Comfort or the cross?

Jesus chooses the cross, not comfort. What will our choice be?

Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger

“Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head” (Mt 8:20). A curious passage indeed, but its context is very telling. I often wonder whether his experience of forty days and nights in the loneliness and insecurity of the desert sensitized and prepared Jesus not only for his own public ministry, culminating on Calvary, but also the temptations his followers would face. He had just experienced the Baptism by John, where he submersed himself into the lot of sinners, baptism being a symbolic drowning, a “death” to sin. Rising from this ritual passage he receives affirmation from heaven: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” No sooner is he exalted than the Holy Spirit drives him into the desert to be humbled by very human temptations. 

Every moment of Jesus’ life, I have heard it said, was a constant humiliation. It must have occurred to him — often and not just in the desert — that if he was really the Son of God, why should he have to put up with all of this. This at least was Satan’s ploy. He tempts Jesus to a life of comfort, to assert his power and entitlements, to settle for creature comforts at least if not a glorious manifestation of his divinity. Jesus refuses to take the bait. His mission is not a life of comfort, but the cross.

Jesus is always on the move. In the passage cited at the beginning of this article, he has just begun his Galilean ministry in the Gospel of Matthew where this “Q” sourced series of tropes appears. “Q” stands for “Quelle” (in German) which means “source” and refers to a common tradition from which all the synoptic writers drew from. In Matthew, Jesus has just ordered the crowds to go to “the other side,” apparently referring to the Sea of Galilee. It is like he is inviting them to a kind of exodus with him, a sea-crossing. A few potential disciples detain him on the shore.

This tendency to want to cling to the safety of the nearest shore is an inherent trait of ours as human beings. Is it a residue of Original Sin? A fear of the unknown and lack of trust in God’s providence? At any rate, some of Jesus’ would-be followers keep making excuses as to why they are hesitant to “cross over” with him, to make their exodus, so to speak. Recall the terrifying moment where the Hebrew people, recently released from slavery in Egypt, come to the sea, pursued by Pharaoh’s armed charioteers. They complain to Moses, wishing they could go back to their slavery rather than die in the desert. We know the rest of the story, how God parts the sea as they pass dry-shod through it and destroys the horde pursuing them. So it is when we stick with Jesus, despite the headwinds and the fears of leaving more secure ground.

Another momentous incident in the Gospel reveals a similar pattern. Last Sunday we heard the Lucan version of the Transfiguration. Illuminating for its detail, we learn the contents of an intimate conversation among five significant figures from the Old and New Testaments. Moses, who represents the law, and Elijah, who is an exemplary prophet. Peter, James and John are clearly leaders in the early Christian community, each having letters attributed to their authorship. We might assume the three disciples heard Jesus address both Moses and Elijah by name, which may be why Peter’s first impulse is to want to set up a tent for each. As a Jew, no doubt he is thinking of the Ark of the Covenant being born during the exodus, which was kept in a protective tent, a prototype of its enthronement one day in the temple of Jerusalem. Perhaps hearing Jesus and the two Hebrew figures speaking of an “exodus” also prompted him. But it was the wrong exodus. The exodus of Jesus which they were speaking of was the cross he would endure on Calvary, his passage from death to life that would be our salvation as well.

During our Lenten pilgrimage, it would be fruitful for us to meditate on these passages. Our contemporary culture — perhaps like most cultures in human history — highly prizes material and emotional “security.” The Gospel continually questions and challenges us to re-examine our notions of what really brings peace and happiness, which are the supposed fruits of “security.” As we learn from his entire earthly passage, Jesus does not indulge in any comfort but to do the will of his Heavenly Father. Even as he prays in the Garden to be relieved of the cup that he must drink, he affirms “your will be done.” He chooses not comfort, but the cross.

What will our choice be? Our immigrant ancestors certainly lived very difficult lives, many of them coming to these shores to escape religious persecution, or at least to seek a better existence with the promises of a relatively free economy and way of life. Such motives still draw people to what America offers. One of the signs of having “landed” was to build a church, often a national one, which symbolized not only the faith but also pride in the country or ethnicity of origin of the founders. Over time, these structures often assume a kind of sacredness in themselves, as monuments not only to their ancestral history but a way of present self-identification. A parish thus becomes a church and its mission one of realty preservation. Does this ring true with the Gospel?

“We’ve always done it that way” is a verse sung in the many tones of church-life as all parish leaders learn sooner or later. The all-too-human urge to cling to shore rather than “put out into the deep,” to build a tent because it feels good to be here, to go back and take care of business instead of crossing to the other side. And we know the dangers and uncertainties that come from getting into that boat when squalls and storms can suddenly arise, as the narratives of the apostles, terrified at sea, reveal. But in the midst stands Jesus. He is always on the move. He always shows up.

Jesus is our comfort! He meets us wherever we are, no matter how far we stray, even as he seeks not to leave us there, and urges us on. Follow me, he says. And we know that leads to the cross, but it also saves us from ourselves.