Mistaking the Cross for a Tree

Two quotes for today, both by theologians I respect and appreciate:

God heals the sicknesses and the griefs by making the sicknesses and the griefs his suffering and his grief. In the image of the crucified God the sick and dying can see themselves, because in them the crucified God recognizes himself.-- Jurgen Moltmann

Salvation is not some felicitous state to which we can lift ourselves by our own bootstraps after the contemplation of sufficiently good examples. It is an utterly new creation into which we are brought by our death in Jesus' death and our resurrection in his. It comes not out of our own best efforts, however well-inspired or successfully pursued, but out of the shipwreck of all human efforts whatsoever. --Robert Farrar Capon


Texts:

Psalm 107:1-16

Numbers 20:1-13

1 Corinthians 10:6-13

The texts for today remind us that God's leaders, even Moses, sometimes find it difficult to do what is asked of them.  It would have been so easy for Moses to command the rock to yield water, yet he struck it instead.  Seeming to think it was his right to manipulate the rock however he chose, he found his entitlement to God's power and God's work prevented him from leading the people of Israel into the land God promised them.  This reminds me of the Naaman narrative, in which Naaman fumes and raves because Elisha has asked him to dip himself in the Jordan 7 times.  Naaman's slaves ask, "Master, if he had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? Why, then, do you refuse to do something easy?"

Sometimes, we want to make things more difficult than they are.  We create scenarios and situations in our heads that take the small piece of the picture we are given and try to see all of the angles, all of the possibilities, and all of the challenges all at once.  This is impossible to do, though it is our tendency to want to know what is around the corner as opposed to enjoying where God has placed us.  Dreaming of the future, we sometimes forget to live into the present.

First Corinthians speaks to the challenges that happen as people of faith wander through the wilderness.  It is difficult to have faith when we cannot see what is around the corner; strangely, this is the very place at which our faith takes root.  Not able to see what is right in front of us, we strive to see what lies beyond.  Unable to see the cross for the trees, we set off looking for a savior that is more fashionable, more easy to understand, who fits better into our understandings of what it is to have a savior and what it is to have a God.  Often, when we read 1 Corinthians 10:13, "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it," we fail to understand the dynamism of these words.  Quoted at people who are experiencing excruciating pain or situations that threaten to kill us from the inside out, this text becomes a weapon rather than a salve.  We misunderstand this passage, I think, if we think it will bring a magical fix, if we think it will show us what lies around the corner, and if we think it - once and for all - promises that God will come and beat up all the bullies. We misinterpret this passage if we lose sight of the cross.  It is from the foot of the cross that this verse takes its meaning.  It is from utter brokenness that we understand what it is to have a God who will bring us through our trials, and through our final trial of death, into eternal life.  I think this text is on the one hand drawing us into a future of hope but also drawing us into a future that has as its goal Christ drawing us to Christself through his life, death, and his resurrection, bringing us through our lives, through our deaths, and into our first breath of life in communion with Him.