today. Usually I send an email with a brief reflection to help us prepare for the worship gathering. But today I thought I would also made it available in audio in hopes that maybe if you can’t sit down to read something today, you can listen to it while you make breakfast or putter around the house this morning.

For now I’m calling this a one-off audio, but who knows. Maybe it’ll stick.

And so for today, I wanted to share a couple of quotes as we prepare for the worship gathering and then a small reflection all of which shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.

One quote is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the other is from Soren Kierkegaard.

Bonhoeffer says, “The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.”

And Kierkegaard says, “The difference between an admirer and a follower still remains, no matter where you are. The admirer never makes any true sacrifices. He always plays it safe. Though in words, phrases, songs, he is inexhaustible about how highly he prizes Christ, he renounces nothing, gives up nothing, will not reconstruct his life, will not be what he admires, and will not let his life express what it is he supposedly admires.”

What I like about the Bonhoeffer quote this is how the cross is not an accessory to the Christian life, but the essence. To know Christ (and, thus, to know God) is to know him as crucified. There is no real communion with Christ other than with him on the cross.

What I like about the Kierkegaard quote is the recognition that there are admirers of Jesus who are not truly followers.

Both of these quotes are quite sobering in our North American culture where it is quite easy to identify as a Christian without the need to actually follow or imitate Christ. What further complicates this is that sides have formed about with means to follow Christ.

I write this partly in hopes that we might recognize if and when we slide into admiration of Christ when the going gets tough. But maybe even more importantly that we remember the cross does not mean all things to all people. It means something particular of the one who was crucified in the social, political, economic, and religious context of his day. Our witness as the church depends on being able to see this coherently and truthfully.

Palm Sunday is a time to remember this as the people wave branches and shout Hosanna at Jesus as he rides into Jerusalem, people who are perhaps not quite so aware that he—he who is the least of these, the poor one with no place to lay his head, who offended religious bureaucrats for loving their power more than people, who makes a way of inclusion for the marginalized, who makes is easier for the voiceless to be heard, who says renounce your privilege and sell all you have if the rising tide benefits you but not another, he who stares relentlessly into our eyes asking who do you say that I am?—this is the one riding to the cross and calling them and us to follow.

See you at 10:30am for worship.

Grace and Peace,

Pastor Scott