Taking up your cross can be taken to mean simply doing the hard thing because it is the right thing. Which thing? That thing that you need to do. It’s between you and God. It’s your choice to do it, and if you do choose, God will give you the courage to follow through.
I’ll tell you one hard thing I’m doing. I’m paying attention. I’m listening to news I’d rather tune out for my own peace of mind, though I am trying to avoid the gossip that passes for news. I’m learning about the Powers in our time and the people who are being crushed by them and I’m using all my spiritual tools to protect myself from the meanness and desperation around politics that early Christians would call demonic. I’m going to stay woke, as they say, and keep my gospel values, and I’m figuring out where and how I can take some small actions for reconciliation or for justice.
*****
Brea
Congregational United Church of Christ
February
25, 2018
Choice and Courage
Mark 8:31-38 Then he began to teach them 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.
32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and
began to rebuke him. 33 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.”
34 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. 35
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. 36 For what will it profit them to
gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 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.”
Jesus
needs to talk to some marketing experts.
This “take up your cross” thing is not going to go over well in
recruiting followers. Ask the prosperity gospel preachers; they’ll tell you to
just skip this passage altogether. The story
sells better if you say only Jesus had a cross.
Since he obviously overcame it, we can just jump on his bandwagon to
ascend to heaven.
Mark
clearly did not consult the marketing experts because he doesn’t hold back in
this passage at all. “Get behind me,
Satan,” says Jesus to Peter. Jesus
wasn’t speaking to Peter at all. He was speaking to the temptation Peter gave
him. Yes, according to Mark Jesus was really tempted, because Jesus was really
human. The temptation went, “You don’t have to do this the hard way, Jesus. You can just be a law-bending rabbi, settle
down in Galilee, a safe distance from Roman power and the corrupt Temple
leaders in Jerusalem. You don’t need to
make a stand before the Powers that Be.” But apparently he did. And according to Mark, so do we.
The
cross is a pivotal symbol of our faith. As
any pivotal symbol, it has been understood different ways. But the original meaning of the cross before
Christianity was: an instrument of torture used by the Roman empire not only to
kill criminals and enemies of the state, but to shame them utterly, deny them
humanity; to make of them such horrors as to terrorize their family and community
into submission. Only it didn’t work with Jesus and his followers.
Until
the fourth century after Jesus’ death, the cross was not widely displayed by
Christians. Only after crucifixion was
banned in the Roman Empire did the symbol of the cross take hold. The cross was
the means to an end, an obstacle that was overcome. So we don’t get to glorify or seek out
suffering. (Actually for me that’s never
been an issue.) But neither do we always get to take the easy way out, when we
are called to love and serve as Jesus showed us.
The
cross is strong medicine. Strong
medicine, taken in the right amount, for the right purpose, can save. Taken at the wrong time, it can do great
harm. So you won’t hear me preaching
about the cross every week.
In
Catholic grade school my teachers thought it fitting to bring us into the
sanctuary each Lent to walk the stations of the cross. This is a long meditation on fourteen
different detailed images of Jesus’ suffering and death, for the purpose of
immersing oneself in the experience. The stations of the cross form the
plotline of the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” rated “R.” Strong medicine. Possibly
appropriate for some adults. Never
appropriate for a child with a good imagination.
It
is natural for us to recoil from suffering. It is healthy. Yet sometimes we
can’t avoid suffering. We are also very
capable of facing suffering when it is for a good purpose. My husband Scott and I were debating which is
more painful, a kidney stone or natural childbirth. He had the kidney stone,
and I had the natural childbirth. I’m pretty sure his was worse. Pain level
aside, there is nothing redeeming about a kidney stone; it is just something to
be endured. The pain of childbirth has
an awesome purpose.
Most
Christians are pretty sure Jesus endured the cross for a good purpose. We differ, however, on what that purpose was.
New Testament writers differ on what that purpose was. Theologians have argued about this
extensively. A variety of explanations
have been given; you can track them down in Wikipedia under Atonement in
Christianity.
Let
me say a few words about the most common understanding of what Jesus
accomplished on the cross. Substitutionary atonement has been the dominant
explanation in the Western church for many centuries. Substitutionary: Jesus
substituted himself for us, took our punishment to pay our debt to God, the
great lawgiver in the sky who required the death penalty from all of us for our
sins. Atonement- we are at one now, all good. Does this make sense to you? It
makes Jesus sound so heroic and generous… and it paints a picture of God the punishing
Father that I want nothing to do with. But then, God accepted the sacrifice and
became loving and forgiving, so this works for some people. I think this is
basically Paul’s view– and maybe understandable with the personal load of guilt
that Paul had.
Taking
up your cross and following Jesus makes no sense if the point of the cross is
substitutionary atonement. Jesus already
did the work; put that cross down! So
let’s try a view that may resonate better with you: moral influence atonement. Kind
of a lame name. Jesus went to the cross
to show us the lengths to which his love, God’s love, would go to get through
to us; to death and beyond. We can trust
that he truly accepts us. And in
relationship with him we can stop being selfish and love generously too. To the
extent that liberal Christians deal with the cross at all, it has usually been with
this understanding.
To
some people, this understanding of the cross seems wimpy. And if you keep the
whole experience at arm’s length, I suppose it is. But if you seek to draw close to such a radical
love, in my experience, it is transformative.
Let us call this drawing close participatory
atonement. When we follow Jesus we are invited, in our own small way, to sacrifice
ourselves, so that we can be transformed.
To lose our life, so that we can find it
I
suppose the stations of the cross were participatory in a way. Well, they backfired on me pretty
spectacularly. A reminder not to force any interpretation of the cross onto
someone else.
In
Mark’s view, Jesus didn’t get a cross because Rome made a mistake, or was
tricked by God or Jewish leaders into executing an innocent man. For Mark, the
cross is Jesus going before us to face the worst that the Powers of empire and warped
values and death-dealing injustice can dish out. Jesus became powerless and
helpless, the lowest of the low, and was crushed to death, and yet his life,
his Spirit, could not be crushed, and he lived on in and with his followers,
and lives on still.
Those
of us who are in positions of comfort and power get invited to follow Jesus
into places we don’t want to go. Matthew
got a little more systematic about it; in his Gospel, Jesus says, whatever you
do to the least of these, you do to me.
If we refuse to let go of comfort and status for those who have none,
how could we enter an upside-down Kingdom?
Wow,
this is hard. Participating in Jesus’
work of the cross is incompatible with capitalism and nationalism and war or
political feuding. It is incompatible
with NIMBY and gated communities. People who embrace the cross fully are the saints
and revolutionaries, people so courageous we want to be inspired by them, but maybe
not too much; it would be too hard. No wonder substitutionary atonement won the
theological debates in the church of the Roman Empire, and is still winning many
places today. Substitutionary atonement
is a transaction between the individual and God. It allows systematic injustice go
unchallenged.
So,
how will we take up our crosses? One thing I want to make very clear: your
cross is the cross you are given by God, that you accept of your own choice,
and not the one any human being forces on you. How convenient if someone in
power goes about assigning powerless people their oppression with the church’s
blessings. One of the ways this strong
medicine has been warped is by church authorities telling victims of domestic
violence: well, this is just your cross to bear. Slave owners and the religion of slave owners
used to tell slaves that their bondage was their cross to bear. Bosses have told laborers that unsafe or
degrading working conditions were their cross to bear. Nobody gets to tell you what is and what
isn’t your cross. That’s between you and God.
Taking
up your cross can be taken to mean simply doing the hard thing because it is
the right thing. Which thing? That thing that you need to do. It’s between you and God. It’s your choice to do it, and if you do
choose, God will give you the courage to follow through.
I’ll
tell you one hard thing I’m doing. I’m paying
attention. I’m listening to news I’d
rather tune out for my own peace of mind, though I am trying to avoid the
gossip that passes for news. I’m learning about the Powers in our time and the
people who are being crushed by them and I’m using all my spiritual tools to protect
myself from the meanness and desperation around politics that early Christians
would call demonic. I’m going to stay
woke, as they say, and keep my gospel values, and I’m figuring out where and
how I can take some small actions for reconciliation or for justice.
This
church did a hard thing, the right thing, by becoming open and affirming; publicly
proclaiming gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and queer people, among
others, are welcome here. You do a hard
thing, the right thing, when you make your hall into a homeless shelter each
summer and treat the people in it with respect and care.
The
first time I helped out in a homeless shelter was in a church basement in
Minneapolis in 1992. I was very excited to be walking the talk of my newly recommitted
Christian faith. I was also petty scared
that as one of two overnight volunteers in that large shelter I would be getting
four hours off duty to sleep. I wasn’t in the least scared about being a young
woman and the only volunteer staff in a room full of forty people. My cross looks different from your cross.
Before
I arrived, I was tutored by my friend Ardys.
Ardys liked to cooked piles of roast chicken for the guests, and she
said, “You have to go sit with them and talk with them and hear their stories.”
So I had a long talk with Ed. Ed had open-heart surgery not long before, and
between not being able to work and not being able to pay his medical bills,
that surgery made him homeless. See how the Powers hide their dirty work? Surgery didn’t make him homeless. Having no
sick time or medical coverage made him homeless.
I
noticed that the crew that was cooking that night didn’t sit with the guests;
they ate in the kitchen. Actually eating
with homeless people was out of their comfort zone, I suppose. Their loss.
At lights out, a guest who was bent out of shape at getting his TV show
interrupted grumbled at me, “You people don’t care about us, you’re just here
for the money.”
“Excuse
me sir,’ I said. “I am a volunteer.”
Hearing me, his jaw dropped. He
apologized. “Really? You’re doing that
for us, for free?” He looked like I had
just given him a surprise birthday party.
That
was the first time I learned a lesson about carrying crosses that I’ve
relearned many times since. You can’t
carry someone else’s cross. But when
they know that you are beside them, and you care, their cross can feel a whole
lot lighter.
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. Losing the life we think we should have
according to our plans, to participate in something bigger than us. Living for a purpose, God’s purpose. Participating in the upside-down Kingdom
where nobody is rejected. Living courageously. Living faithfully.
Our
sanctuary cross is empty, because Jesus didn’t stay on it. And we don’t have to either. Nor should any
human being. With Jesus’ help, we can choose to carry our cross with courage,
and we can also join Jesus at the very large and joyful and abundant celebration
that is the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
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