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The Church of the Redeemer

September 17, 2006

the Reverend Dorsey McConnell

Text:  Mark 8: 27:38

What does it mean to “pick up your cross,” and follow Jesus?  When I was growing up, an ancient relative of mine was famous for applying the phrase to anything that caused her pain or even inconvenience.  Her chronic backache was her cross; her drafty house was her cross; any phenomenon that got in the way of an easy life amounted to nothing less than her cross.  I have also heard the phrase applied to temptation or addiction—a fatal attraction to alcohol or sex, for example, which—when resisted—becomes a personal cross.  People often reference Saint Paul, and his famous “thorn in the flesh” as the basis for this, even though Paul calls his temptation a thorn, not a cross.  There is a big difference between a splinter and a firing squad, and as vexing as strong temptations can be, both Paul and Jesus point to something more than a merely personal struggle with sin when they reference the cross of the disciple.  So if taking up my cross is not just about my pain, or my temptation, then what is it about?

            Jesus does not simply pull the phrase out of the air.  Rather, it comes to him as a result of a specific incident.  He and the disciples have been through a very exhilarating and adventurous time together, a few months of teaching, healing, casting our demons, a public witness to the power of God unlike any that anyone had ever experienced.  Yes, people had seen healers before, and teachers before, and prophets and holy men before, but no one had seen all of these things rolled up in one person; and add to that that his teachings were always so surprising, about the last being first, about great things growing from insignificant beginnings, about the poor being blessed and the rich and powerful being in danger—all quite the opposite of everything even very religious people had been taught. And yet he did it in a way that made it all make sense.  When you heard Jesus, or spent time with Jesus, you wanted to be like Jesus.  On top of it all, he never seemed to do anything out of a desire for personal gain, never really cared about his approval ratings, and he put up with people, actually even more, he loved people, even in his own inner circle, who were difficult, proud, short-sighted, whiney, self-involved, controlling, passive-dependent, calculating, slothful, boring, confused, cowardly, anxious and boastful and his inner circle in fact consisted entirely of this kind of people.  And he loved them, you see, even before they were with him; before they knew him, he knew them and loved them, and because he loved them, he chose them.  He did not choose them because he thought they were worthy, or because he thought they were capable of something they turned out later not to be.  He chose them because, for mysterious reasons all his own, he knew that these were his precious ones, his beloved, as motley a crew of favorites as had ever been assembled, perhaps, but they were his motley crew, his children and sisters and brothers, and for that reason alone, he would always love them, and bear with them, and teach them, and listen to them, and forgive them, and whenever they fell down, pick them up and dust them off and set their feet in the right way again. 

            This, then, was the entire content of Jesus’ ministry up to the point of the story we hear today, and so you can understand why there is such trouble in coming up with a single word to cover all of what Jesus does and is.  Prophet doesn’t do it, and teacher doesn’t do it, and pastor doesn’t do it, not even mother or father quite do it.  And Jesus knows this.  So when he asks the disciples who others say that he is, he is in effect backing into this problem.  Oh, of course he is interested in what others may say, beyond the disciples, because it tells him how the preaching of his father’s Kingdom is being understood, or not, but he especially wants to see if his chosen ones, his children, have gotten it.  So he listens to their answers about other people’s opinions, and then he asks the zinger; “And you?  Who do you say that I am?” 

            There is an embarrassed silence.  The disciples look at each other, and look at their feet, and no one wants to say anything.  Jesus waits.  Finally, with great effort, Peter utters the strangest word imaginable, the impossible, most-hoped-for word, the extravagant, last-resort word, as if he had thought of every other possible word in the language, and none of them fit, so this in the end must be it, even though it sounds crazy to say it:  You, Peter says, are the Christ, the anointed one, the savior. 

For a moment, Jesus must have been filled with hope.  He must have thought, “He gets it.  Maybe they all get it.  Maybe they see that, just as the Father has loved me and chosen me and anointed me, so I have loved and chosen and anointed them.  Maybe there is some chance they will understand that they can love one another in the same way, and so discover who they really are, their purpose in life, God’s power through them to make things new.”  Then he tells them the rest of his story—how he must preach the Kingdom of God all the way to Jerusalem, and the center of worldly power, how he will be tried and stripped and killed by those whose only desire is to maintain their control, how God will raise him from the dead, and show the world what human beings can be made of, if we will only let God make us this way.  Mark says, he tells them all this plainly.  And that is when he finds out how little they get. 

He finds out as soon as Peter pulls him aside, and begins trying to talk him out of picking up his cross.  You can imagine the conversation, “Master, you have to stop this crazy talk about dying and rising.  I mean, we have got a good thing going here.  You are amazingly popular.  You could be king.  And I can help you. These others, they don’t begin to get it; they’re sheep.  They don’t know you like I know you.  But they will follow us if we don’t make it too hard for them.  So no more talk about suffering and crosses and so on, all right?  That’s scary talk.  It just gets people upset.”  Jesus listens to this with one eye over Peter’s shoulder where he sees, in the background, the others standing there, confused as ever, now feeling embarrassed and a little left out.  And Jesus realizes Peter has understood nothing.  Or whatever he has understood is worth nothing because of the one thing he hasn’t understood.  So he sends Peter to the back of the line, tells him to start over, to be quiet and listen, and then he wades into the crowd, disciples and non-disciples, those who are devoted and those who are merely curious.  It doesn’t matter to him.  Jesus is looking for some sense of recognition, some clue that someone, anyone, gets it, and the more people he has around him, the more likely that a light will go on for someone. 

Because Jesus has never felt the pain of the cross as much as he feels it at this moment.  He has never been as disappointed by human frailty as he is right now.  He feels the weight of Peter’s incomprehension and sin, the burden of his disciples who love his miracles and his teaching but don’t seem to have any more love for each other than they had before they knew him, and he knows the full meaning of the Cross—in advance.  He lets it fill him, and the sorrow and the hope in it come out in the next words he speaks, slowly, carefully:  If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and pick up his cross…  He hopes the message gets through, that his father will use the grief and the disillusionment he is feeling at this moment to teach the most important lesson of Jesus’ life, namely this:  Being crushingly disappointed in people and staying with them, passionately loving them, sorrowing over their inabilities, and yet not ever giving up on them, that is the cross:  and to find your cross you generally have to look no further than the person next to you, because as Jesus says from the middle of the crowd, if you try to love anyone in this way—whether they are your spouse or your kid or your boss or the mailman—look around you, he says, pick anyone to start with—if you try to love anyone in this way, you will find immediately that you have to give up your own priorities in life and think instead of what is best for them. And then you must pursue what is best for them in spite of all their talent for rebuffing your offer and breaking your heart again and again and again.  

That is what it means to pick up your cross and follow Jesus.  It’s a message that goes absolutely against the grain of human nature, society and culture which, at its best, says take care of yourself first, and love with what’s left over.  And in fact, by nature alone, it is completely impossible, but if you will begin with the intention of loving in this way, and asking the Father to reshape your life so that this love becomes your only priority, you will discover who you really are, who you were made to be:  whoever keeps his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.     

If we had to generate even the first seed of this love, we would be dead in the water.  Picking up your cross only becomes possible because Jesus has picked up his.  From before you were born he has loved you the way he is asking you to love others now, and that love still flows from his Cross into the world like an endless stream. An old Methodist preacher I knew used to call it Calvary love.  

His name was Tommy Tyson, and I had invited him to my parish to conduct a preaching mission.  It was the first parish I had ever been rector of.  I was young and ambitious, and the church was neither.  I was sure that I had the best plan possible for them all, and was shocked when they did not receive it gratefully.  Every time they rejected my ministry, or even criticized me, I took it as a personal affront, and was so surprised to find that things I had tried in other contexts, that had succeeded so well, were of no worth now.  About a week before Tommy arrived, a member of the parish wrote a letter, specifically addressing what she saw as my shortcomings.  It went on for several pages, and she mailed it to the entire parish.  I cannot tell you how wounded I was.  (Actually, I read it again the other day, and it was only half about me, but that meant it was all about me).  And when Tommy came, I was still so hurt and feeling so angry and self-righteous.  I wanted to show it to him, because I needed his counsel.  I wanted to know what I should do in order to stand up against such wicked people.  And so I gave it to him, and Tommy sat in a big chair and read it and read it again. And he sat there for a long time, and tears began to fill his eyes.  Finally, he said to me, “Well, bless her heart.  She’s carrying so much on her shoulders, isn’t she?  She must feel responsible for the whole church!  Good gracious.  Bless her heart.”  And I realized this visiting preacher loved one of my people with Calvary love.  He went on to tell me the story of the first time he had been kicked out of a parish.  It had happened to him more than once.  “A lot of the elders came to me with a long list of grievances, and so I offered to resign.  It never dawned on me that they would take me up on it, but they did!  Son, don’t you ever do that unless you’re serious!”  But in the course of ten or fifteen minutes of talk about all his old adversaries, never did he once say a bad word against them.  Never was I aware that, in all of the fights that this old Christian warhorse had been in, he had had anything less than perfect love for those who wished him harm.  And I went to school on that.  It broke my heart.  I realized I had a lot to learn, and I still do. 

Perhaps you have run into something like this kind of love before, from a teacher, or parent or friend who refused to give up on you.  Even that, as marvelous as it may have seemed to you, is a mere hint of the love of Christ crucified. And because there are so many people who never have even had a hint of it, the church cannot afford to be anything less than a bottomless well of this Calvary love.  Thank God, it is all around us right now.  It is pouring as we speak from the walls and the glass, the music and the prayer of this day, from the generations that went before us, and the saints and the angels who surround us.  It is even now using the hearts of those who are sitting next to you, behind you, in front of you, as conduits, however timid, half-willing or even unwilling, prompting us all with the silent voice of the Holy Spirit constant as a pulse, asking each of us from moment to moment, Will you be Mine? Will you take up your cross?  Will you love one another as I have loved you?  Only say yes, and I will make it happen in front of your eyes.  May this love be poured into us this day, and through us into the world that God loves and for which his Son gave his life.  Amen.