A long narrow road

With the cross fresh in our memory from Easter a month ago, its helpful to spend some time thinking about what God intended Jesus' sacrifice and resurrection to result in. Surely Jesus' death and resurrection mean eternity in heaven after we die for those of us that follow Him. But for centuries, the underlying assumption has been that Jesus' cross had to do with death, his and what happens to us after ours. But, if we look closer, I think we'll find that Jesus' cross had far more to do with life than it ever did death.

Does it ever stike you funny that Jesus bothered being born and growing up - living an entire 33-ish years of life here just to be crucified in the end? Couldn't he have landed on Earth full grown, died a blameless death, and rocketed back up to heaven after the resurrection? If God took the time and trouble to live 30-some years here, I think we could spare a couple minutes to see if we can understand why.

Because Jesus' life wasn't just him biding time between his birth and his cross. It was him demonstrating a new kind (or quality) of life. In the words of NT Wright, "a new way to be human." Jesus' life was the blueprint, our example to follow long after he had gone back to heaven.

So how does Jesus' life and his cross fit together? The latter makes the former possible - Jesus' death frees us from Sin and gives us another way. It enables and inspires us to live our lives the way Jesus did his. But we often hold his life at arm's reach, thinking that his death was the only thing that directly affected us. Between now and heaven, we think we can admire his life, appreciate his death, and then get on with our own lives.

To know that Jesus lived a life that he intended us to emulate is a challenging thing. We have no problem being "good" to the extent that its convenient. But when our goal becomes to live our lives like Jesus would, we've chosen a more difficult way. A narrow road as long as our lifespan. We have to be willing to pay the price to walk down this road because it is the life we were intended to live. From the accounts of other that have already walked down that road we know that it has its rewards - a quality of life this world will never be able to match.

We also know that, walking down this road, we'll succed in drawing attention to ourselves. Some people shy away from this because of the stigmas arounding "radical" followers of Christ. There have been plenty of loud-mouths that call themselves Christians and do a horrible job of representing who he really is. Surely we don't want to be lumped into that group. But we have to understand that if we don't step out there accurately modeling Jesus with our lives, the only thing people are going to know about Jesus is what the loud-mouths say - and that is a tragedy.

Looking down that road and over the horizon, I see the glow of something great beyond it. Along the path I find little notes of those that have gone before me encouraging me to continue. Going a little further, I meet other travelers heading in the same direction as me. And the longer I walk down this road that I was so afraid to start walking down, the more wonder how I could have walked anywhere else.