Today’s reading comes from an interesting source. Dag Hammarskjold served as the UN Secretary General in the 1960s. He died under suspicious conditions in a plane crash. You can read a little more about him here.
Rather poignantly his essay is entitled “For the Sacrificed.” In it, he details in a fresh, captivating way the final hours before Christ’s crucifixion and the indispensable nature of faith for all who would follow the path of Christ toward selfless obedience to God. Though Hammarskjold never uses the word, I was drawn to the word “resolve” as it defines Christ’s journey to Calvary and our journey to follow to Him. I distinguish between “resigned” and “resolved” because Christ was not resigned to the cross. In the sense that resigned means he sacrificed because it was His fixed fate of which he had no choice nor real passion. He resolved to follow. Paul picked up on this when he “resolved to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2) The hymn writer understood this when penned, “ I am resolved not longer to linger……. I will hasten to Him.” In following the journey of Jesus there is a daily call to the conviction that the path of obedience to God is right and worthy, because He is both of those things. May we “hasten so glad and free.” Hammarskjold ends with this, “ Would the Crucifixion have had any sublimity or meaning if Jesus had seen himself crowned with halo of martyrdom? What we have later added was not there for him. And we must forget all about it if we are to hear his commands.” Sacrifice means following Jesus wherever He leads. “Hasten so glad and free!!”