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Calvary, the word pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. It is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. It searches our love for our beloved. It discovers the quality of that love. An Indian refiner puts his glistening gold into a small earthen crucible. As he blows up the fire, grey scum floats to the surface of the gold. The grey scum of selfishness in our human love will float to the surface of our soul and be discovered by us, if we are willing to allow the Refiner to blow up His fire. There is a rooted possessiveness about much of human affection. “My loved one for myself”—that is the underlying thought of much that looks so beautiful.
God’s thought was different. The love that our Lord asks for us is different. His Father’s love was a giving love.
Often the children in a Christian family are ready and eager to follow their Lord all the way, but the parents pull them back. A few rise to the heights of not refusing them. Their high-water mark is expressed is such words as these:
O Father, help, lest our poor love refuse
For our beloved the life that they would choose,
And in our fear of loss for them, or pain,
Forget eternal gain.
For some even that has seemed high. But the love of God infinitely passes that. With Him it was never that He did not refuse; it was that He gave the Son of His love unto death, “even the death of the cross.” What do we know of sacrificial love?
Ignatius Loyola knew it, and his earlier followers knew it: “Set the Indies on fire, Francisco,” he said as he sent his young disciple to a service that was to see nothing of ease, and never a furlough, till on the edge of China his warfare was accomplished.
Count Zinzendorf knew it, and his Moravians knew it: “I have one passion; it is Christ and Him only.” Because that passion consumed him he could lead the parents of his community into the joy of the giver who holds nothing back. Have we as a Church lost the power to lead others into sacrificial giving? Have I lost the power to lead those committed to me? Was it ever mine at all? We cannot lead the climber further than we have gone ourselves. We cannot inspire the soldier to storm the fort from which we have fallen back. We cannot even point to a heavenly vision which, having seen ourselves, we have disregarded. “Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision”—and the loyal and obedient spirit of his leader set Timothy on fire.
Where have we failed?
When our Lord spoke of His Father’s love He knew His Father’s heart. He knew as no created being can know, the utmost reaches of the love wherewith His Father loved Him, the utmost reaches of that bleak land of pain to which that love had given Him.
And yet on the evening of His betrayal He did not desire for us the less costly love, the natural love which shrinks from a hard way for a beloved one and never contemplates anything approaching shame. Human love with its loopholes of escape from the supreme demand was not in His mind. It was divine love that He desired should be in us, the love wherewith He Himself was loved, divine love with all its agonizing possibilities—but with great certainty of eternal joy. We have lowered the standard. That which should be usual has become so unusual that we are surprised and stirred, and write books about these bright particular stars in our firmament who have shone mightily in loving. Such lives should be the rule, the others the exception. Have we in our refusal of the crucifix refused also the cross? We do refuse the crucifix. The sign of our faith, as Westcott said long ago, is an empty cross, an empty tomb: He is not here, He is risen. But it is strangely possible to decorate that empty cross, to smother it in flowers, even (but surely this borders on blasphemy) to use the symbol as an ornament. And yet the great law stands: “Whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after Me, cannot be My disciple.”
We who follow the Crucified are not here to make a pleasant thing of life; we are called to suffer for the sake of a suffering, sinful world. The Lord forgive us our shameful evasions and hesitations. His brow was crowned with thorns; do we seek rosebuds for our crowning? His hands were pierced with nails; are our hands ringed with jewels? His feet were bare and bound; do our feet walk delicately? What do we know of travail? of tears that scald before they fall? of heartbreak? of being scorned? God forgive us our love of ease. God forgive us that so often we turn our faces from a life that is even remotely like His. Forgive us that we all but worship comfort, the delight of the presence of loved ones, possessions, treasure on earth. Far, far from our prayers too often is any thought of prayer for a love which will lead us to give one whom we love to follow our Lord to Gethsemane, to Calvary—perhaps because we have never been there ourselves.
Lord, we kneel beside Thee now, with hands folded between Thy hands as a child’s are folded in its mother’s. We would follow the words of Thy prayer, dimly understanding their meaning, but wanting to understand.... “That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”