We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
Elizabeth Templeton asked England’s House of Bishops how they would respond to a stranger who announced that his bus left in two minutes and he wanted them to explain the resurrection. Templeton herself replied that she would advise the inquirer to be prepared to miss his bus. Archbishop Rowan Williams countered, “I think I’d have asked the man where he was going, then said that I’d accompany him on the journey.”
We sometimes think of laying down our lives in a one-shot blaze of glory. Certainly the cross teaches us to honor Christian martyrs, but that kind of finality eludes most American Christians. Fred Craddock chuckles at his own childhood visions of glorious martyrdom which would result in a monument: “Johnny, you stand over there where Fred gave his life. Let’s get your picture.”
Mostly, though, we lay down our lives by laying out our lives a few minutes or hours at a time on unplanned bus rides that take us out of our carefully constructed route. Jesus died on Friday, it’s true; he also spent his whole afternoon on Sunday telling Bible stories to numbskull disciples on the Number 3 bus to Emmaus. He even accepted their invitation to dinner, foregoing a new episode of “CSI Jerusalem” that he’d forgotten to TiVo.
Frederick Buechner tells how, in the course of a required charity gig as part of his seminary curriculum, he met a man whom he was able to help with alcohol and employment issues. He ran into the guy a few months later. “What was left was just his need for somebody to be alone in the world with,” the novelist recalls. “When you find something in a human face that calls out to you, not just for help but in some sense for yourself, how far do you go in answering that call, how far can you go, seeing that you have your own life to get on with as much as he has his? As for me, I went as far as that windy street corner up around 120th Street and Broadway.”
“You have your own life to get on with.” He laid down His life for us. One of these statements reflects the nature of the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ. No one builds monuments to bus stop martyrs, but the angels rejoice at each tiny Calvary along the road to Emmaus.
Going My Way?
Doug
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