Bear Your Share
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at St. Matthew’s UMC, August 28, 2011, the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Matthew 16:21-28
One of the great comforts of life comes from knowing what to expect. [Anyone expect an EARTHQUAKE this past week??!] We human beings need structure, direction, some sense of boundary and ritual. This is why we naturally rely on “the way things have always been.” It is especially difficult for us to let go of images and practices and ways of being that we have helped to create, those things that are sources of identity. Some years back, in my home church inSapulpa,Oklahoma, a new Sunday School program was launched. It was a wonderful new approach to Sunday School—but I found myself getting very anxious and upset about it. You see, part of the program involved painting murals on the walls of the classrooms to create scenes from the Bible. Wonderful, right?
But, when I was in youth group, we painted the walls of our classroom with images and words to songs that were meaningful for us. We put our handprints and names on the wall. One friend of mine wrote a poem especially for one space on the wall. You see, my anxiety was that those images painted by me and my friends were going to be covered over. At the time of this new Sunday School program, it had been almost 20 years since we’d done that painting project…and it had been almost as long since I’d been present and active in that church community. But I didn’t want them to paint over what was so meaningful to me. The reality, of course, was that the church was stepping out in wonderful new directions and they needed new images to enliven a new generation of children and youth. That’s the reality. But it still felt strange and unsettling to me to know that, whenever I return to “my church,” “my room” won’t be as it was.
Today, we see the disciples unnerved when they are given a new image, a new direction: Jesus will undergo suffering. All of a sudden, they no longer know what to expect. They’d been traveling the road with Jesus, believing that he was the Messiah who would liberate them and their people from suffering. They thought they knew what to expect, they thought they understood what they’d signed on for. And all at once, the image has changed. Peter, who had just been named “the Rock,” gets in the way of Jesus. Instead of being a solid, smooth stone upon which Jesus could depend for sure footing and support, Peter becomes the stumbling block that is in Jesus’ way. He doesn’t want to hear what Jesus is saying. He doesn’t like the direction that Jesus is leading the community. He can’t or won’t see the larger picture, the vision that Jesus sees clearly. Peter allows his own issues to get in the way. And we can’t really blame him.
Jesus says to Peter: get behind me! That is to say: follow me. And if you want to follow me, then this is how you do it. You take up your cross. Like it or not, the new focus for this community of disciples is the cross. It is hard for us, I think, to grasp how difficult this must have been for Jesus’ disciples. The cross, in our experience, has been cleaned up for the most part. But for the first disciples, crosses were commonplace as instruments of torture and death. There was no ambiguity about the cross. So when Jesus says to them you must take up your cross, they were anxious, fearful, and confused. No wonder.
For Christians, the cross remains the central symbol of our faith. It is a sign of identity and belonging. And the call of Jesus to those first disciples is our call today: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” When we hear this phrase today, we too might become anxious, but not because we hear Jesus saying to us that we have to be crucified on an actual cross. Our anxiety may come because we don’t understand what it means to do what Jesus is asking of us.
What does it mean to “take up your cross?” Let’s think about what it doesn’t mean first. I do not believe that this teaching of Jesus is about an individual’s personal problems. On the one hand, this personal application can lead to a trivialization of the teaching. For example, someone could complain about their crummy commute to work as “the cross they have to bear.” I’m not suggesting that a long, crummy commute isn’t difficult; but I don’t believe that such things are what Jesus had in mind when he asks us to follow him by taking up our cross. The other problem with applying this teaching of Jesus to individuals is that it allows the interpretation of “take up your cross” as saying that we have to endure suffering or abuse; that we have to simply suffer alone, in silence, because this is the “cross” we have been given to bear. This interpretation of Jesus’ teaching can keep persons in situations and cycles of abuse. It keeps folks from reaching out for help when they desperately need it. And all because someone somewhere said that Jesus said that they were to suffer in silence is holy and that it’s what they are supposed to do.
But you see the cross is not ultimately about individuals. It has deeply personal implications, but the cross is about God’s salvation (here you might be thinking, “my” salvation, “personal” salvation…but) and God’s salvation has everything to do with relationships, with community. The cross is the ultimate symbol of God’s self-giving love that makes a way for us to be in relationship with God and to be empowered to share self-giving love with others in community. From the beginning of what we call salvation history, God has called a holy PEOPLE. Yes, leaders have been called to serve among the people, leaders like Moses and Peter; but the story of God’s salvation has always been about how to live TOGETHER. Jesus calls people (then and now) to follow him, and teaches us how to love each other, how to live humbly and justly and peacefully with each other, how to listen for God’s voice of wisdom through prayer so that we would be able to be who we are for each other.
God’s salvation is about more than just our individual, personal salvation—God’s salvation is this vision of people living in peace and mercy and justice TOGETHER…living together as Jesus lived and loved and served. And Jesus took up his cross for the sake of this vision of God’s salvation; he took up his cross every time he challenged the ways of the world that said that people should be ignored because they are poor and when they are blamed for their poverty, when he challenged the powers that taught that the sick and suffering were untouchable, when he loved the despised, when he honored the children as real people worthy of his time, when he chose nonviolence in the face of violence, when he confronted the conceit of those who claimed that they had God all figured out.
Jesus was crucified because he loved God’s people and wanted us to learn how to love and care for each other. This may sound different from what you have heard before… But think about it, the “powers” of the world most likely didn’t fancy the kind of change that Jesus’ way of living, loving and serving would require…And Jesus just kept on, with his eyes fixed on Jerusalem, risking his own safety for the sake of others and for the sake of the good news of God’s Reign that he came to proclaim. And so Jesus was crucified because he loved God’s people and wanted us to learn how to love and care for each other—no matter what the risk. (deny yourself…lose your life…)
And so the cross that we are called to take up is that same cross. It has everything to do with living together in love and mercy and compassion and justice. This is not something that we do on our own, this taking up our cross. It’s not just about ME and “my room” and my handprint. The cross we take up is something that we can only learn, can only achieve in community with each other.
One day, my colleague walked into his church’s fellowship hall as some church members were preparing for a Lenten Passion Play. The place was alive with activity; folks were building props and rehearsing their parts. The pastor looked over to one corner of the room and saw a life-sized cross made of real trunks of trees. Its beams were rough and a bit crooked, as some trees often are. He commented about what a powerful cross it was to the men who were working nearby. One of the men said, “Yeah, I’m going to carry it in the play and I’m glad it really turned out well. But you know we created it out of Styrofoam and papier-maché. If it were the real thing, I’d never be able to manage it.”
We, as individuals, would never be able to manage the cross alone. It is simply too heavy. We are called to carry the cross together, which means that we are to follow Jesus’ Way of living and loving and serving.
The church is our primary place to learn how to follow Jesus Christ, not just to learn with our heads, but to learn through what we do, how we act, how we treat one another. We learn how to follow Jesus by looking for the best in each other instead of the worst; by sharing our suffering with one another; by asking for what we need; by risking ourselves in positions of leadership and by supporting and encouraging those who take that risk. We learn how to follow Jesus by trying something new; by reaching out to those among us who are on the edges of our church family and by inviting others into relationship with Jesus; we learn to follow Jesus by courageously challenging injustices and by naming realities among us that are hurtful; we learn to follow Jesus by honoring our children, by loving the unlovable, by living together the way that Jesus came to show us how to live together.
And this is where the personal call of Christ comes in: to take up the cross and follow Jesus as a community requires personal commitment from the members of the community. If only a few are committed to living as followers of Christ in our church family, then it will be impossible for us to be the community that God is calling us to be. We are on a journey together, a journey of transformation and new life. There are people all around us here in Bowieand beyond whom we are called to reach out to and love and serve and invite to share in the life of Christ that we are so blessed to share…there is much we are called to do and to be! And to do what we need to do will require change and new ideas and responses. In the midst of all the newness stands one image that is constant: the cross of Jesus Christ. We shouldn’t be surprised that new life, change, and transformation are a part of Christian community, and we shouldn’t be surprised that we have to struggle over and over again with the discomfort of that new life—because the cross of Jesus Christ stands at the heart of our faith, and that cross is all about new life. And we who are this church family have an opportunity to take up our cross in this community and become more fully the source of life and learning and transformation and hope that Jesus is calling us to become. It won’t happen without the hands and hearts of every one of us. And the temptation to remain stuck with the old vision, the comfortable, known way will surely be an obstacle to our moving forward together. But if we keep our eyes firmly on Jesus, and follow together, then we will find ourselves participating in God’s life and mission in new and awesome ways!
Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American canonized saint, lived from 1774 to 1821. She formed the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph who lived in and served out of a farmhouse in Frederick County, MD near Emmitsburg. I came across a collection of her quotes this past week and was struck by this one, “If you find that there are any obstacles in your way—and doubtless you find many, as every Christian does, in the fulfillment of duty—still persevere with yet more earnestness, and rejoice to bear your share in the cross…” Rejoice to bear your share in the cross… Rejoice and be glad for when we agree to follow Jesus, to take up our cross together, we never carry the cross alone.
