Image: Blessing Cross © Jan Richardson
Reading from the Gospels, Year A, Proper 17/Ordinary 22/Pentecost +11: Matthew 16.21-28
Following so close on the heels of Jesus’ encounter with the Canaanite woman, who would not release Jesus until he healed her daughter, this week’s gospel reading confronts Peter—and us—with the demand to let go: not of Jesus, but of any impulse we have (and, oh, my goodness, I have them) to lock him into our own plans. Pondering this passage as the story of the Canaanite woman lingers with me, I find myself wondering: How do we discern what we should be fierce about? How do we choose what we will hold on to, and what we need to release?
“If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says in this passage, “let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Some crosses are made of what we take on; some crosses are made of what we let go. Always, the cross that Christ invites us to is the place where our desires and Christ’s desires find their place of meeting, and all that distracts us from Christ falls away.
Where is this place in your own life? How do you discern what you will hold on to, what you will claim and fight for, and what you will release? How does this choosing, this discerning, draw you closer to Christ and to what God might imagine for your life?
Blessing in the Shape of a Cross
Press this blessing
into your palms—
right, left—
and you will see
how it leaves its mark,
how it imprints itself
into your skin,
how the lines of it
meet
and cross
as if signaling you
to the treasure
that has been in
your grasp
all along.
Except that these riches
you will count
not by what you hold
but by what you release,
by what you lose,
by what falls from
your open hands.
—Jan Richardson
P.S. For an earlier reflection on this passage, click the image or title below:
Related posts:
Lent 2: In Which We Set Our Mind Somewhere
[To use the image “Blessing Cross,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Painted Prayerbook possible. Thank you!]
Leave a Reply