Wisdom at the Corona del Mar Ace Hardware Or I’d Rather Be A Sprinter
I plopped down two bottles of faucet wax and a sponge on the checkout counter at Ace Hardware in Corona del Mar and answered the clerk’s friendly “How are you?”
“Ugh. Hanging in there.” I mumbled flatly. They didn’t have the Invisible Shield glass cleaner I wanted so my annoyed response seemed chirpy enough to me.
“Untrue.” He bagged the sponge. “Jesus Christ already did that.”
I stared at him--“I’m sorry? Untrue? Jesus . . . what now?”
“Jesus. He already ‘hung in there’ on The Cross so you wouldn’t have to.
Your job is to forget yourself, take up your cross and follow Him everyday! That’s it! Forget all this! Forget yourself! Don’t worry about what comes. Trust Him—You know . . . accept what is. $17.96, please.”
Bemused, I swiped my card and grabbed my bag.
“I’m not wrong.” he called after me, motioning for the next customer in line. “I am not wrong.”
I went to my car.
Was this something he told all his customers? And if it wasn’t, why did he pick me? Was it that obvious that I constantly gazed toward the heavens muttering, “Sweet Moses, WHY!?” or “Really, AGAIN with this garbage?!!” or grimacing and spatting, “WHEN will this all be over??!”
This exchange, stayed with me for months and now I can say, for years; I’ve used this story in church discussions before; many have benefitted from the meat of his peculiar response to my clichéd “Hanging in there” answer and it’s useful for the topic I’ve been assigned today: Mark 8:34-35
Mark
34 Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
35 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.
That hardware cashier—let’s call him Moises—wasn’t shy about lecturing me about the difference between losing myself and “taking up” my cross verses losing my mind and feeling like I was “hanging on” one against my will.
As for crosses, or burdens we are called to bear, we all have one—at least one— and they’re as unique to the individual who carries them as they are real. What burdens you, may not burden another or even cause them to flinch so since we’re not conversant with the crosses of others, it’s wise not to compare our crosses with theirs. But we are, on the other hand, very well acquainted with our own, knowing each angle and surface, the texture and the smell. The size and the color. They don’t define us, but can re-fine us. Elder Neal A. Maxwell says:
Each of us comes to know his cross quite well. We know its configurations; we know its weight. We feel its rough edges. It would be so much easier for us to carry it if we could develop the faith which would permit us to cast our cares upon our Father in heaven. . . . We can rid ourselves of [the weight of our own stupidity or sin] so that we may take up the cross and move swiftly and deliberately on to our journey.”
But sometimes, when we encounter a fresh cross along on our journey’s path, we can stumble, losing our balance and unsure how to even define what the new burden is! Attempt as we might to tell ourselves that this cross, more fiberglass and steel than our old warn, wooden one, is a new chance at experiencing Christ and becoming holy, it can still feel overwhelmingly painful and sickeningly hopeless. Consider what elder Marvin J. Ashton has said on this:
“ [And w]hat if we are challenged with more than one cross? [Someone] once said to me, “Elder Ashton, it just isn’t time for me to have another cross. I’m not quite used to the one I’m carrying now. How can I handle both?” . . .
If you have more than one cross—three or four—maybe you could build a ladder out of them and use them to climb to new heights. Sometimes becoming is more important than achieving or arriving.”
But how do we “build this ladder to climb to new heights” striving to “become” more than to achieve? How do we cease constantly taking our temperatures, assessing our progress at every turn, and wanting recognition for our efforts? How do we choose instead to just lose ourselves in Christ’s work rather than just “Hanging in there” and getting through it just to get it over with?
Some context to the verses about taking up our crosses is vital here. They’re all cited in the books of Matthew, Luke and Mark, each with a slight twist on the events but all after Jesus has just told them that He will go to Jerusalem, suffer many things, and will be killed, rising on the 3rd day. Upon hearing about Jesus’s suffering and death, Matthew recounts that Peter urgently pleas: “God Forbid, Lord! May this not happen to you!” (Matthew 16:22. p 38. Wayment, Thomas. The New Testament: A study Bible, Deseret Book. 2019). Jesus responds harshly to him turning and saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me because you do not think about the things of God but rather the things of man.” (Matthew 16:23. p 23 Wayment.). Mark reports this event slightly differently, with Jesus not calling Peter a stumbling block but rather chastising Peter for his concern of “mundane considerations rather than Jesus’s upcoming trial” (Wayment, p 84). And Luke, skips the rebuke of Peter all together, not mentioning it but he adds a key and transformative word—”daily”: saying, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23)
This brings us back to our beloved hardware clerk, Moises. Unbeknownst to him, his off-the-cuff remarks, succinctly explicate the secret sauce to a life of discipleship found here in the differences between Matthew, Mark and Luke’s accounts to these scriptures.
1. Matthew’s message: Don’t give in to the temptation to avoid your cross; pick it up and do what’s needed to carry it and follow Him.
Though tempting, it’s not an option to not to take up your cross, however massive it may be. Avoiding or dodging it or trying to change it into a different one, will not make it go away. Resisting hoisting its weight on your back doesn’t build muscle and will only make it seem heavier. Abandoning your cross by shoving it to the side of the road, out of the way, covered in shrubs, will not cause it to biodegrade like an apple core. All of these are false choices tricking us into thinking that passing it by is actually an option; it is not.
A cross is only made beneficial and useful by its ability to refine its carrier’s character and this is done through extracting the gifts it offers in the form of Christian virtues—the virtues we need to become like Him, the ones we need to become holy. We cannot be like Him unless we do as He did and that includes meekly accepting, wholeheartedly, the burdens that are allotted to us.
This doesn’t mean that we won’t be tempted to find ways to ditch our callings. From Matthew’s account, even Jesus entertains the fantasy about what another way might look like for Him. If there was any other possible way, He would take it, but there is not, and He does not and He will not avoid His cross, in this case a literal one. He is willing to do what needs to be done with what has been allotted to him; and if that means rebuking a friend for entertaining the idea of abandoning His calling and if that means leaning into, accepting, and embracing the suffering woven into his role, that’s what He’ll do.
If Christ had brief moments of pondering another way out, it shouldn’t surprise us when, attempting to manage our crosses, we falter and cower, surprised by how hard what is being asked of us is. In fact, as Elder Maxwell says:
“ . . . In Gethsemane, the suffering Jesus began to be ‘sore amazed’, or in the Greek, ‘awestruck’ and ‘astonished . . .. Imagine, Jehovah, the Creator of this and other worlds, ‘astonished’! Jesus knew cognitively what He must do, but not experientially. . . . Thus, when the agony came into its fulness, it was so much, much worse than even He, with his unique intellect, had ever imagined!” (Maxwell, Neal A. Willing to Submit, 7 April 1985)
We waste time and add suffering when we resist our lot preferring instead to complain about it or procrastinate the forward motion of “the doing”. The more effective thing to do here is, as my friend Mike Bartholomew says, to “Stop crying, put your head down, and swim.” Taking up our cross is hard, brutal work but it polishes us into a version of ourselves that wouldn’t have emerged any other way. Do, what my friend Moises admonished, “Take up your cross! That’s your job. You know . . . accept what is.”
2. Mark’s message: Lose yourself by having God’s long view of your life and the things that matter; don’t focus on the things that usually matter to and trip up humankind.
I can’t help but think of my father, Rodney Hawes, when I read this message because he is truly incapable of ever focusing on anything other than the long, eternal view. When vexed with human frailties, or how some church leader dealt with a sensitive (or even not so sensitive) issue, or when my life seemed unfair, dissatisfying, its outcomes disappointing, I would spew at dad, all my frustrations about them with all the vitriol I could muster. 9 times out of 10 he would pause, look at me perplexed and almost bored and say, “I can’t get excited about that.” He’d then proceed to explicate how this small, trivial matter may even be a good thing for me in the end—the old idea from Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Act II, Sc 2). “This is getting you nowhere, honey.” He would say. “Do you really want to concern yourself with this and damage your soul by being so angry?” and then the dreaded, “Have an eternal perspective.”
And of course I would bow my head in submission and see his point…..
Um . . . NO!! That’s not how it went.
The frustration! The pure mania of my railing that ensued for the next few hours (or even days) after his comments was a given. But, after the initial frustration passed and the saucy Beverly parts of me had quelled, I knew he was right. I should be looking at the big picture, losing my very human reactions in favor of God’s vision for me. I should divorce myself from attachments to specific, “favorable” outcomes because doing so, according to the second tenant of Buddhism, only creates more suffering. Was this actually an unsavory experience? Was it actually “bad”? Who could say? I have since tried to never assign a moral value to pain as being “good” or “bad”—it’s just pain and, according to Jesus—and to Rodney—it can be useful.
Or, as Elder Marvin J Ashton says, “Truly, suffering is part of our mortal existence, and suffering is not all bad” (Ashton, Marvin J. Carry your Cross. BYU speeches, 3 May 1987).
So we observe compassion in Mark’s version of Jesus’s rebuke to Peter. Jesus knows Peter’s view is the short, human view. Peter was, as Elder Maxwell describes, concerned with “proximate problems”—the problems at hand, close to us, assuredly pressing and immediate, yes, but not eternal in nature. (Maxwell, Neal A. Brightness of Hope. October, 1994).
But to train yourself to have a long view, to lose yourself in Christ, undaunted by the pain associated with taking up your cross, you have to be brave. You have to do as my Ace Hardware friend bid, “Forget all this! Forget yourself, . . . and praise and trust Him every minute of everyday, being thankful for the chance to do it.”
And finally
3. Luke’s Message: Practice all this this daily to become refined and like Him.
Luke’s addition of the word “daily” to the instruction to take up your cross, is as simple as it is challenging. “Daily” is relentless. “Daily” always comes. “Daily” doesn’t take a day off. “Daily” is a harsh taskmaster. But “Daily” is also vitally essential in Ashton’s “becoming.” Though “daily” sounds like a superficial approach, it is anything but. Maxwell again:
“A superficial view of this life, . . . will not do, . . . we mistakenly speak of this mortal experience only as coming here to get a body, as if we were merely picking up a suit at the cleaners . . . we casually recite how we have come here to be proved, as if a few brisk push-ups and deep knee bends will do. . .
…One’s development need not be dramatic or tied to a single moment; it can occur steadily in seemingly ordinary daily settings. . . . the shaping goes on, and it is anything but merely cosmetic.” (Maxwell, Neal A. April 1985)
For any substantial transformation to occur, we have to assume that we need to endure more than a few pushups once and call it good. Instead, we have to be like Jens Voigt, the unstoppable (but now retired) German cyclist, who when his legs were at the point of failing, famously ordered, “Shut up legs!” and “Shut up body and do what I tell you!” who rides with a broken hand for two hours and who, when his bike was demolished after a crash yells, “Give me some sort of bike, give me anything!” then rides a child’s bike with toe clips for 20 kilometers so that he could finish the stage in the Tour de France.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather be a sprinter,” Voigt says” – ride all day in the peloton, do a couple of minutes in the wind and get my arms up . . .get the glory and the money! I’d rather be a sprinter” (Road cyclingUK.com. Collins, Henry. “Jens Voigt: How to Suffer Like a Pro” 8 October 2015) “But I have the ability to suffer and to suffer for a long time. [So] hit me. I’ve got broad shoulders. I can carry the burden. . . . [Pain is temporary]. Glory is forever!” (Danish tv interview).
However, what moves me most about Jens Voigt’s willingness to suffer is that he will NEVER win a Tour of any kind; it’s simply not his role on the team to do so. Jens is a “rouleur”—an all-around strong rider who will chase breakaways, protect the one who is favored to win (the Team Capitan), and pull his team ahead all by grueling, full boar pedaling in the wind on all sorts of terrain. His burden is to suffer for the greater good of the team, focusing on “becoming” instead of arriving. He accepts his burden instead of complaining about why his contribution isn’t as celebrated as the final Yellow Jersey winner—the one who only had to pedal alone in the wind for 1KM verses his 300KM.
“Who will win the Tour,” the Danish interviewer asks Jens.
“Oh, it’s not even a question.” Jens beams. “Andy Schleck, of course.”
Taking up your cross is a daily grind. So be brave, put your head down and pedal. As Moises says, “Take up your cross and follow Him everyday! That’s it!”
So….when can we put down our crosses? Elder Holland says:
“When will these burdens be lifted? The answer is “by and by’. And whether that be a short period or a long one is not always ours to say, but by the grace of God, the blessings will come to those who hold fast to the gospel of Jesus Christ. That issue was settled in a very private garden and on a very public hill in Jerusalem long ago.”
That’s right. Jesus has already “hung in there” for us.
Jens Voigt on child’s bike
Stop wasting your time cleaning your shower glass. Slather this magic elixir on your glass and watch the water bead off. You’re welcome….Say hello to Moises for me.
