On Dying Before We Die, a Teaching from John Behr, and Small Crosses We Carry

A Note from Me

Growing up, Easter mostly meant new clothes, an egg hunt, and a long church service. I knew it had something to do with Jesus dying, but I mostly thought of that as something he did so I wouldn’t have to.

It was his job, not mine.

Only later did I begin to hear the invitation hidden in the gospel story. Jesus doesn’t just ask me to thank him for what he went through. He asks me to join him, to learn his way of self-giving love, to take up a cross of my own.

That’s a harder truth. It means following him into places where my self-centeredness dies—when I listen instead of defend, forgive instead of cling to a grudge, give up comfort to serve someone else. These are small deaths, but they’re real. And I think they matter more than we know.

Maybe that’s the point of Holy Week. It’s not just about remembering what happened long ago. It’s practicing how to die before we die, so the life of Jesus can take shape in us now.

A Voice from the Christian Tradition

“Christ shows us his divinity not in a superhuman—inhuman—manner, but as truly human, human in the end common to us all. Put to death on the Cross, he voluntarily laid down his life in love for us, showing us what it is to be God in the way that he dies as human…

…It now remains for us to follow him to the end, not simply to stand by and watch, but to use our own mortality, our capacity for death, to follow him, taking up the Cross, being crucified with him, dying now to all that is fallen and sinful in ourselves and in the world, that we might rise with him, and he might live in us, as he promised.”

—John Behr, The Cross Stands, While the World Turns

A Question to Carry

In what small way might you join in Christ’s self-giving love this week?

Grace and peace this Holy Week,

—Jon