Laying down your soul

"No greater love than this," Jesus intones, and then he talks about laying down his life for his friends.

There's always been a resonance to this passage that I've struggled with. Here, a text that seems to speak of dying for a band of brothers, and of the cross as blood sacrifice. The cross is important to me, it is. It is the mark and emblem and proof of who Jesus was, and why he was so important.

But so is every other part of my Teacher's life, and everything that he taught and did. When his specific instructions on how to live are subordinated to a theology that places no ethical demands on us beyond obeisance, Christian faith becomes a stunted thing. The cross has meaning because of who was upon it, and what they taught and lived. What that person taught and lived has meaning because of how far he was willing to go to show that he meant it. The two cannot be separated.