Second Sunday in Lent
March 8, 2009
The Gospel: Mark 8:31-38
Sermon: "Cross to bear"
The Rev. Dr. Vicki L. Smith, Rector
The Gospel: Then Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Mark 8:31-38
Cross to bear March 8, 2009
My husband hates to fly—he really hates it. He hates the packing, the security, the crush at the gate and especially the take off and the landing. He really, really hates to fly. And yet, at least once a month, he heads off to the airport for yet another journey for work— that he hates to go has absolutely nothing to do with it. Some might call this his cross to bear.
Caring for an ill spouse, coping with an obstreperous teenager, looking for work in a down economy—all of those too, have been called a cross to bear. “We’ve all got our cross to bear,” we’ll say—sometimes jokingly about a minor inconvenience, and sometimes most seriously in times of trial or struggle. Everything from the inability to resist potato chips to a diagnosis of cancer has been labeled, “our cross to bear.” And most of time, I’m afraid that’s simply incorrect.
There is much that is inconvenient or difficult or sad in life, and we tend to label all of it, with greater and lesser seriousness, as our cross to bear—and that is inaccurate, even in the most devastating and tragic situations. You see, the cross was a willing sacrifice—what we so often label as our cross is not something we choose to take on but rather the troubles that life thrusts upon us.
That is not in any way to diminish or make light of the troubles and pains of life. Our lives can be extremely difficult, bringing even deep suffering and sorrow, but those are not necessarily our crosses, they are our troubles. They are pains and sorrows that Christ walks through with us. They are struggles that challenge and change us; they are times that call for all we have to give and then some, but they are not necessarily crosses, because we do not choose them, they choose us.
The crosses in our lives, we choose. We do all have our crosses to bear, as well as our troubles, the problem is that they are not always, or perhaps, even often the same thing.
Jesus did not have to die on the cross—he could have run away, he could have fought, he could have appealed to a higher court, but he didn’t. He chose to die, to make that sacrifice in that way at that time. It wasn’t the nails that held him to the wood of the cross, it was his choosing to love us and sacrifice himself for us that kept him there. It wasn’t the law or the government or the Romans or the Jews that caused his death, it was his choice to die—to save the world.
Our gospel lesson reminds us that Jesus tells us that to be his followers we must take up our crosses and follow him; we must live a life of sacrifice and love as Jesus did. Like Christ, we pick up those crosses not because life forces them upon us, but because we choose to embrace sacrifice for the love of God and others. Taking up our crosses is choosing to die to self, so that we may live to God.
By Christ’s example, we know that the path to resurrection and new life goes right through the center of the cross. We would like to move straight from the joy of Christmas and the wonder of Epiphany right into the victory of Easter but it just doesn’t work that way. Without the sacrifice, the victory doesn’t happen. Without the cross, there is no resurrection.
Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow him, not because he is a hard task master and not because he is a puritan who believes in sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake but because it is only by taking up our cross, by choosing to sacrifice and die to self, that we can participate with him in his resurrection.
Desiring as we do to be his disciples, and to share in his resurrection, how do we pick up our crosses and follow him? How does that happen?
It happens when we recognize those times in our lives when our desires, our likes and dislikes, even our needs, must be sacrificed for the greater good of God’s will and the love of others. It happens when the mother in Darfur feeds her child while she goes hungry. She has taken up her cross.
The Dad who keeps working at a job that is difficult and unpleasant so that his family continues to be housed, fed and cared for—he has taken up his cross. The school child who befriends the socially questionable classmate, just because it is the right and kind thing to do—that child has taken up his cross. The salesperson who changes jobs, maybe even with a cut in pay, rather than sell something she thinks is harmful or wrong—she has taken up her cross. And those troubles I talked about before, how we choose to respond to them can also be our cross—the attitude with which we offer our care, the willingness to keep working at a relationship, the offer of forgiveness even when we don’t feel like it—that too, is taking up our cross.
Sometimes our crosses will be large—heavy and onerous with the weight of sorrow or momentous decisions. Sometimes our crosses will be smaller and easier to bear, with sacrificial choices that seem almost natural to us. But large or small, none of our crosses are insignificant, none of our sacrifices are unimportant, none of our choices inconsequential.
Chances are that we will not be called upon to offer our hands to be nailed to the wood as Jesus was—that was his cross. We are called to take up our cross—the cross and sacrifice that lies in the midst of our lives. In the Philippines, every Good Friday, there are men who have themselves lashed to real wooden crosses in a re-enactment of Jesus’ crucifixion. And while that may express great piety, it misses the point. Our cross, our sacrifice, will not be found in reproducing Jesus’ physical suffering, but in copying his willingness to give all and the depth of his love.
We all do have our crosses to bear. When they are presented to us, we must choose whether we take them up and walk the road of sacrificial faith, as Jesus did, or if we will leave them lying untouched, to tread instead the rather more comfortable road of self.
Taking up our cross is not an easy thing to do. It is not easy to choose the road of sacrifice, to choose to die to our own needs and desires. Self-preservation is genetically bred into us, and self-agrandizment is societally installed. To stand against all that and willingly accept sacrifice for the will of God and the love of others is profoundly countercultural, and our culture probably will not support us in it.
Just as many around him thought Jesus was a fool for dying as he did, many around us may label our sacrifices wasted or codependent, naïve or pointless. But following our savior is never naïve and sacrificing for his sake, for the love and sake of others, that is never pointless.
If we are to be Jesus’ disciples, let us pick up our crosses and follow him. And may we take them up, if not with gladness, at least with purpose, knowing that our Christ has gone before us and that following him leads not just to sacrifice, but through sacrifice, to resurrection and new life.