How Deep Your Cross?
Author: Andrew Comiskey
April 02, 2021
‘The rain came down, the
stream rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house; yet it did not
fall, because it was founded on the Rock.’ (Matt. 7: 25)
Sexuality may not be the
most important aspect of our humanity. But its integrity reveals the depth of
Jesus’ converting power. This Good Friday I reflect upon the rising and falling
of many and can now correlate surrender to the Crucified with sexual sanctity.
Or scandal. We can allow the Cross to descend into our hearts--the source of
unseen motives, fantasies, and hungers. We give Him lordship over our passions
by allowing trustworthy members of Christ to know us well and help us order our
longings in a way that denies foolishness and dignifies others.
Or the ‘social self’ nods
superficially at doing the right thing while feasting on the sly. We go with
the sensational, unstable flow to our peril. Like a handsome cottage built atop
a pier, its pilings eroded by currents whipped up by moral storms, we collapse
into the abyss of cyclical monogamy, divorce, new lovers and new ‘selves’ all
of which we justify on the grounds that we are finally being ‘authentic.’
Authentic? Not to Jesus.
He is not fooled, nor should we be, when fellow believers reveal that they have
neither understood nor taken up the Cross at all. We were happy to celebrate our
gilded gateway to heaven but when asked to die to our vanities we held out. In
truth we hated the Cross more than we loved it. We refused its descent into
unwieldy, contradictory passions. As a result, we stopped becoming persons of
virtue who could be counted on in unwanted singleness, or after the wedding, when
old passions roared in like a flood.
No Cross, no anchor: we
can readily forsake our plumb line and lightning rod, the emblem of God’s
warfare on our behalf endowed with power to break the grip of any desire
usurping Christ.
Gratefully, Good Friday
shines a light on men and women I have known who have lived differently. Many
who had been mastered by ‘gay’ selves and sensuality have since refused all
worldly lures to ‘self-realization’; they simply could not fathom life outside
the shadow of the Cross. Jesus became everything for them—their life, health,
peace, and protection. The Cross continues to bore its royal way into their
depths, one confession, one repentance, one death at a time. They now live for
Him; He is their form, their fragrance, their fruitfulness.
Two images I received—one
was of dead thick wood that was insect-infested and hollow, being gathered up
and thrown into the fire. Beware of believers who claim the ‘truth’ of immoral
authenticity. They have (limited) authority to infect the flock, are detached
from the Cross and will be thrown into the fire. I then saw young men like
Andrew Franklin, Ken Williams, and Marco Casanova whose very uprightness
derives from the Cross. I could see green roots coursing up through their
cruciform lives, ordered desires and actions growing and extending out in
potent expressions of surrendered masculinity.
Today I marvel. The Cross,
an instrument of death, becomes in our ‘yes’ the tree of life. Hail the
Crucified God who makes all things new.
Get Ken Williams latest book by clicking the picture below.
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