It’s the day after my third round of chemo, and the days
immediately following the poisoning are the worst ones of this dreadful cycle.
Even before this round my taste went south again, and a horrid chemical odor
fills my nostrils day and night. Escape from the chemical poisoning is
impossible right now. I’m beginning to dread the prospect that it will linger
until chemo is behind me. According to the oncologist at Monday’s appointment,
my last round will be on November 30. If so, it will indeed be a new year come
January.
Meanwhile, God keeps whacking away at my pride. Since
turning 50 it’s been one loss after another to my ego and pride. Sometimes I
handle it with grace, other times the pain is palpable. From CEO and owner to
unemployed. From industry guru to ignored. From dot com era genius to another
failure when the bubble burst. From creative genius to old guy. From source of
wise counsel to I’m not sure what. How I need God’s perspective: act like a
servant, Jim, not an owner. Because no matter what my job, I’m still a servant
of the Owner of all. It’s too easy to forget.
Easy to forget when you’re not invited to meetings anymore.
When people that you trained and hired are the heroes (a very satisfying thing) but your input isn’t wanted by management or client. When junior would-be
captains of industry who don’t know what they don’t know send you derisive
messages weekly and then smile in the hall and say, “How are you doing?”
pausing not long enough to hear an answer.
Solomon nailed it: “There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow”
(Ecclesiastes
1:11).
The closing scene of Patton has George C. Scott walking off toward a
Quixotic windmill, recounting the tradition of the Roman tribute given on
behalf of the conquering general. Amid the pomp and ceremony, a slave stood behind
the conqueror in his chariot, holding a gold crown over his head while
whispering in his ear, “All glory is fleeting.”
Indeed. Especially when you never really had a parade in
your honor. But of course, Jesus did. We call it the Triumphal Entry. That
Sunday he was the hero. On Friday they crucified Him.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts this far more telling reality into
perspective, and brings me out of my silly self-pity – at least while I dwell
on the Truth rather than my doubt and pride:
"The
cross is not adversity, nor the harshness of fate, but suffering coming solely
from our commitment to Jesus Christ. The suffering of the cross is not
fortuitous, but necessary. The cross is not the suffering tied to natural
existence, but the suffering tied to being Christians. The cross is never
simply a matter of suffering, but a matter of suffering and rejection, and even, strictly speaking,
rejection for the sake of Jesus Christ, not for the sake of some other
arbitrary behavior or confession. The cross always simultaneously means
rejection, and that the disgrace of suffering is part of the cross. Being
expelled, despised, and abandoned by people in one’s suffering, as we find in
the unending lament of the psalmist, is an essential feature of the suffering
of the cross, yet one no longer comprehensible to a form of Christian life
unable to distinguish between bourgeois and Christian existence.
“The
first suffering we must experience is the call sundering our ties to this
world. This is the death of the old human being in the encounter with Jesus
Christ. Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her
own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the
horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of
community with Jesus Christ. Every call of Christ leads to death. Whether with
the first disciples we leave home and occupation in order to follow him, or
whether with Luther we leave the monastery to enter a secular profession, in
either case, the one death awaits us, namely, death in Jesus Christ, the dying
away of our old form of being human in Jesus’ call.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Discipleship and the Cross,” from Meditations on the Cross, Louisville,
KY, translated
by Douglas W. Stott. Copyright © Westminster John
Knox Press 1998.)