I am thinking about talking about living through the cross. 
In a book that was required reading in college in 1975 (I am older than dirt) 
WHERE GOD MEETS MAN (p36), Gerhard Forde says
"The point is rather that in the cross and resurrection God is bringing about 
something absolutely new, something that is to put and end to the old - 
including our way of thinking as well as acting. The cross is not to be understood 
as another system, the cross is its own system. The cross and resurrection 
in itself brings about something entirely new. "

To take up the cross or follow the theology of the cross means to deny (die) 
to self and rise in Christ...as in baptism.

I am thinking about talking about what people will say about us when we die. 
Especially if we die suddenly. What will people say about how we died to self 
and lived our lives through the cross....??

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When my daughter was three, I used to ask her questions about God before she went
to bed. I asked questions that I didn't have answers for like what is God's
favorite colour and so on. Any way one evening some how we got on to the
topic of the devil. She turned to me and said with complete composure,
"That's not his name, Mom". It sent a shiver up my spine. I said, "What is
his name?" She replied, "The Hunter".

I have never forgotten it. And it forever changed my theology. And that is
precisely how I see evil to this day. All evil is predatory, self-centered
and willing to meet its needs at all costs - even annihilation -  dismissing
and disregarding others. Evil will hunt down whatever it needs to feel
powerful, satisfied, important, capable, acceptable, and revered. Now when I
see evil as "the hunter", I am better able to disengage and put an arms length from
it so I can keep my wits about me.

As a side note, someone told me yesterday that she heard a good definition
of sin. Sin is when someone is not being all of what God dreamed them to be.

(from Vivian Carter at thevicar@rogers.com.)

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"The tragedy of Christianity has been that Christians have left it all to Jesus. 
There have been a few exceptions, of course. In the main, however, 
Christians have never tired of seeing the spectacle of Christ Himself upon the Cross -- 
in some mysterious way He is our stand-in or proxy representative in every age. 
We love to sing about the Cross, to pray about the Cross, to preach about the Cross. 
As long as we are so fascinated and mesmerised, humanity troops on to its doom.

"What will save the world is not Christ's suffering and death but ours. 
It is not His blood which counts but ours. It is not His broken body which matters but ours. 
In fact, this is what Christianity is all about. It concerns the followers of Christ 
no less than it concerned Christ Himself. They must be radically obedient to God, Truth and Humanity.

"The Cross of Christ becomes the most important event in the world only 
when it is the inspiration for a journey every Christian must make. 
In the sense that He was not spared, so we will not be spared. 
Thus it is a salutary reminder that the reward of Christian discipleship is not a peaceful mind, 
freedom from anxiety in personal living, but the very opposite."

-- Ted Noffs, founding minister of The Wayside Chapel (in Sydney), from his book 
"By What Authority" in the 1970s.

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Robert Capon in Hunting the Divine Fox presents a wonderful picture of our typical 
American Messiah -- and it doesn't look much like Jesus on the cross.

. . . almost nobody resists the temptation to jazz up the humanity of Christ. 
The true paradigm of the ordinary American view of Jesus is Superman: 
"Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, 
able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It's Superman! Strange visitor from another planet, 
who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, and who, 
disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, 
fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way." If that isn't popular christology, 
I'll eat my hat. Jesus -- gentle, meek and mild, but with secret, souped-up, more-than-human insides -- 
bumbles around for thirty-three years, nearly gets himself done in for good by the Kryptonite Kross, 
but at the last minute, struggles into the phone booth of the Empty Tomb, changes into his Easter suit and, 
with a single bound, leaps back up to the planet Heaven.

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