8/28/11 Real Life Crosses
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Do you wear a cross sometimes? Many of us do… here’s one that I was given at my priestly ordination by my boss, back in the day. Here’s one that I bought at the Royal Ontario Museum. Here’s one I picked up at General Seminary’s bookstore, and I love its Celtic design.
Many of my crosses are way too pretty. As such they are ironic, beautiful reminders of the most difficult thing I have ever been called to do: to follow in the footsteps of the One on the Cross and to lose my life in him—only to get it back again.
And of course that’s not true only for priests. It’s true for all who call themselves Christians and who try to follow Jesus.
So—let’s take a look at this call, and at today’s gospel that makes it clear.
Now, you may remember that last week we heard Jesus praise Peter for correctly discerning Jesus’ true identity as the Son of the Living God. Peter was re-named and called the Rock—or as we may say, Rocky. But in one short week we see the apostle Peter go from steady-as-Rock to stumbling block. Jesus gets mighty upset that Peter would dare to suggest that Jesus is not called to suffer and to die—to be taken to a place where he did not particularly want to go. It seems that Peter was trying to comfort his friend and his teacher, cajoling him not to sound so bleak. But Jesus reacts with lightning speed, calling Peter / Satan. I suppose the temptation that came with Peter’s intention to comfort Jesus was too reminiscent of the temptations Jesus suffered in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry.
Note that Peter didn’t seem to hear the part about being raised again after three days. I think the first part about suffering and death was just too hard to bear. He didn’t like hearing his friend and his master speaking like this.
Jesus seizes the opportunity to turn this into a teaching moment, discoursing about our call to follow him into a landscape of suffering—of carrying our own crosses. Jesus calls us all to have a cross-shaped life. A life that entails our own suffering and death, and our own reward at the end.
One of my seminary classmates took this teaching to heart. He reflected his acceptance of Jesus’ call to carry our crosses in his email address. It was “cruciformed.” That’s one address that’s unforgettable.
What does it mean to carry our crosses? Listen to one writer’s interpretation as he reflects about what happened to the person carrying a cross in Roman times:
“The condemned criminal who carried the horizontal bar of the cross to the site of crucifixion would have been subjected to taunts, humiliation, rejection, and shame before finally enduring an agonizing death. The disciple who ‘takes up the cross’ is one who is willing to surrender pride, ego, status, comfort, and even life for the sake of the kingdom of God.” [Mitchell G. Reddish, in Feasting on the Word, year A, Volume 4, p. 23]
Surrendering pride, ego, status, comfort, and even life for the sake of the kingdom of God. That is a very, VERY tall order, but if we are to take our faith seriously, to have “true religion” in the words of our Collect today, that’s what we’re called to do. Surrender the things that make us feel big, and important, and vital. Become insignificant in the eyes of the world, but large in the eyes of God.
Just last week we celebrated the feast day of Louis IX of France, who was sainted for doing just this. He led his people with integrity and compassion, and he purposefully lived a life that minimized the luxury that was his birthright, and sought abasement and humiliation for the sake of the Gospel.
And now let’s consider Jesus’ call to surrender our own lives for the sake of the kingdom of God. It’s a fair statement that probably none of us will live the lives of martyrs who shed their blood for the spread of the Gospel. But it is a calling of each one of us that we “die” to the allure of the world over and over again, in favor of service to others – which includes of course giving to people who are in need. That is a kind of surrender—and it certainly goes against the grain of the Fairfield County lifestyle, doesn’t it?
The church is here to remind us of our call to die to self and to the world. It puts me in memory of the old church bulletin blooper. The notice in the bulletin read, “Don’t let worry kill you. Let the church help.”
Well really it is the church’s call to interpret Scripture so we can see more clearly what Jesus meant when he said “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
There are lots of kinds of crosses. There are the crosses of very specific personal crises we encounter and endure. But there are also crosses that are mundane—ordinary—not exactly crises but instead ongoing challenges and frustrations in our lives. My friend Elsa [the Rev. Elsa Worth, Grace Church, Trumbull] says “our crosses are our very lives.” That’s an interesting statement. Our crosses are our very lives.
And so it’s a good thing that today the Church sees fit to give us the particular reading from Romans that we heard. St. Paul tells us how to carry our cross everyday, in the most mundane way, in our very lives, by our behavior.
The upshot is that we are to overcome evil with good, never to stop trying to show love, even when it’s really frustrating. We are not to think ourselves wiser than we really are. We are told not to repay evil with evil—not to try to get even with people. That includes people we know and people we don’t know. How often in families and between families is vengeance-taking really destructive…the play “Romeo and Juliet” is a classic illustration of vengeance and its disastrous end. But we’re to let God work things out, because the implication is that God always does—either in this life or in the next.
We can put our enemies into God’s hands and know that they will be rehabilitated in time. Does the word “enemies” make you a little uneasy? Think of enemies as people who are really difficult or people we don’t much like. They are not enemies in the classic sense of being opposite us in a war, but they do represent crosses in our lives. We can put our loves into God’s hands and know that they will be respected and nurtured. We can put our sorrows there, too, and know that we will be healed in God’s time. For we are assured that God sees our troubles and comes to help us walk through them.
Real-life crosses are not very pretty.
But don’t be afraid of the suffering in the present and the suffering yet to come. God is in the present with us, and God is already in the future, waiting for us. Carry your cross, and live.
Amen.
| 
| 
Share
