9-15-2024 Crossing Commitment

Today we consider what Jesus means when he says, "Those who want to follow me must pick up their cross." This phrase is often used in ways that have nothing to do with its meaning. 

Transcript

First of all let me say that I have allergies and they're kicking up today, inconveniently. So, if you hear me clear my throat or something, please excuse me, and know that I do not have Covid or anything that you can catch. Good morning. It is good to be here. Thank you for inviting us, for including us. This is our first time in your beautiful state of Maine, although we did our research. Two weeks ago, we started watching Main Cabin Masters. We have heard of LL Bean, and we have heard of a famous author who lives here who writes scary books. I think his name is Steve.

And even though I have lived in the Great Lake State for much of my life, I can identify the Atlantic Ocean when I see it. We have seen a lighthouse. We have experienced the culinary perfection of your lobster. It's interesting that part of the reason that we did these things was to answer for ourselves a question that Jesus asks in the beginning of today’s Gospel:

Who do you say that I am?

This weekend has been about discovering who you are, and to those who might be calling us, for them to discover who we are.

Jesus’s question is one we answer about one another all the time. 

And yet answering Who do you say that I am when Jesus asks feels much more consequential, maybe because, who we say that Jesus is, impacts the lens through which we see one another, and tell others who we are. Who someone we know is.  Jesus response when Peter gives the correct answer, “You are the Messiah!” is met by Jesus with an odd response: tell no one. What? It reminds me of this scene in an old movie called, Pirate Radio. In this scene a bunch of modern-day pirates of the airwaves are playing a game in which they try to convey a word to the others on their team but they can't use the word in giving the clues. One guy says to his team, he's trying to convey a word or a person. He says long flowing robes, long flowing hair? Could be Bob. Really nice. Maybe not Bob. Super duper nice guy, sandals. And finally a teammate says, “You’re not talking about Jesus are you?”

The teammate gets all excited, Yes, Yes it’s Jesus!!

 And another one of the team says why didn't you say Son of God? Why didn't you say Son of God? The Son of God. This is the one who we follow. No less than the Son of God. 

Imagine if that's how we always refer to Jesus instead of using the name, Jesus. It is no small thing.

And part of the reason it is no small thing is that what the Son of God asks us his followers is different than what any ordinary human being might ask. In verse 34: the Son of God says, … 34He 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.

 And that's where I want to focus on your feast day. What does it really mean to take up our cross, really. People incorrectly speak of the cross they must bear all the time. Right? Gregg Allman, a founding member of The Allman Brother’s Band--his biography is titled, My Cross to Bear. It refers, in no small part,

 to his struggle with alcoholism.

In the Lego Batman movie, a computer says to Batman, “You have beautiful abs, sir.” And Batman replies, “that’s just my cross to bear.”

I know you guys don't know me, but you can laugh at my jokes.

It's hard to laugh at church. Even well-meaning people at times refer to their own burden in life as their cross to bear--whether it is a physical disease, a mental health challenge, or a particularly challenging spouse, child, or parent. 

But for Jesus, picking up his cross was something much more sinister. Right? But for Jesus, picking up his cross was something much more sinister. We tend to think of the cross as another word for life/lifestyle/burdens/suffering and that is not entirely wrong. But the cross was specifically an image for the suffering and punishment inflicted by the Roman Empire, on those perceived to be guilty of sedition. Other alternate leaders and their followers had already been crucified at this time, and the disciples would have felt the shiver of fear go up their spine with the phrase take up your cross and follow. They would have been triggered. It is not wrong to now understand the cross as a more universal image but we need to be careful not to water down the meaning to be that only of personal suffering and fidelity. For the language of the cross to remain potent we need to keep its challenging reference to living answerable to a different kingdom and different leader than the place we inhabit in the everyday sense.

Taking up your cross is about a transformation within you. Paul liked to say we “died to sin every day” was the way he said it. When I was in seminary, I worked in a church where the pastor said this phrase, in every single sermon the phrase was: Do you know what baptism means? It means that you are dead buried and out of the way. Every sermon. My 9-year-old son and 4-year-old son, who would sit in the balcony, thought this was rich humor, that he would do it in every sermon. And so they came up with a game to play. They would each bring a quarter to church and put it on the thin railing right there. And when the pastor hit ‘do you know what baptism means - it means that you are dead buried out of the way’, they would try to grab both quarters. And whoever grabbed both got to keep them. But you had to wait. You had to time it to when he said the phrase. I'm sure it was great fun, uh but I did have to have a conversation with them. Boys, there's no gambling in church, during church, during the sermon, when I'm a student in seminary, ever. They agreed. They wouldn't do this anymore. The next Sunday when the pastor said ‘baptism’, I hear from the balcony hands slapping wood, and I look up there just as a lone quarter flew through the air, landed on the brick of the center aisle, right about there, went ping and then began to spin before, finally, falling with a somewhat flatter sounding ping. I looked to the balcony at the very moment that said big brother wisely ducked and baby brother of course smiled and wav, “Hi Mom”. Picking up our cross, as followers of Jesus does mean something about dying to our own desires and rising again to follow Jesus who may or may not be going where we would prefer to go.

Picking up our cross is about participating in the transformation of the world, by allowing ourselves to be transformed by participating in living the Gospel. 

It's about love, but it includes the more demanding, inconvenient ways of loving. I mean we use the word love to describe everything, strong feelings, sex, buttered popcorn, favorite music group, our children, spouse, Lord and Creator of the Universe. All those go under things we love, right? But when we talk about real love, about the kind that endures, that might be likened to a cross the one element present in almost every authentic manifestation of real love is…suffering. From the ultimate expression of love – "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for another man" – to the simple act of being patient with your misbehaving children, love implies forbearance, patience in the midst of problems.

And the other part about love, and about picking up our cross as followers of Jesus is that this cross is not thrust upon us. We have first right of refusal. Jesus says, “If any WANT to be my followers”. It's not imperative. Our decision to follow is our choice. God does not force humans. The love of God requires consent. Jesus follows on the invitation to those who would follow by picking up their cross by saying, those who lose their life will save it. While we aren’t always sure what this means or how it will play out, we believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Don’t we?

The truth is that people do choose various forms of suffering for the sake of growing love in the world. Enlisted service men and women deny themselves as a way of life so that those they serve will be able to sleep at night knowing someone else has the watch. I know a man who retired in his 50s and is spending the rest of his life teaching people about native plants and helping churches, businesses and any willing organization better understand the effects of climate change and then showing them how they can take small steps on the land that they own to plant native plants to help with the negative effects of climate change. How they can do this care for creation and make up some of the damage humanity has done over the years. It isn't exactly a lifestyle we would equate with suffering, but he's committed to it. It's a commitment to love the Earth and the people in it by doing it day after day after day. I see him on his knees in the dirt around town. And you, faithful people of God, you who have come through your own traumas, including most recently a worldwide pandemic whose long-term effects we are just beginning to name. You know something about this cross that we are invited to carry as members of the body of Christ. You have worshipped when it was uncomfortable, in ways that were awkward, at a time when people were walking away from their churches and their faith in huge numbers, and while, in the face of so much death, some wondered, and some actually said aloud, the age old question, where is your God? And not everyone understands that our God is found in places and situations we along with the rest of the world will just as soon avoid. Jesus is, in effect, saying, that to be his follower, means to venture away from the cool and comfortable Galilees into the more risky, unpredictable and even hazardous regions of life, into the Judean desert on to the dangerous road that leads to Jerusalem.

I believe it was Neil Simon who said, If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.     

Following Jesus is about taking risks for the sake of love. It is about living in a rhythm of confession, forgiveness, renewed commitment, risk, failure, confession, forgiveness, commitment, risk. It is about doing more than you realized you would be doing when you first chose to practice Christianity. It is about following Jesus into places and situations that those not committed to the cross might just skip.

And we are often tempted to follow Jesus--up to a point. Right? It's easy to follow Jesus here in our beautiful sanctuaries on Sunday mornings. It's somewhat easy to administer programs within the walls of our church. It is like saying: “Jesus, I’m only going as far as the southern edge of Galilee, you can let me out there.” Jesus is not our Lyft driver. Church for many of us has frequently been a comfortable and safe place. Like a nest. But church isn’t supposed to be about cuddling up in a nest, it’s about being pushed out over its edge and learning to fly. One of our Eucharistic prayers reminds us: Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace alone, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.      

Sometimes we find Galilee to be a circle around our baptismal font.  It happens whenever we treat baptism as a safe little celebration… as a day to dress up, have cake, have the pictures. When in fact, all those years ago, my internship pastor uh was right. It is a place of dying and rising again. Baptism is about doing that. It's in... we are… we rise again into a life of endless connection with flawed humans with whom we travel to Jerusalem. “Then Jesus began to teach them that the Promised One had to suffer much, be rejected by the elders, chief priests and religious scholars, be put to death and rise again three days later.”

What a shock for those disciples who suddenly wondered if this was the same assignment they signed up for.

There is a true story about a woman who signed up for a 10K run. 

When the gun went off she was caught up in the runners from the starting line, and she ran and she ran and she ran and she ran and finally, she stopped to ask her official, why is in the course at this point turning around? He said, you’re running the Cleveland Marathon 26 miles. Her race had started a half hour … started a half hour after the marathon. She was in the wrong race. She made the decision to keep right on going; she finished the race. 

Later she told an interviewer, that wasn’t the race I trained for, and it wasn’t the race I entered, but for better or worse, it’s the race I ran.   Do you ever feel like that as a member of church? A lot of Christians find halfway into the race that they’re going to have to go farther than they thought, and in a different direction. Just ask anyone on the property committee; they’ll know something about doing more than you signed up for. Jesus never promised that the journey would be comfortable, but he did promise that we would never be alone! And that is one of the mystical experiences of following Jesus. To know the presence of the Holy Spirit in ways we cannot define, and we cannot deny. To have other followers walk with us through some of our darkest moments, and to find the depth of beauty of walking with them through theirs. 

For you here, people from two churches, who are engaged in seeking a new pastor who will walk with you into the future of a church that is changing in ways we honestly had not imagined when our churches were built, did we. All over this land churches are closing and merging and choosing to downsize so that money they had previously um, earmarked to maintain their cathedrals, was available for new ministries that Jesus was calling them to do. The future church may well have a less predictable rhythm than we are accustomed to living, but Jesus is doing what Jesus has always done and what God always does calling people to venture forth into the future in new ways, not knowing where they're going. To dare more boldly. In Maine, you might say to sail on wider seas, when in losing sight of the land you find yourselves turning to the lights in the night sky and the wind against your back to guide the movement going forward.

But do not be daunted . Do not be intimidated in this venture of calling a new pastor and finding your way forward just because today you cannot see where it leads. Remember that none of us carries our cross alone and that as a committed band of saints and sinners, committed to following Jesus together, we are able to step into each and every tomorrow with a sense of strength, courage, and hope.