Crux enim fiasco est

I sat once in your office. It was a rainy afternoon and the outcry of glory engulfed the very cavity of my heart as I longed to hold on to anything that was of and in me. I surrounded my mind with images found in glances around your space, noticing book titles, pictures, pens, sticky notes, and the lines on your face. Those lines that bore witness to a soul un-settled, a soul stirred at the very core of existence by the fiasco of the cross. A soul crying out to seven students who gathered weekly to enter into the darkness. To enter into the darkness of you. To enter into the darkness of cancer. Of the cells rapidly multiplying and overtaking your physical being. The cells that threatened invincibility. The cells that threatened our time together. The cells that threatened your work. The cells that threatened your family. The cells that could single-handedly rip you from all that we know. And there was your eyes. I asked my question, fumbling over my words, always so full of questions and no answers...and as I continued to struggle to hold on to something in my life- something that made sense- something that mattered, something that I could do, someone I could be, answers to my questions, answers to my questions, answers to my questions...your loving gaze fixed upon my eyes and as your soul stood tormented before me you spoke of the cross, the chaos, the darkness of calvary, the crucified Christ, the fiasco... and there in the shadows of the cross you stood, standing only in the hope that God loves you for Christ’s sake and will never let you go. And there I sat- healthy, young, vibrant, confused, seeking, searching, trying, failing. What then? What then shall I do? At the foot of the cross is all despair, loss, suffering, fear, anxiety, anger, depression, hate, deception, lies, a hellish reality that I cannot control. And there in that moment, you wrote it down. You wrote it, the sparkle in your eye, you handed it to me. And I looked down at the word: Freedom. It pierced like a knife. The only freedom of this life is the freedom of the suffering and death on the cross. And in that suffering and death I am set free. Free to be part of Christ’s body. Free to be in doubt, pain, fear, hate, anger, anxiety, depression, deception, lies, loss, the hellish reality that God loves me for Christ’s sake and will never let me go. The only hope. The only freedom. The only reality: failure. I fail to understand and as I fail to understand I am swept up by the cross, contained only in its fiasco, as a part of Christ’s body. In Christ I am free.