Sermon for 2 Lent; February 28, 2021
Good Shepherd, Acton
. Our Gospel this morning is a pretty standard text for the season of Lent. You’ll recall that in three of the Gospels, Jesus predicts his suffering, death and resurrection three different times. Three times the disciples fail to understand. And three times Jesus uses this context to teach about the meaning of genuine discipleship. Today’s lesson being, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
I found myself in conversation with a clergy friend this week about today’s Gospel lesson. We both are preaching today- and at first glance, neither of us found the Scripture from Mark to be particularly compelling. My friend John joked, “I just can’t find the juice in it!”
So what is it about this familiar teaching that we find so uninspiring?
Can’t you just see Jesus shaking his head at the two of us, well-intentioned priests in his Church, and rebuking us, along with Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
And so we are! There is probably no harder directive than the one which asks us to deny ourselves and take up our cross to follow Christ. And I think part of our aversion to a text like this is our honest admission that actually, we don’t want to do this. Not really. Not completely. Who among us is willing to lose their life for the sake of the Gospel? Who is motivated by this particularly challenge? Isn’t it more human (and more honest) to be like Peter, and object to Christ’s need to suffer, while avoiding our own suffering at all costs?
Historically, of course, there have been magnificent examples of courageous and selfless Christian faith— often from times and settings when Christians were persecuted for their faith, when faithful followers of Christ really did give up their lives for the sake of the Gospel. When rather ordinary folk really did bear the cross, with their lives on the line.
My daughters were quite taken aback by the description of young Tarcisius, who was featured in Lent Madness last week. He was a 3rd century child martyr who died at the hands of an angry mob while bringing the Sacrament to prisoners, on behalf of the priests. It was a dangerous time to be Christian, and the priests were easily recognized. So young Tarcisius, an altar server, was tasked with bringing the consecrated Eucharist to the jail. When a Christian symbol was spotted on the lid of the box he carried, a mob turned on him. He preferred death to allowing the Sacrament to be spilled or desecrated. Is this what it means to bear the cross?
Consider another 3rd c. example- that of Cyprian of Carthage in North Africa. In a letter to his friend, Donatus, Cyprian wrote:[1]
“This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden under the shadow of these vines. But if I claimed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the high roads, pirates on the seas, in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds, under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world…”
Would we say the same of our own contact, eighteen hundred years later? We may not have brigands on the highways, or pirates on the seas, but our lives do know something of theft and greed. Humans in every time, it seems, have been known to take delight in the misfortunes of others. And in these hard times of our own, it is not difficult to find examples of misery and selfishness in our own context. What would we see if we climbed some great mountain, or the tower above our church, and looked out over our own community? -An environment in peril? Avarice and greed? Rising economic disparity between rich and poor? A nation divided by politics? Relationships in trouble? People frustrated by the ongoing pandemic while more than half a million American families mourn their dead?
Cyprian goes on to write, “Yet, in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasure in this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians, and I am one of them.” Cyprian himself became a bishop.
What if this were said of Christians today? Wouldn’t it be something if people looked upon us, worshipping and praying and trying to lead faithful lives in the midst of these challenging times, and knew us to be a quiet and holy people, who have discovered a joy a thousand times better than any pleasure in this sinful life?
Sometimes, we achieve this. Sometimes our faith can free us to a peacefulness that surpasses human understanding. Sometimes we can experience a grace so special, we know ourselves to be held in the embrace of a loving God. Sometimes our experience of Christian community can be so fulfilling that it overcomes the burdens of the world.
Other times, we find ourselves in Jesus’ words, setting our mind on human things, rather than on divine things, and we are far from Cyprian’s loving description.
Jesus’ challenge to us, one that Cyprian’s community seems to have met well, is to overcome the world for the sake of Christ. I suspect that most of us find this neither desirable nor easy. For the truth of the matter is that we do live firmly rooted in this world. Even in these days of quarantine, none of us are free from the demands, temptations and burdens of everyday life. Christians we may be, but we are also mothers and father and grandparents, children and caretakers, workers, and retired folk. We have obligations and desires that are not necessarily grounded in Gospel values, but that define our lives nonetheless. We worry about worldly things: our income, our health, our families, our homes. We pursue pleasures that bring meaning and happiness to our lives, and while not necessarily harmful, may not always be of God. More often than not, our minds are set on human things because we are human and we do the best we can.
Yet, Lent is a time for us to challenge ourselves. To face the Scriptures that demand much of us. To acknowledge the commitment and devotion that Christ does ask of us. It is tempting to explain away the Scriptures like our Gospel. We convince ourselves that while Jesus may have needed his disciples to take up their cross, to lose their lives for his sake, such a demand is not relevant to us. Perhaps in Cyprian’s day, when Christians were being persecuted, it was necessary that they overcome the world- but in our time- our world’s not so bad that we must forsake it completely. Right? We even trivialize the notion of taking up our cross: equating it with that annoying neighbor or our chronic back pain: “I guess that’s just the cross I have to bear!”
The reality of the Gospel, however, is that the cross is not just some unfair burden we must bear, but a means of death. To take up the cross is to take up that which would kills us, break us… not just annoy or pain us. And most of us choose to avoid this at all costs. In fact, I’ll suggest that it is likely we will always fail this challenge.
I guess that’s why my friend John and I were resistant to this Gospel. Here again is Jesus demanding something of us that we are loathe to do. Here is that age-old challenge that we know we will always fail. Take up your cross. Lose your life for my sake. Deny yourself.
In our Gospel, Jesus directs his comments to Peter, the other disciples, and the crowd. But he is also speaking about himself. For it is Christ who will take up the cross, who will lose his life for the sake of others and the Gospel. It is Christ who will forfeit his life, rather than gain the whole world. It is Christ who gives his all to us, in return for his life.
We may be expected to do the same, but the truth is that we will fail in our attempts every time. It is only in our dependence upon Christ, to walk the way of the cross on our behalf, that we are saved. It is not by our own doing. But by the selfless act of Christ, who does for us what our own selfishness prevents us from doing on our own,
I once heard someone suggest that Lenten disciplines are most effective when they really challenge us. For what do we gain from giving up coffee or chocolate for 40 days, other than the self-satisfaction of having met a goal? But by choosing a discipline that challenges us to fail, we come to recognize that they only way we are to grow spiritually is through our dependence upon Christ.
Our Gospel provides a similar challenge. Christ calls us to bear our own cross, to lose our life for the sake of the gospel, to follow him, even into suffering and death. He sets the bar high. His standards are impossible to meet. And, ultimately, it is Christ who must do it for us, since we cannot do it ourselves. By failing this challenge, we come to recognize our dependence upon Christ for our salvation. We cannot do it alone. It is the cross Christ bears for us.
And for this we say, with upmost humility: Thanks be to God.
Amen.