Carrying Crosses and Following

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Lent 2B

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton) Warsaw VA

Text: Mark 8:27-38

²⁷Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

³¹Then 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. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But 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.”

³⁴He 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. ³⁵For 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. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those 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.”

For us here this morning, these words are, for the most part, familiar territory. ‘Take up thy cross and follow me, I heard the master say’ is already echoing in our minds before we finish that phrase in the text. We are familiar with the image, with the words, with the way we occasionally joke about just what the crosses that we bear ARE.

In all honesty, I think it is a good thing that we are THAT familiar with the words. It means they come readily to mind when we think about following Jesus. They are right there – just below the surface – and have an easy and sometimes inconvenient way of popping up, sometimes when we least expect them to.  When we find ourselves wrestling with an issue that is confronting us in our faith pilgrimage.

So I don’t really mind that we can joke about something as serious as a phrase that reminds us of the fact that in the last hours of his life, Jesus, after being beaten and scourged to the point of near-death was made to pick up the crossbeam of his cross and carry it towards Golgotha – the first century Roman equivalent of digging his own grave.

I don’t mind it because even though it is a part of our vocabulary of glibness now, it is close by. And sometimes the things that are closest to us can become our best teachers.

When he first spoke these words to his disciples and the rest of the crowd that had gathered and was listening in, there was no understanding on their part that Jesus was talking about himself. There was no point of reference.

After all, crucifixion was the way a slave was executed – there was no dignity in it, no honor, no redemption. There was no way that this teacher and the one they had just finished equating to John the Baptist (by the way, that one has always puzzled me, since Jesus and John the Baptist were, for a while at least, contemporaries – after all, they WERE cousins…) or Elijah, or one of the other Prophets … I have to interject another thought here … this sounds suspiciously like reincarnation – channeling at the very least … I’ve always wondered, what does Hebrew theology have to say about that? Anyway, back to the scene: this disconnect between what Jesus was saying about himself and how the people and his disciples were understanding it – or not, as the case may be – was so profound that Peter, after hearing him say it, pulled him aside and basically told Jesus “That’s crazy talk!”

And we’re familiar with Jesus’ response:  even that gets used as a punch line on occasion: “Get thee behind me, Satan!”

He tells Peter to toss the traditional, human understanding of who the Messiah is and open his mind and his heart and his eyes to who the Messiah really is – the one who is standing in front of him and speaking the truth about what is going to happen in order for people to begin to understand exactly what God is capable of doing in order to reestablish that relationship that humanity keeps finding ways to sever.

For us, post-crucifixion, post-resurrection, this teaching makes sense. We UNDERSTAND that Jesus was talking about being willing to give his own life for the sake of the Gospel and for the sake of the Kingdom. That is part of what it means to have perfect historical vision – 20/20 in hindsight. It’s obvious.

For the folks he was talking to at the time, not so much. This was some time before things started heading south – literally as well as figuratively. So before Jesus starts telling them about HIS death, he tells people about THEIR death – death to self – to self-interest, to self protection, probably health and well-being. And he frames it in this image of something that they are all familiar with – shudderingly so – And it is a cold slap in the face to folks who are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and clothes on their backs and food in their stomachs. Hmmm… that doesn’t seem to have changed much over the centuries, has it?

We still strive for just that, on a very basic level: shelter, food and clothing.

And we probably don’t want to forget transportation. It’s good to have a nice ride – at least here in the States. It makes an important statement about who we are.

And might as well not forget entertainment. It’s good to be able to watch the latest movie on that big screen.

And this list of desires quickly becomes a list of perceived needs. If so-and-so has x then I should have it too.

I don’t want to berate the point, but you know the story – keeping up with the Joneses is the driver of our economy and our society.

So I will extend to you the invitation that I have extended in the past. Be cultural atheists. Reject that which our culture has made gods. Wealth, possessions, bling-bling, fame, fortune, even notoriety – that is, fame based on having done either nothing of significance, or fame based on having done something trashy and being proud of it. Living into that reality speeds the already too-easy process whereby we get our priorities confused and end up losing our way.

When you follow Jesus it means putting your own self-survival in the backseat. The first act of following Jesus is totally re-ordering your priorities and principles to the way of the Kingdom. It’s no longer about saving your life.

Following Jesus means that your priority is to lose your life.

And, just in case Jesus’ first audience didn’t get it—because they were scandalized at the thought of dropping those last few pitiful rungs on the societal ladder—Jesus himself follows this up with showing them how it’s done.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in response to what he saw happening in Germany and Europe during WWII wrote: “only a suffering God can help”.

This past Monday afternoon a friend of ours, a nurse midwife at MCV, called us and asked if one of us could come to be with a young woman from Guatemala who was going into labor. It was her first baby and the father was out of the picture. She spoke little or no English. And she had just found out the day before that her baby had died. She had an ultrasound on Friday and everything seemed fine, but she stopped feeling him move Saturday, and she was taken into the ER, where they confirmed that the baby – Diego, she had named him – had died due to a chemical imbalance caused by a rare and difficult to detect pregnancy-induced medical condition that affects the liver of the mother – not caused by anything she did or didn’t do. She was getting prenatal care at a local health department.

Her housemate arrived at the hospital shortly after I did. Cristina was her name. As I visited with them and began to get to know them, Cristina shared that three years ago she lost a newborn son to a congenital heart defect at the age of six months. She has two other children, one older, one younger. When Diego was finally born, what should have been a joyous event, filled with tears, yes, but laughter as well, was eerily silent. There were words of encouragement and comfort through the pushing, and the straining, but when the little baby finally arrived, there was no first breathe, no first cry, no flailing arms and kicking feet. Cristina shared from her heart words of wisdom and comfort that I could not have. When she said ‘I know how you feel’ it was with all the raw, hurting, grief-laden emotion that comes from one who had walked where that young mother was now walking.

“Only a suffering God can help.”

God did not keep himself disconnected from us, from our lives, from our experience. He was born into it and lived it alongside us.

Let’s just admit it.  It’s really only the hard things in this life that end up telling us who we are, what we are made of, and what really matters.  The happy and easy times make life enjoyable, and give us something to look forward to, but it is only the struggles we work through, successfully or not, that teach us the limits and the grandeur of the human experience.  It is only the acceptance of suffering as a necessary part of the human condition that draws us together and unites us as one in our fragile, bodily, humble reality.  It is only in confronting our mortality and placing our lives wholly in the arms of God, that we can finally and truly live.

If Jesus took away our struggles and hard work and suffering, he would simply be taking away the meaning and purpose of our lives, as mysterious and inscrutable as it may all be to us most of the time.  Don’t let Jesus’ cross take away yours.  It wasn’t what he was about, and it leaves you with nothing meaningful left to do. By calling us into the hard work of a life of purpose, sacrifice, and loving others, Jesus gives us back our lives.  He saves us from meaningless days and years of having nothing to do.  He opens us up to see injustice and cruelty in the world and say, “Yeah, I guess if I don’t do something, no one else will.”  He gives us back hard lives that aren’t about our small selves only, but about God’s bigger picture.

And when we hear Jesus say “I know how you feel” we know he speaks from experience.

So here’s the invitation: open eyed, straightforward, no holds barred: take up the cross of human existence – life in a broken world – and let yourself be used by God to begin the process of mending and healing it – beginning with yourself.

Let’s pray.