Beyond the Patio

WHAT CROSS?

Mark 8:31-38

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.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:34-36)

What did Jesus mean by taking up your cross?

I know what I thought it meant to me at one time. I thought that “to take up your cross” meant to accept anything nasty that was happening to me at any particular time. It meant that any kind of suffering that I experienced was sharing in the suffering of Christ on the Cross.

So if I had a toothache, headache, stomach cramps, difficulties in my studies, disappointment, sickness, disaster, accident, any suffering at all, I considered to be the CROSS I HAD TO BEAR.

I have heard other people say the same thing. They say of a very difficult marriage, “this is the cross I have to bear.” She says, “My husband is the cross I have to bear”. He says, “My wife is the cross I have to bear.” They both might even say of a difficult child, “this son or daughter is a cross we have to bear.” What it really means is that we don t get along with them and that they cause us some kind of distress. I have heard clergy say of some difficult parishioner that they were the cross that they had to bear.

Have you heard people talk that way? Sometimes their job is the cross they have to bear. Almost everything and anything is the cross they have to bear, and they are just waiting for them to end so they can start to enjoy life. The cross is sometimes seen as anything that keeps us from living to the fullest.  Two people were discussing the abortion issue not long ago. They were deeply embroiled in the question of when life begins. One said life begins at conception. The other said life begins at birth. A third person piped up and said, “Life begins when the children leave home and the dog dies.”

Another thing that people say about the crosses we have to bear is, “How happy you are that you are called to suffer.” Have you heard that? I ‘ll be honest with you. I have trouble with that. Some people go so far as to say, “that s the way that God loves you. God gives suffering to you. God sends crosses to those he loves and trusts.”

I’m tempted to shout, “God, can you stop loving me now. I have had enough!”

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I don t want to be glib about this. I do believe that our suffering does relate to Jesus suffering. But I think that Jesus meant something different in this passage when he talked about taking up a cross. A lot of our suffering just happens to us. We don t take it as an act of will or a decision. Here, Jesus talks about it as a decision to take up your cross.  In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is recorded as having said “If any want  to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take their cross daily and follow me.”  The word “daily” is important.  It means taking up the cross “day by day”. This is a conscious decision.

At this time in Jesus life, He hadn’t died on the cross yet. The cross that he died on was yet to come. He was still on his way to Jerusalem. He hadn’t got there. That not a cross that he took up every day. He took that cross up for a few hours, and was helped part of the way by Simon of Cyrene. So he was talking about taking up the cross ‘day by day’ . He was talking about the cross that he was carrying the moment he spoke, the things that he was doing all the time.

What were those things?  Well, he was constantly investing his life in other people.  He was constantly struggling against all forms of evil. This even included the evil of religious people who profited from the piety and guilt feelings of the poor and miserable. They would sell turtle doves in the temple for exorbitant prices gouging the poor who felt compelled to buy them so they could offer a sacrifice in the temple.  Jesus turned over the money changers tables in the temple in anger over that corruption and affront to the poor.  He stood with the adulterous woman against her hypocritical oppressors. He fought against situations where husbands could treat their wives like non-beings and divorce them for any reason whatsoever, leaving them destitute. He struggled against corruption, bribery and the neglect of children. He worked on freeing people, releasing them from all the things that imprisoned them and kept them down, like physical and emotional sickness as well as attitudes that built up barriers between people. You name a sin, or any kind of injury and he would be seen struggling against it, not violently, but powerfully every day, every hour.

That was the way that he took up his cross daily. He forgot self and lived completely for others. This is what got him into trouble with those that were benefit from evil and oppressive practices. Today if you work to free prostitutes from their situation you are in trouble with the pimps. If you work with people with drug addictions you are not popular with the drug pushers. That was the kind of thing Jesus was doing at all times.  That is the way he took up his cross daily long before he was nailed to a cross on one particular day.

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Sometimes we like to emphasize the “payoff” of our belief in Christ….that we get so much when we believe in Christ. And of course you do. But that often is emphasized too much and the cost of discipleship is emphasized too little. There are some people who believe that if they have faith, Jesus will give them anything they ask for. They actually ask for stereos and cars and things like that. “Ask for anything in Jesus name” they say. “Ask for anything in the name of Jesus” they say. But when you ask for something in Jesus name, it is like signing his signature to your prayer. When you sign someone’s name to something you would ask only what they would ask for.  Would Jesus ask for cars and stereos and the like. I don’t think so. Jesus didn’t seem to be concerned  with possessions. How do we ask for those things in his name?  He is concerned with laying down his life for others — so that s what you ask for. A young man said to an old preacher one day, “God has just given me a Cadillac”. The preacher replies, ” That s odd, he gave his only son a Cross.”

What Jesus faces us up with here is not the “payoff” to our belief but the “payout” — what it is going to cost. In fact when you study any passage of scripture, there are possibly only two main questions to ask, “What do I hear God saying to you? What will it cost you to truly believe what I hear God saying to you?”

It s interesting that a number of years ago the Ford Foundation made it possible for the Department of Sociology at one of the Universities in America  to make a nationwide survey of the basic demands of the discipleship of Jesus. Respondents were asked questions pertaining to their love of their enemies, their being willing to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile, to their being not overcome by evil but overcoming evil by good, to their visiting those who were in prison, giving up their wealth to follow the teaching of the Lord, and their willingness to take of the Cross daily and follow Him. Church leaders were astounded and chagrined to learn that the persons who most accepted these prime precepts of Jesus were the ones who were not connected with the church, and the one who rejected them were the ones who were faithful churchgoers. Now there is limitations to these kind of surveys, but it is challenging to us. We can listen to these passages of scripture over and over again, celebrate the events of Christ year after year, and go largely unaffected by them.

In fact there have been some tests done in regard to what we really hear in Church. There have been surveys done of people coming out of church and only 40 %  of them remembered the Gospel that was read and proclaimed only 45 minutes before.

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Jim Wallis is the founder of a community called Sojourners. He is an Evangelical pastor who has a passion for a new social order based on the Gospels. He believes that our willingness to work on justice for the poor, and peacemaking, and all the other things that we find in the Jesuss’ Sermon on the Mount, is the test for the depth of our conversion to Christ. He says in this book, The Call to Conversion, (Harper Row, San Francisco, 1981) “Perhaps never before has Jesus’  name been more frequently mentioned and the content of his life and teaching so thoroughly ignored”.

For some reason his main teaching on the Kingdom of God has been ignored. Our commitment has to go beyond going to church and being involved in church activities. It has to go beyond merely our personal salvation. We have to remember that we are saved for a purpose. It is not just pie in the sky when you die by and by. It is to be involved in the Kingdom . It is to be a part of ushering in the Kingdom of God – God’s new order – a new order based on Love, Peace, Justice, Freedom, and the well being of all people. It is following Jesus all the way.

We need to hear this Gospel today in a different way. We not only need to hear it with our ears, but in our hearts. “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.  For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” (Mark 8:34-36)

I know myself I need to hear this because I find it extremely hard to get involved in the suffering of the world like he demands of us. Most days I don’t want to do it. I’m afraid it will be too costly.

Yet I know that Jesus does not call us without demanding our ultimate involvement in the world with him. Also he does not demand this for us without giving us the strength to do it. If ever we needed a revival in commitment regardless of cost it is now.

This Gospel keeps coming through to me like waves beating against my life. “Deny yourself”, “Take up your cross daily”, “lose your life in me”. “lose your life so you can find it”. My inclination is to say, “I can’t do this.” But I can hear God saying, “My son, you can to this with my Spirit. What it requires is repentance — to turn around and keep your eyes on me and walk straight ahead.”

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During the Second World War , when universities were plagued by skepticism and apathy, the late Archbishop Temple led a mission at the University of Oxford. It was no modern, high—powered, highly financed evangelical campaign that we are used to in our age. But in many ways it was effective because it affect the lives of many of the students, giving them an experience that they would never forget. On the last night of the mission, in St. Mary s church, the crowded congregation of undergraduates was singing lustily the words of Sir Issac Watt s hymn, “When I survey the wondrous cross where the young Prince of Glory died”. Dr. Temple stopped the singing before the last verse and said,” I want you to read over this verse before you sing it. They are tremendous words. If you don’t mean them at all keep silent. If you mean them even a little, and want them to mean more , sing very softly.” There was a hushed silence while every eye was fastened on the hymnal, and then the words were first sung in a whisper then louder and louder until by the last line the church rang with the sound of hundreds of voices:

Were the whole realm of nature mine
That were an offering far to small
Love so amazing, so Divine
Demands my soul, my life, my all

 

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