“The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty; yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone. (Psalm 90:10)”

At my poetry reading group this morning, the issue of age kept coming up.

Not just age, but the existential feeling of getting older and the sense that our lives are running away from us, while death is rapidly approaching.

No matter how old we are or what we have done in our lives, there is a sense that we haven’t fully lived into the life given to us. We have missed opportunities, and we have downright run away from other opportunities.

I sometimes look back on my life with regret.

Man, what if I had pursued that doctorate in German philosophy? I could really understand Kant and Hegel then.

Man, what if I had become a Trappist Monk? I could have really used all of that silence to become wise.

Those are paths that I could have taken, but, of course, each path we choose means that we choose not to take other paths. Being human is not just about facing physical limitations, but it is also about facing existential limitations.

I can only be one person with one life, and that means that my choice to be an Episcopal priest who serves a church in Tryon will limit me from being many other things in my life. I love being the priest at Holy Cross, and I love the people here at the church and throughout the community.

I am, truth be told, in awe of the fact that this congregation called me to be their priest, and yet the itchy finger of regret scratches my existential desire to be unbounded by choice.

What if, what if, what if … and yet the Gospel is very clear. We get one savior who had one body, and who chose to die one death on one cross.

Jesus is constantly coming up against the fears of his own disciples.

Please, Jesus, don’t go to Jerusalem. They’ll do terrible things to your body, and they’ll mock, shame and despise us.

We can’t deal with that. We only have one life to live, and we’re too afraid to make a choice that might be painful, shameful or even just wrong.

Jesus won’t back down. He tells Peter that Peter is Satan, and he tells Peter unequivocally that he must go to Jerusalem, that they all must go to Jerusalem.

Yes, there are safer places to go. Yes, there are more comfortable vocations to choose, but Jerusalem is where life will truly be lived without regret.

All of us must eventually go to Jerusalem. Jesus chooses the cross without regret, because he knows that his life is most fully lived at that moment from the cross. Death is no longer the dark force that can be wielded be the violent powers of this world or by the unredeemed recesses of our ego.

I stare at the awful and awesome particularity of our savior on the cross, and I am reminded that God gives us one very fleshy and limited life to live so that we may pour it out as an offering of love without regret.

“So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)”

-Father Robert Ard, Holy Cross Episcopal Church