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Jay Weldon
Taking Up a Cross
Despite Benedict's desire for solitude, his holiness and austerities became known and he was asked to be the abbot by a community of monks. He accepted, but when the monks resisted his strict rule and tried to poison him, he returned to Subiaco and became a center of spirituality and learning. He left suddenly, and in about 525, settled at Monte Cassino. He destroyed a pagan temple to Apollo on its crest, brought the people of the neighboring area back to Christianity, and in about 530 began to build the monastery that was to be the birthplace of Western monasticism. Soon disciples again flocked to him as his reputation for holiness, wisdom, and miracles spread far and wide. He organized the monks into a single monastic community and wrote his famous Rule prescribing common sense, a life of moderate asceticism, prayer, study, and work, and community life under one superior. It stressed obedience, stability, zeal, and had the Divine Office (that is to say, Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer) as the center of monastic life. At the heart of Benedict’s Rule is the sense we get about him that he took this call to Christianity very seriously. He seems to me like some sort of a cross between a quiet monk and a United States Marine Sergeant Major. He is remembered by many as a man who felt like an enforcement of Christian rules and obedience and order was the essence of the Christian life, and for obvious reason we remember him today as a man who took up his cross and followed Jesus. My cousin’s name was Winn Jordan. He was born about five years after me, a year after I was the ring bearer in his parents’ wedding. I tripped down the stairs during the recessional, fell flat on my face, and according to my mother helped ease the tension of an otherwise stuffy afternoon in June. While sitting outside at a restaurant on the Decatur city square a few years ago, my aunt Jan, my mother’s only sister, confided in me that she had always wondered what was wrong with him. According to her, he just came out cross-wired, and she had never been able to figure out why or what to do. He came with no instruction manual and there was no warranty, and so as with all human beings, there was no exchange to be made. She loved him, I am sure, as any mother loves her only son. Winn was different from St. Benedict in every way imaginable. St. Benedict was a scholar and developed a rule of life still used in many ways by the western Church. Winn finally made heads or tails of things at the Open Campus High School, designed specifically for the students who couldn’t make it at high schools named Decatur, Druid Hills, and Chamblee. Benedict retreated from the hectic life of big cities, finding refuge in the quiet life of monasteries, spending his days devoted to quiet and contemplative prayer. Winn liked things fast paced, and said that he wanted to find a job racing go karts when he finished high school. Benedict heard the words of Jesus in St. Luke and was challenged to take up the biggest cross that he could find. While I do not know for sure, I am able to surmise that Winn heard the same text from Luke, and, assuming that he was listening, knew that he needed a smaller cross. Benedict seems to have found joy in life by taking things seriously; Winn found joy in life by never taking anything seriously. In a way, I have a special respect for him. I was a serious child, maybe more like Benedict, and Winn was the type that I secretly envied because he and they were able to enjoy life so easily. In March of 2004, Winn was 19 and just a few weeks away from graduating from Open Campus High School, only one year later than he would have on a traditional path. On the morning of March 24th, he was coming home from a friend’s house at about three o’clock in the morning when he lost control of his car and plowed off the road into a tree. The sheriff’s office in DeKalb County found him about an hour later, and the coroner said that he had died immediately, not suffering at all. He was the lucky one, I suppose. His girlfriend at the time was absolutely devastated. At the cemetery, she screamed, she sobbed, and even tried to keep the grave diggers from lowering his body into the ground. I had never seen anything like that in my life that wasn’t on tv. His mother, to this day, is still suffering. She quit her job, separated from her husband, and doesn’t talk to family any more. A white cross on the side of LaVista Road is all that is left to remind us of Winn today. In a strange twist of irony, he got the small cross that he needed in the end. I find it truly ironic that Winn is commemorated by a small white cross, no different really than St. Benedict whom we remember with mention of the cross, no different than the countless others that line American streets and highways, commemorating other cousins and sons and mothers and nieces and boyfriends and best friends. One of my favorite bands, the Indigo Girls, also from Decatur like my cousin Winn, say this in a song about these crosses, “I see these crosses on the side of the road, tied with ribbon in the median. They make me grateful I can go this mile, lay me down at night and wake me up again.” Even though I know that they don’t mean it the same was as I do, I like what they say, mainly because I have found that to be true for myself. When I think of Benedict and his cross, I think about seriousness and strict devotion. When I think about that plain white cross on the side of LaVista Rd in Decatur, I am instilled with hope. Yes, there is sadness, but the cross to me is a symbol of hope. I know the truth, that it was the cruelest form of humiliation and execution people have ever known. I know that Jesus, when he talked about taking up a cross and following him, was making a grim and dissuasive statement, reminding us how hard it is to be a disciple. People like Benedict heard that and were up to the challenge, devoting themselves to the way of the cross. Another was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed in a concentration camp, who was also up to the task. He spent his life reminding us of the cost of discipleship, convinced that it was harder than we think, and then sealed his witness with his own martyrdom. I know that this message of taking up the cross is a Good Friday message, but I still hear it with Easter ears. I cannot help but do so. I hear it from this side of the resurrection and I am not willing to go back. Because of Jesus, I see the cross, and I feel hope… glad like the Indigo Girls say that I can go this mile, because I believe that he goes beside me; glad that he is still calling us to him today like he did those first disciples years ago; glad that when you and I reach that final mile, we will know that he has gone before us. So at this point I feel slightly confused by the dichotomy of what I am feeling: that Benedict did what Jesus originally meant—taking up his cross, following, and being a disciple—but that those of us who fall short, hearing this with Easter ears, still can trust in the love and grace of Jesus… because I believe that both are true. Perhaps it is the real irony that both sides of the aisles are remembered with the cross, whether it is deserved or not. I was surprised to learn something else about Benedict. Just before his death, he said that, if given a choice between justice and mercy, he would choose mercy. I don’t know if I see it in the text, in Jesus’ words, or if I feel it inside of me, but I think that the conclusion I have reached is not a dichotomy, that Benedict knew after carrying his cross, that he was still reliant upon the same grace and mercy on which you and I rely today, both on the days when we carry the cross, and on the days it is put there for us. So I look back to Jesus for the answer. He told us to do the math carefully, so we must take his advice and do the math carefully. We can look ahead to the ending, and say with a resounding ALLELUIA that is why we find hope in the cross. And until then, we will carry our crosses, but until then, we look for the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. Amen.
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