“If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me.”
Wow. That doesn’t sound like good news to me.
I want to follow Jesus. I love seeing people restored to health, to soundness of mind. I love his words of love and forgiveness. I admire his union with God, and I want some of that myself.
But the cross? To the people of his time, this is not a metaphor. The cross is a daily presence for them, a brutal reminder of Roman power and cruelty. I don’t want to even think that there’s a cross with my name on it.
I thought Jesus came to bring life. Abundant life. Is this a contradiction? Or a test? What is this?
It’s not a contradiction, or a test. It’s a very challenging invitation.
In Jesus’ time, people watched him die this horrible death. Many of his followers also died in this way. But somehow, more and more people decided that what Jesus promised was worth the price. Over the next years, thousands of people would die on crosses. More would die in amphitheaters, torn apart by animals. Over the centuries some would be drowned, or stoned, or burned, or or lynched, or shot. Many would die at the hands of others who claimed to be following Jesus.
In our time, people marched in Selma, in Birmingham, in Moscow. People faced mobs and police and armies. From poor peasants to archbishops, people faced into their fear and took up their crosses.
No one forced this on them.
The cross is not something other people put on us. That is just suffering and oppression. Jesus doesn’t want us to intentionally aim at suffering, or allow ourselves and others to be passive victims. His is a message of empowerment and liberation.
The cross is the path to life only when we pick it up. When we actively choose to face the danger, when we risk our comfort and safety to follow Jesus more faithfully, our lives begin to expand.
There are lots of dramatic examples, but they are not the only crosses we encounter. More commonly we face the cross in our daily lives.
When do I pick up my cross? When do you pick up yours?
When I apologize to someone I’ve injured.
When I acknowledge my failures, either of omission or commission.
When I hold my tongue when I’d like to argue or offer advice
When I raise my giving toward a tithe, and give it to causes that Jesus would recognize
When I make consumer choices in line with care for creation
When I make time to pray, and serve, which limits my leisure time
When I speak out on a topic that might draw controversy or opposition
When I acknowledge my faith in the face of others who would disdain it
Some of these sound pretty tame compared to hanging from a Roman cross. But they are actually more challenging. I might hang on a cross with hatred in my heart. I might curse my oppressors while they kill me. And then, Jesus says, my bravado earns me nothing. The goal is not to lose my life; the goal is to live, to save my life.
So what is this life that I’m promised if I pick up my cross?
“I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.”
I’m not promised survival, a longer life.
I’m promised a full life, a life of meaning and purpose and joy.
That’s the secret. That’s why all those people, past and present, picked up their crosses. They had discovered what it was to be fully alive, to be the person God had created them to be. And they had learned that backing down would cost them that fullness of life.
Perfect love casts out fear.
I’m not there yet.
But I do want to follow.
I want to go there.
Jesus, hold on tight to me. Yell in my ear, help me hear you over the roar of my fear. Stretch out your arms and gather us all. Amen.
