tragedy.

This is, of course, where Jesus starts, and his word of tragedy is "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden" and then stops there, stops there, because "I will give you rest" is the word of comedy and comes later. All ye who labor and are heavy laden - Jesus speaks his word as tragedian, and the word floats free in the New Testament with no special event to moor it to and no special listener pictured as listening to it because it is addressed to anybody who will listen, and there is no special event to which it does not speak. It floats loose so that it can find its mooring anywhere. When he says, "Take up your cross and follow me," I think that he is saying the same thing because before it means take up some special mission or some special sacrifice or responsibility, "take up your cross" means simply take up the burden of your own life because for the time being anyway, maybe that is burden enough. Take it up in the sense of touch it and taste it and listen to it, look at yourself and your own life, and smell the smell of your mortality and nakedness. All of you. Who are the poor naked wretches? Who are the ones that labor and are heavy laden? All ye, Jesus says - that is the tragic word to us, and his preachers must speak it after him if they are to be true to his truth.

~ Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: the Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale