Our Cross: Gen. 17: 1-7, 15-16; Mark 8: 31-38
When I was in high school, I made a very terrible decision one that would make my life superbly difficult. I made the choice to take advanced placement calculus, and I regretted it for my entire junior year of high school. You see it was not enough that algebra was difficult, nor was it not enough at geometry was difficult. I had to go all the way and take the high-level math course of calculus. And I learned…math is not what I’m good at. Sometimes in life we are faced with difficult decisions. The decisions we make sometimes turn out very well for us, and sometimes they don’t. This week, my friends, we look at our second installment of our Lenten series, This Faith Is Ours, with a lesson on choices and our cross.
In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus attempts to teach the disciples about what is to come. He starts by talking about the work he was to do—death and resurrection, bringing life into a place of death and despair. Peter, however, is confused by all this. Talking about mustard seeds, coins, and lost sheep was one thing. But to predict that he would be killed brutally and suffer, then rise from the dead. Well, it was a lot for Peter…too much. Peter pulled Jesus aside and told him to stop saying this. Just stop, Jesus, we don’t want to hear it.
I don’t think that went over well with Jesus. His response was “Get away from me, Satan!” He then sets up this choice for the crowd in verse 34: “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.” Just prior to this exclamation, he tells Peter to stop seeing things from a human point of view and see it instead from God’s point of view. There is a choice set up in Jesus’s teaching: will you follow your own way, or will you follow God’s way? The answer should be fairly obvious, but the application, or the living it, may not be very easy.
As Christians, we should choose God’s way, and in doing so, there are a few things we will have to lose or give up. In order, those things we give up include: our control, our worldly goods, and our pride. Each of these stems from our desire to do things our way, to choose how we want to do things instead of taking up our cross to follow Jesus. All of these things come from our temptations. One of the greatest tricks to pull us away from God is the illusion of self-sufficiency. Friends, apart from God, we can do nothing. If we could fix everything on our own, all would be fixed. The Gospel calls upon us to give up our ways of doing things and to lean on God’s holy will.
Jesus asks the question, “What do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?” The question Jesus asks draws me back to his time in the wilderness being tempted by Satan. Jesus is taken to a high place and shown all the kingdoms of the world. Satan offers them to Jesus if only Jesus would worship Satan. But the truth is all of this already belonged to Jesus. For him, it wasn’t a tough choice. For us, it’s harder because who doesn’t want it all, or maybe one specific thing that could be tempting as well.
We also have to give up pride. Pride demands of us more than we can safely give. Choosing your way over God’s way here comes in bits and pieces: today I’ll praise Jesus, but tomorrow I’ll conjure up all the cuss words if someone makes me mad; today at church I’ll be sweet and welcoming, but Monday morning brings back my meanness, bigotry, and gossipy ways; today I come to church, but tomorrow I get to be who and what I want. If Jesus cannot have all of you, what’s the point of giving him any of you? Jesus didn’t go halfway to the cross. He chose the full road to Golgotha and demands that we choose to follow, and to take up our own cross with joy and pride in our hearts.
So, what, exactly, do we get for taking up our cross and following God? We get both redemption and the cross itself. In talking about redemption for our souls. Jesus says, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it.” Understanding this requires understanding another teaching in the Gospel of Matthew—no one can serve two masters. All throughout this teaching, Jesus is trying to say, “Find yourself in me, and not in your own way.” In the cross, we find forgiveness and grace for all those times we chose our own way and had faults and failures. As the hymn says, “for t’was on that old cross, Jesus suffered and died, to pardon and sanctify me.” Life is not about your screw ups, it’s about your moments of forgiveness and grace in Jesus and following God into your new and Christ-centered self—our redemption from us to God through Christ.
Lastly, we get the cross itself. Now, taking up a cross to carry it may seem like a burden. The cross in Jesus’s day were a brute and ugly thing designed to inflict maximum suffering and torment. We all have the images of Jesus struggling to carry it and collapsing on the way to Golgotha. For us, though, the cross is different. The cross is not a burden; it’s a mark of God’s love and forgiveness. In fact, when you take up the cross, you can lay all the burdens here down. You can be reminded that Jesus says come to him for his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. The burden we have in the cross is this: a mark of forgiveness, a reminder of God’s love, and hope for God’s coming kingdom here on earth filled with peace and justice. As the hymn says, “To the old, rugged cross, I will ever be true; its shame and reproach gladly bear.” Jesus calls us to give up our way and take up his way—the cross.
When we take pride in the One who loves us, created us, and redeems us, God, too, takes pride in us as children of God. When we rely on ourselves, we will often come up disappointed. In many ways we let ourselves down because we are not perfect. But God is perfect and will always give grace for our imperfections. That’s something to be amazed by and proud of—this idea that God loves you and me enough to cover our worst shortcomings with grace. There’s a point of pride for us that even though we don’t get it right, God’s promises never fail, and God is always there with us. There is a hope, a love, and an excitement in the fact that God has given us a cross, intended to shame and humiliate Christ, but which has become a point of strength and pride to all of Christ’s followers.
Today, then, and each and every day we have a choice to make. Will we go it on our own, holding back from Christ part of ourselves, or will we take up our cross—the whole cross—and follow him? Down through the ages, that choice has been presented. Abraham had to choose what was familiar and comfortable or follow God to the promised land. God’s way or our way—the choice may be obvious but is likely very tough. There is a bonus incentive in our choice, though. For if we take up the cross and follow Jesus, we can rest assured that one day, we will trade the old cross for a crown.
Worship Video: https://www.facebook.com/fccmacon/videos/168682448395815