Let us Pray - Lord God, Creator and Maker of us all, speak in the calming of our minds and in the longings of our hearts, by the words of my lips and in the thoughts that we form. Speak, O Lord, for your servants listen. Amen.
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.... (And) -- 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.
A Pastor wrote to an on-line study group with this message:
"I'm having difficulty with the Gospel this week; what is this cross that I am to take up, and what am I to deny in following Jesus?"
A seminary student once wrote:
"I find this a hard gospel text because it talks about suffering rather than joy"
The cross has always caused problems to people. Brutal and barbaric - the cross was a tool of political power for the Romans. They maintained their power because of the fear of death on the cross.
When one was condemned by the state, the condemned literally had to "take up his cross" and carry it to the public place where he was to be crucified. It was part of the humiliation process, the mechanism of social control for which crucifixion was invented.
The cross was an instrument of suffering and shame - and no more so than among the Children of Israel - where the scriptures themselves declare: "cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree".
To die on a cross was a sign that one died cut off from God, and cut off from the people of God - a sign that the person was rejected. And of course in the case of Jesus this was very true.
Jesus went to cross as one who was rejected and abandoned. Rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes, and abandoned almost completely by his disciples too. Jesus didn't die as a hero or a martyr. He died as a blasphemer.
The cross was the worst form of execution - for the people of Israel and for the Roman Empire as a whole. Indeed it was a social faux pax to mention crosses or crucifixion in the presence of women and children of high social standing.
Yet Christianity in contrast to many of the other religions of the day, which celebrated the search for beauty, truth, and the good, had, and still has, at its centre this most awful symbol of death and disgrace.
This must be dealt with - and understood correctly.
I say this because with our gold and silver crosses adorning our altars, and worn as jewellery around our necks, and with so much wrong-headed preaching on cross-bearing, preaching which reduces bearing the cross to little more than performing acts of kindness toward other people, or putting up with difficult situations we risk transforming our faith into just another religion - a religion that celebrates many good things - but which avoids the difficult truths about life and about faithfulness to God.
Jesus is clear. To be his disciples, to enter the Kingdom of God, we must deny our selves and pick up our crosses - and follow him.
So what is the cross we are called to bear?
FIRST, what the cross is not.
The seminary student I quoted at the beginning of the sermon, as part of his work towards his degree meets with a study group that looks at the gospel passage for the coming Sunday. After telling them that he found today's gospel reading a hard passage because it talks about suffering rather than joy, the group discussed the passage.
He reported that for the next 90 minutes he listened to the most amazing series of stories of survival. The members of the group talked about the death of a husband, the death of an infant son, the near-death of a teen-aged child, divorce, chemotherapy, bankruptcy - and how they look back now and know they weren't alone - that in all these events God went with them - supporting them - wiping the tears from their eyes - and bringing new hope and new life out of tragedy. Praise God for that!
He ended his report by saying that the members of the study group thought they were talking about picking up their crosses and that he was very much inspired by their talk.
But my friends - while I praise God for the testimony of the members of his study group about how God went with them in their suffering and affliction - they were not necessarily talking about either the cross of Jesus or the cross that he calls us to bear.
I say that because most people make a fundamental mistake when talking about the crosses they bear. They confused the suffering that is inflicted upon them by the world - a suffering that comes without their choice or decision - with that which comes because we have chosen to be faithful.
Think about it for a moment. Think about the cross of Christ. Think about how he could have avoided it, how he could have called legions of angels to his rescue, how he could have turned away from the confrontation in Jerusalem and ministered quietly in Galilee.
A cross is something we pick up because we desire to follow Jesus. It is not something falls upon us because we are made of mortal flesh and live in a decaying world, though how we react to those things may, in fact, turn them from an affliction that we bear to a cross we bear.
I think of the aging husband or wife who faithfully tends for and cares for their spouse even when that spouse can no longer recognize them or communicate with them. They have made a decision to be faithful - and the burden they bear is indeed a cross and simply an affliction.
SECOND - the cross we are called to bear is not exactly the same as Christ's cross. Our crosses are our own - they are shaped specially for us by our own life issues and by the call of God upon our lives.
There is a true story in a wonderful book called "A Cloud of Witnesses", by Douglas Weaver. He writes:
There were 40 soldiers of the Twelfth Legion of Rome's imperial army who were Christians. Their captain announced one day that Emperor Licinius had issued an edit requiring all soldiers to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods.
The forty soldiers replied, "You can have our armour and even our bodies, but the allegiance of our heart belongs to Jesus Christ."
It was mid-winter, AD 320. The captain had the men march out to a frozen lake. Their clothes were stripped off of their backs, and they were told either to renounce Christ or to die. Baths of hot water waited on shore as a temptation to deny their faith.
Throughout the night, the men huddled together and sang, "forty martyrs for Christ, forty martyrs for Christ..." One by one, the soldiers fell in death.
Finally, only one soldier was left. His courage failed; he stumbled to shore, renouncing his faith in Christ. But the officer of the guard who had been watching the drama had secretly come to believe in Christ. When he saw the fortieth soldier come to the shore, the officer walked out onto the frozen lake, disrobed, and confessed his faith. As dawn broke the next morning, there were forty bodies on the ice.
As commentary, the book goes on to quote Tertullian, the great North African defender of the faith: "We multiply whenever we are mown down by you; the blood of Christians is seed.
Many people assume that the cross we are called to carry is like this - like Christ's - that it is a literal willingness to die for the sake of the gospel.
Naturally, they can't relate to that very well, because these days, in the Western World at least, we are not placed in such situations - where our physical death can result from witnessing to Christ.
But there is more than one kind of death, more than one kind of martyrdom, more than one kind of witness. And that brings me to say what the Cross IS for us - and how it is like Christ's.
Our Cross is like Christ's in the sense that it involves offering ourselves to God and our neighbours in complete and total love and obedience to God, no matter where that love and obedience may take us.
It may involve us in less than physically dying for Christ (depending on what part of the world you live in), but it will involve us in far more than simply performing acts of kindness toward other people, or putting up with difficult situations.
Our cross will involve us in the denial of self so that we may live to God, much as the faithful husband or wife in dealing with the sick partner deny their own needs, their own pleasures, and live for their mate.
Our motives for doing things will not be - how will this help me - but instead how will it serve Christ? How will it serve God?
I am struck by verse 35 in today's gospel reading. Those words that say:
"Those who save their life will lose it, those who lose their life for Christ's sake, and for the sake of good news, will save it."
Too many Christian folk are concerned about whether or not they are saved. They worry about whether or not they am going to heaven.
If that is our focus then Jesus is very clear that we have missed the boat. Our attempts to save our own lives won't do it.
If however I lose my life, that is, if I give it away to others in service to Christ and Christ's good news, then and only then have will I save it.
Giving my life is my only hope. Giving my life away in service to God - for God's sake - for the sake of Christ - is where it is at. Loving others with the love of God is where it is at. Otherwise all we are doing is trying to work our way into heaven.
There's a message here for the church.
Focus on the health of the church, or the denomination it belongs to, spend your energy on the latest church growth gimmick, look for money to simply keep the doors open and we will die.
But if the church gives its life away, if it focuses on the mission that God calls it to, if it seeks to obey and serve God, if it spends itself on proclaiming the good news and invites others to support its vital work of life saving it will, inadvertently as it were, saves its own life.
I would like to conclude this sermon by saying three things about what "denying oneself" means. There is much more than what I will hold up for you, but there is not much more in the way of time this morning.
First, denying oneself means refusing to judge others or oneself, but rather leaving all judgement in the hands of God.
One of the things we struggle with most often is our sense of our own worthlessness; it is so easy for us to listen to the condemning voices in my head telling me that I am a failure, a fraud.
Jesus invites us to deny our own evaluation of ourselves (and others), to give up making judgements about ourselves and to accept the grace, the special relationship we have with God through Christ at face value, to accept God's evaluation of us.
That is denial indeed. No more can I say, "He's such a nice fellow!" or "She's horrible!", but rather I must say, "this person is a child of God, one for whom Christ has given his life". And what I say about others, I must also say about myself. God finds me worthwhile. I am acceptable - and God will help me to grow in his grace as I yield more and more to his will for me.
This sort of denial would eliminate the boundaries we erect around the gospel - around God. There would be no more insiders and no more outsiders. All of us are out (there is none righteous, no not one) and all of us are in - since Jesus has taken away the sins of the whole world...
Would that ever make for a different Church, and a different world, if I and the people ever came to believe it!
Second - denial of self means the refusal to feel ashamed about the gospel.
Shame or embarrassment is a self centred feeling. Every time we hesitate to share the faith because we will be thought foolish or a religious fanatic - we are thinking more about ourselves than about the good of others...
Jesus is clear - if we are ashamed of him he will be ashamed of us.
Part of our denial of self is to put off feelings we may have about speaking about our faith and to share the good news we believe in with others even when we think that maybe they will not appreciate it.
This doesn't mean that we must go about knocking on doors and making a nuisance of ourselves - but does mean that we must be a little less afraid to rock the boat - to be a little less afraid of standing out in the crowd, a little less afraid of "being different"
If we truly believe that God alone makes the difference to human life and that faith in Christ sets one free, then how can we not share that?
Again - it is not about us and what we do or don't do; it is about God and what God can do and will do - if we let him, if we get ourselves out of the way.
And third, self denial means be willing to take risks, to let go of the familiar things, the familiar thoughts and to let God lead us - much as he led Abram and Sari into a new land, a land they did not know, and there gave them new names and a new life.
Christ calls us beyond our known borders. He says, "join me, follow me"
Christ is always well beyond us in vision, but he also beside us to help us walk with him into the new land, the promised land.
Like Abraham and Sarah, and indeed like the people of Israel in the wilderness, we are not worry about how we eat, what we will wear, or where we will lay down our heads - but to trust that if God is calling us - then God will make the way ready for us....
Most of us spend our lives working for tomorrow - for our children's education - for our future when the children leave home - for retirement - even for our pre-arranged funerals - and so we miss the riches of today, we miss discovering what it is that God is doing amongst us.
"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.
Yes - it is difficult stuff, this stuff about the cross, this stuff about denying ourselves - but it is made easier by the fact that when we begin to do so some marvellous things being happen - we begin to see with the eyes of God and we begin to experience a portion of what God has promised that we will experience when we live by faith, an experience that not only includes the cross, but the resurrection.
Praise be to Christ - the Lord of the living and the dead. And praise be to God the Father - who raised him up from the grave. Amen.
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