Mark Twain once wrote, “It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.” Jesus said some hard things. Some hard and deeply challenging things. Hard…but not difficult. There’s a difference. Love your enemies, forgive others, and give away what you have – these are hard. Saying ‘sorry’ is just one little word – not difficult to say on its own – but quite possibly the hardest thing that can come from your mouth when you know that you’ve hurt someone. There are some things we know so profoundly to be true and good, but we simply do not know how to get from the stuck place where we find ourselves to where we might flourish and give life to others.
One of the hardest things Jesus said was that in order to save our lives, we must give it away. Elsewhere he said that the first will be last and the last will be first. He took it further and said unless you die, you can’t live. These are hard words. They call us to consider spending our lives on something other than our own gain. Perhaps in spending our lives for the wellbeing of others, we will find our life along the way. This is hard, but not difficult.
Every spring I get to learn this lesson again. When a seed sits in an envelope, it is safe and sound, but seeds were never meant to sit peacefully in a package. They are meant to be buried, break apart, and sprout new life. A seed truly must die if it’s to find life.
The best moments of our lives often come to us like this. When I officiate over a wedding I feel like I witness both a death and new life at the same time. Standing before me in beautiful clothes and surrounded by flowers and friend are two people who publicly put away their singleness, they bury any ambition for being with any other person, and they make promises to be faithful and loving at all costs. It is perhaps the single most limiting thing a person can commit to – it is a death of an old way of life. Yet in that moment there is something better that emerges, a new way of life that this couple commits to embracing. With a simple ring and kiss a wedding is the start of new life, of companionship, comfort, friendship, love, and intimacy that is almost miraculous in its own way. Weddings are full of celebration and tears of joy. It is tremendously hard and costly to give your life to another, but no one has ever found it difficult to say, “I do” in that special moment of love and delight.
Every day we have a choice for how we live in our neighbourhood. We can reach out to our community, or hide from others. We can forgive others, or blame them. We can live with thankfulness, or resent the world around us. We can live with an open table of hospitality, or show hostility. We can offer grace and love, or live out of fear. We can speak well to others, or build a wall of sarcasm.
Our neighbourhoods are places where we choose to do the hard thing, the self-giving thing, the life-creating thing. They are the places where we experiment with giving some of ourselves away. It might be the hardest thing you ever do when you choose to care for your neighbour as much as you care for yourself. Hard, but not difficult.
