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“THE CROSS WE MUST BEAR”
This morning I would like us to think about one of those sayings
from the Gospel that none of us much wants to hear. It goes like
this: "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24) I don't like to
hear that, and I doubt that you like it any more than I. There are
many things that we all would prefer to hear: comfortable words
from Scripture, we might call them. Words which ease our
troubles and bring us reassurance and peace. Surely that comfort
is part of the message of our religion. After all, doesn't Gospel
mean Good News?
And yet from time to time we are forced to hear something else -
something not comfortable: rather something disturbing and
unsettling like that all too familiar saying from the Gospel. These
are hard words, and if we are at all serious about our religion,
they bother us. Bother us, I think, because we know that they too
are part of the message of Scripture and because we know, as
well, that what they tell us is inescapable, unavoidable, because it
is true.
Jesus said many things like that. He told us: "Do not think that I
have come to bring peace on earth: I have not come to bring
peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his
father and a daughter against her mother . . . and a man's foes will
be those of his own household." Or in another place he says to a
young man - and through the Gospel he is speaking to us as well -
"Go sell all you have and give to the poor and come follow me."
Those are hard words, aren't they? Very hard.
I suspect, though, that they are not nearly so hard for most of us
as this other saying about the cross. Those are all about giving
up. Giving up possessions, giving up family, and we can always
imagine giving up and going on almost as before. But here we are
told that we must take something on . . . and what we must take
on is a cross.
There are many crosses in human life. In fact human life is marked
by a cross. That indeed is part of what it is to be human - to be
one who bears a cross.
Sometimes those crosses are not ours. We are often called to
bear the cross or to help bear the cross of another person. A
wife, a husband, a son , a daughter, a friend. There are times
when we are obliged by love or friendship to take up a cross that
does not belong to us. We don't ask for it. We don't want it any
more than they, but love presents us with a cross and we take it
on. At other times it's simple proximity that obliges us. A stranger
on a plane or train in distress. A drunk in a bar who spills out his
heart to you and you take on the cross of someone whose name
you never know. The victim of an accident. A lost child. A
deranged person in the street. Another's cross can come to us,
and we find ourselves involved in it for no other reason than that
we are there and they are there. Simon of Cyrene stood by the
road to Jerusalem watching the rabble as they hounded a man to
his execution. The soldiers handed him the cross. He had nothing
to do with Jesus, as far as we know, but he took it. He was just
there.
But here in what we are thinking about today our Lord is not
talking about taking on another's cross. Certainly that's
something he would expect us to do; that's something he did.
What he tells us, however, is that we must take up our own cross.
And that may be a somewhat different task, for to acknowledge a
cross as one's own is part of its agony and part of its pain. A cross
which you know is your own is a very heavy burden.
I wish that I could tell you that our religion promises no crosses.
There are some who will tell you that - that a cross in your life is
just a mistake or a blunder or that you can somehow bypass the
crosses that will surely come to you. There are some who say that
being a Christian is a sure promise of success and profit and
happiness according to the standard of this world. That's pretty
cheap, I think, and even if we hadn't heard that saying of Jesus
from Gospel, we would still know that that's not true. Christianity
never promises us that there will be no crosses. Indeed, it
assures us that there will be crosses. And one thing that our Lord
most steadfastly insists is that you can't get around your cross,
you can't bypass it.
Think back on another incident from the Gospel. "Jesus began to
teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be
rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be
killed. . . . And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him." Peter
wanted him to deny his cross, to get around it somehow. And
Jesus answers Peter in the strongest possible terms, "Get
behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God but of man."
. . . Satan? . . . Yes. It is Satan who would have us ignore our
cross. It is the demonic and the evil that tempts us always to take
what seems the easy way out, to try to bypass whatever cross is
part of our life. And if we try it, if we ignore it, then Satan has won.
Our cross, our crosses - this is a fact. To ignore it, or to try to get
around it is to become even more securely bound to it. We
become dominated and crushed by what we try to wish away.
The cross is there. You have it in your life. I have it in mine. It is a
fact about us. It comes to us in many ways and at many times in
our lives. Through the death of someone we love. Through
failure. Through poverty. Illness. Addiction. Prejudice. Hatred.
Mental suffering. Physical pain. Not being understood. Being
rejected or betrayed. Through things within our psyche which we
cannot change. Not being loved. Not being able to love.
Disappointment. The changes which come on us with age. You
know the cross, and so do I.
Our Lord never promises us that in this life there will be no cross.
What he says to us to face it, to take it up, and follow him. And if
we face it, if we take it up and follow him, he does not take it
away. No. He does something better. He meets us at that cross
and he takes us through it.
My brothers and my sisters, there is no cross that will ever come
to you in life which he has not known. You will never be alone at
the cross; he will always be there with you. One of the places he
has promised us to be is there. Your cross is never an end. It is
the devil who tells you that, who summons you to despair and
would have you crushed and destroyed by your cross. The devil
would have you ignore it or be crushed by it - the end result is
the same. The Lord Jesus asks you to face your cross and to take
it up and to seek him there and finally to follow. For he will lead
you and take you through it and beyond it. And he will never
leave you.
We can do no better than to end with the words of St. Paul, who
knew a great deal about the cross: 'In all these things we are
more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am
persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
(Romans 8:38,39)
That is his victory. That is his power being made perfect in
weakness. And it is our victory as well.
And that is the reason we call it Good News.
Amen.
By Allan B. Warren