Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Today’s text

Matthew 16:21-23

From then onwards Jesus began to make it clear to his disciples that he was destined to go to Jerusalem and suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes and to be put to death and to be raised up on the third day. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to rebuke him. 'Heaven preserve you, Lord,' he said, 'this must not happen to you.' But he turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because you are thinking not as God thinks but as human beings do.' Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Prayer

Jesus invites us beyond instinct, beyond what is natural and easy to what is true and breathing. Natural is as natural does: we hold back. We protect ourselves from danger, from emotional hurt.

Entering a new situation, few of us naturally throw ourselves into new relationships or duties. We hesitate. We walk with great care and are self-protective. This is safer than allowing oneself to be open and vulnerable. You don’t know what you are getting into, who you will meet and what challenges await, so the best part of wisdom is to go slow.

Fair enough, but the natural tendency to go easily, to refuse risk and vulnerability soon becomes a way of death. We hold fast to what we are, crouching behind a hard shield to ward off threats to our self, our way of being and living. We grasp what is so tightly that it is impossible to release one’s grip and let go.

Our grip is so tight about the here and now we can’t open our hearts to the invitation of the future, to fresh gifts, to new ways to being, to invitations to a future that doesn’t have to be like the past. It can be more, and so can we. No matter what.

‘Renounce yourself,’ Jesus invites. ‘Surrender to me,’ he says. ‘Relinquish what you are that you may follow and know me, not holding onto what you have been. Open heart and mind to what I will bring. Quit holding your breath that you may inhale the fresh air of my future.’

The way of truth and life is the way of our breath. We breathe in; we breathe out. We receive; we give up what we have received. To hold what is … is death, not breath.

So we meet the day with open heart and mind, praying, ‘Jesus, what will you give me today? What will you show me? I surrender what I have been for what your life-giving way will yet make of me.’

Pr. David L. Miller