The Road of Faithfulness

Sometimes life can be very disappointing. Things do not go our way. People let us down. We wonder why we are bothering at all.

And sometimes, if we are willing to admit it, we can even be disappointed with God. Sometimes we can be angry with him.

The prophet Jeremiah certainly seems to have been.

Jeremiah had suffered humiliation and mistreatment for doing exactly what God had called him to do. He was mocked, threatened, beaten, and eventually even thrown into a cistern. And in Jeremiah 20, we hear something of his frustration:

“You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped.”

“Duped” is a rather polite translation. The word is stronger than that. Jeremiah feels overwhelmed, almost compelled by God. He tried to hold back, but the word of God became like a fire burning within him that he could not contain.

And what had obedience brought him?

“Derision and reproach all the day.”

Jeremiah had done what God asked, and instead of making his life easier, it had made his life much harder. He was reaching the limits of what he thought he could endure.

Jeremiah is not calmly explaining the spiritual life. He is crying out from within it.

All of this is to say something we sometimes prefer not to hear: following the will of God can be very difficult.

Jesus knew this too.

In Matthew 16, he begins to teach his disciples what lies ahead of him: humiliation, suffering, rejection, and death.

And Peter, being the very human man that he is, will have none of it.

“God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.”

Peter wants Jesus to be the Messiah. He wants the Kingdom. He wants the glory. But he does not want the cross.

And, if we are honest, neither do we.

We want the good parts of following God. We want peace, joy, grace, and eternal life. But we would prefer to reach them without suffering, without sacrifice, and without having to surrender anything we particularly value.

Jesus rebukes Peter severely:

“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

Peter has become an obstacle because he is placing before Jesus the temptation of glory without sacrifice.

But there is no Resurrection without Calvary.

Then Jesus tells his disciples:

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

Every one of us has a cross to bear. And notice how startling that image would have been to those who first heard it. Jesus does not tell us merely to endure inconvenience. He tells us to pick up an instrument of execution and carry it behind him.

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

That is the great paradox of Christian life. If we cling desperately to ourselves, we ultimately lose everything. But if we give ourselves to God, we discover what our lives were actually for.

That is why St. Paul tells us to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”

Our bodies, our time, our strength, our abilities, our desires, our very lives are valuable. And precisely because they are valuable, they can be offered. We place them at the service of God and neighbor.

This is the kind of sacrifice God desires.

The prophet Hosea says, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” But the Hebrew word there is hesed. Mercy is certainly part of its meaning, but hesed is richer than mercy alone. It means faithful love, steadfast love, covenant fidelity.

God does not desire sacrifice merely for the sake of suffering. He desires the faithful love that sacrifice expresses.

And sometimes faithful love costs us something.

We sacrifice our pride in order to forgive. We sacrifice our comfort in order to serve. We sacrifice our desires in order to remain faithful. We sacrifice what is easier for the sake of what is good.

That is why St. Paul tells us not to be conformed to this age, but to be transformed by the renewal of our minds, so that we may discern the will of God: what is good and pleasing and perfect.

Jeremiah discovered that God’s will was not always easy. Peter had to learn the same lesson. And so do we.

The cross is not proof that God has abandoned us. Sometimes the cross is found precisely on the road of faithfulness.

So we take it up and follow Christ, trusting that when the Son of Man comes in his glory and repays each according to his conduct, we may finally hear the words for which every Christian should long:

“Well done, good and faithful servant.”