August 31, 2008
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)
Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 105:1-6,23-26,45c; Romans 12:9-21;
Matthew 16:21-28
Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
This passage makes me a little nervous. For the truth is the cross is a rough hewn piece of wood from which a person is hanged by hammering nails through their extremities. I am not keen on the idea of following Jesus to such a cross. Yet is that not what the cross is all about? Dying for something, someone bigger than ourselves, indeed, just dying so that God’s unbounded love might be known?
I know that I am not alone in this uncomfortable thought. For I know that people, all good, faithful people, generation after generation, have been so uncomfortable with the thought of what the cross is that we have gilded and bejeweled our crosses, and then passed them from one generation to the next. This morning I have brought some of my favorite such crosses to share with you – and I have many – but I brought just three this morning: one that my mother’s uncle gave my mother’s aunt on one Christmas, another that my grandmother gave my uncle upon his ordination and that he gave me when I did the baptism of my niece with him, and one my father gave me. He brought it from a business trip to
I have a collection of some one hundred and fifty crosses, all with meaning and history and, frankly, great beauty. I don’t have an ugly cross in the bunch. I wonder if a psychologist would look at my collection or the collections of beautiful crosses that people have had over the centuries and ask the question: do you collect beautiful crosses that you might hide the reality of what the cross means?
The cross was for Jesus certainly not a thing of beauty but an instrument of death, an execution instrument, like a hangman’s noose or an electric chair or a lethal injection needle. We would not likely bejewel those and wear them, would we?
I wonder if we make gold crosses and wear them around our necks as a way of denying the power of the truth of what the cross means, the deep meaning of these words in the gospel this morning about self-execution, self-death, denial of self.
So what does it mean to be dead to self, to deliberately choose life in Jesus over ourselves? to deny our life, to die in some way, to execute ourselves?
Self-denial is about forgiving and making it possible for differing sides to come together. Reconciliation is what we strive for as Christians: forgiving even when forgiveness has not been asked for, loving when you are not loved back, serving the common good before serving your own desires. It is not repaying evil with evil; it is never avenging oneself. It is, simply put, behaving like a Christian.
Jesus taught us about self-denial, selflessness, through his own life and ministry, as he let go of his need to be right so that he might serve the whole, serve others, so that he might bring reconciliation between God and God’s people. Think about Jesus standing before Pilate. He let Pilate accuse him of all sorts of untruths and did not fight back, not because Pilate was right but because his greatest concern was for the whole people of God and their reconciliation with God. It is that kind of selflessness that we are called to as followers. That is what it is to take up the cross.
Frankly, taking up a cross is harder than becoming a martyr; dying physically is easier than living into such selflessness. Selflessness asks us to be feeding enemies, giving water to those who revile us, leaving vengeance to God. Selflessness calls us to let go of who we are and become instead who Jesus would have us be, how Jesus would have us be.
Sometimes people say we have crosses to bear. We hear people’s crosses equated with an alcoholic parent, a disability, poverty, learning disability, an illness, being the victim of abuse, or any of the many individual things each of us has to deal with and bear. And while it is true that we each have challenges in life, it is more universally true that unless we are somehow living into the words of Paul to the Romans that we have read this morning, we are not bearing a cross, only a discomfort of being human.
This morning we will baptize twins, Liesl and Max, into the Christian fellowship. Their parents and Godparents will make the baptismal promises for them, and we will promise to uphold them in their life in Christ. And while we do intend and have provided for them a safe and holy place to learn about God and how to be community here in this parish, what it will be more difficult to each them is how to live into the actual “cross carrying” part of being a person of faith.
And that is what I would ask that you think about when we promise this morning to uphold these children in their life in Christ. How will we model what it is to be Christian? as individuals, and as a community? How will we model “cross carrying” to them?
We are called into being a forgiving, reconciling community. This is not an easy thing to be or to be part of, because it means that we always have to put the good of the community, of those with whom we even disagree, above our own best interests, our own individual hardships and human discomforts.
The cross that we will have to bear, to “take up,” is not a gilded one, not one that has been handed down to us by loved ones, but one that calls us to be with people whom we might call an “enemy” – that is Jesus’ word, not mine; mine would more likely be people from whom we are “estranged” – people who see things differently from the way we do, family, friends, co-workers, community members, even fellow Christians. We are to let go of our need to repay evil with evil and replace it with love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, all the time, every day, in as many different ways as there are people with whom we are in relationship. Such cross bearing is what Jesus came to teach us about.
It’s nice to have the lovely crosses too; certainly I treasure the ones I have. But as we hold our lovely crosses in our hands, let us remember that it is not a simple sweet thing to take up a cross. It is a profound and generous act of love. It is difficult, true; but most of all, it is wonderful, life giving, and filled with the peace that passes understanding. For in truly picking up our cross, we find life with Christ. It is that life into which we welcome Leisl and Max this morning, a life of love and peace and forgiveness. Welcome, children! Welcome!
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd