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"Anyone who would follow after me must take up the cross and follow me. Whoever saves their life will lose it; whoever loses their life for my sake will save it."
Wow! Tough words.
Jesus issues a shocking requirement for those who would follow after him. Take up the cross...lose your life. It's a requirement whose shock value is softened significantly in our day by the great distance of time, culture, and circumstance.
It's hard for us to resonate with the viscerally nauseating and revolting power of the cross. We don't experience heart-pounding panic at the sight of the cross, or feel bitter resentment towards those who use it as a tool of domination, as did most Jewish people in Jesus' day. We've never seen the horrible spectacle of a live human being tortured to death on a cross--bleeding, hallucinating, shrieking in agony, suffocating.
For us, the cross is a sacred symbol, and for some, a trendy piece of jewelry. But for folks in Jesus' day, the cross was an instrument of terror. In addition to the Romans, the Assyrians, Persians, Carthaginians, and Greeks used the cross to torture and kill people. Victims were hung on crosses in a variety of ways--upright, upside down, in various obscene positions--often causing long hours of excruciating pain before eventual death.
Romans often nailed their victims to the cross, sometimes sticking a small peg between the victim's legs, then breaking his legs, causing him to hang down and suffer till death by long slow suffocation. They often flogged their victims first, thrashing them with whips that had pieces of sharp bone embedded in them, not only as cruel sport and torture, but to produce bloody wounds that would attract insects and birds of prey to intensify the torment, or wild dogs to tear apart the victim's feet. Some in Rome considered the cross so inhumane they began a movement to abolish its use.
The cross was not just a tool to kill people, but an instrument of social control. Romans used it primarily to punish and kill slaves who tried to escape, and soldiers who tried to desert. But they also discovered it was an effective mechanism to keep the restive Jewish population in line. Romans hung Jews they considered rebellious on crosses in visible places--on top of hills, along main thoroughfares, at crossroads, in garbage dumps--as a warning to everyone else: we are your masters, obey us, or suffer the consequences.
The Gospels are all in agreement. Roman and Jewish authorities tortured and killed Jesus on a cross outside of Jerusalem.
Reflecting on Jesus' death on the cross, we can ask ourselves any number of who, what, and why questions.
Why did the authorities kill Jesus on a cross? Who was more responsible--the Roman authorities or the Jewish authorities? What did Jesus say and what did he do that caused them to crucify him? Did they kill him for religious reasons? Political reasons? Was he a rebel? Was he that much of a threat? Or did he just rub some powerful people the wrong way?
We can also ask ourselves a whole different set of who, what, and why questions--questions of theological or spiritual significance.
What is the religious significance of Jesus' death? Did his death mean something or accomplish something--cosmically speaking, theologically speaking, spiritually speaking? Did his death have some kind of impact on the relationship between God and humanity? Did humanity gain something from Jesus' death? Are we somehow saved or redeemed by Jesus' death? If so, how? If not, what impact does his death have on our spirituality, on our relationship with God and God's creation? How does Jesus' death inform our Christian faith?
Both sets of questions--the historical and the spiritual--are questions people have asked, and answered in a variety of ways, since the dawn of Christianity. What both sets of questions have in common is both focus on Jesus and the cross on which he died.
But today's lesson confronts us with a whole different set of questions: what about us and our cross? What is our relationship to the cross?
Those of you who would come after me must pick up your cross and follow me. Whoever saves their life will lose it; whoever loses their life for my sake will save it.
The question for us today is: what does it mean for us to pick up our cross?
What does it mean in our own set of real-life historical circumstances--here in Austin, Texas, in the United States, in the year 2009? What does it mean to pick up the cross where we work, where we teach, where we learn, where we live, where we shop, where we gather as the church?
What does it mean to pick up our cross--this gruesome instrument of terror, torture, and death, this tool of domination and control? What does it mean to hoist it on our shoulders as we follow Jesus and lose our lives for his sake?
To answer this question, it's clear we need to do some careful cultural translation. In our time and place, those in power don't use the cross as a mechanism of social control through the threat of torture and death. The cross no longer strikes us with visceral fear or bitter resentment. It no longer keeps us in line or compels us to submit in obedience to people that oppress us or suck the life out of God's creation.
So we have to ask ourselves--if we are to pick up our cross, how shall we translate the cross of Jesus' day into some other reality in our own day, some other tool, or mechanism, or system that exists in our time and place?
Is there something, or are there some things, that serve the same function in our day as the cross did in Jesus' day?
If so, then what is it or what are they? And what does it mean to pick up this contemporary version of the cross, to carry it as we follow Jesus, and to lose our lives for him?
Think about it.
What in our time and place, in our world today, controls and dominates other people, keeps them in line, makes sure they remain obedient, ensures they fulfill their proper role in the various systems of oppression and exploitation?
Or to make it more personal, what in our world today controls and dominates us, keeps us in line, makes sure we remain obedient, ensures that we fulfill our proper role in various systems of oppression and exploitation?
These things, these mechanisms, these tools, these systems that use fear to control us may function in open, obvious, heavy-handed, and violent ways, or they may be far more hidden, sophisticated, manipulative, and even seductive.
As I shared recently, I made quite a few trips to Guatemala some years ago, and when I traveled there the mechanisms of domination were open, obvious, heavy-handed, and violent. Soldiers with guns were highly visible and present all over the highlands. On numerous occasions, buses I traveled on were pulled over, and the men had to get out with their hands up and line up against the bus to be searched while soldiers stood behind us with rifles pointed at our backs. Death squads left their victims' mutilated bodies in public places as warnings not to oppose the powers that be. Many of the victims of this domination were Christians who practiced liberation theology, a theology that called on followers of Christ to actively seek justice by openly confronting the dominant powers oppressing and exploiting them, even if it meant risking and losing their lives, which it often did.
It's easier to see what picking up the cross can mean in situations where domination through the use of fear and violence is highly visible and not at all subtle. But we don't live in Guatemala or El Salvador under the thumb of a voraciously selfish oligarchy and brutal military dictatorship, so picking up the cross doesn't mean to us what it meant to Salvadorans and Guatemalans in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
I would venture that the cross we must pick up in our time and place is more hidden, sophisticated, manipulative, and even seductive. But what is that cross?
I suppose one way to answer that question is to ask ourselves:
What am I afraid of?
What in this world is instilling fear within me, and exerting control over my life, over my actions, through fear, even if in hidden, subtle, manipulative ways?
What is preventing me from following Jesus as his disciple, from following him in ways my deepest heart of hearts is calling me to follow him, in ways my spirit, my soul, are calling me to follow him?
What has a greater hold over my life than my deepest aspiration to follow Jesus and to become an authentically Christ-like person?
What am I afraid of?
I think if we take the time to look deeply at our lives, with uncompromising honesty, and identify what we are truly afraid of, we will see the cross that we are to pick up. I think that in facing our deepest fear and embracing it--picking it up and holding it up instead of it holding us down--we can deny that which we fear control over our lives.
Fear can be a very subtle complex of thoughts and feelings through which we mask, justify, and rationalize our behavior. I may quite consciously think to myself that I just don't feel like doing something, when in fact, deep down, I am afraid of doing something. I may think or feel I don't have the time, or the interest, or the energy, or the money, or the skills to pursue this justice ministry, or to visit that person in the hospital, or to get involved with this ministry, or to make that change in my life, when in fact, deep down, I'm really afraid.
It takes a tremendous amount of honesty to face our fear, and to acknowledge that what we often fear the most is losing what we have and losing who we think we are--losing our money, our possessions, our status, our family, our place, our lifestyle, our identity. Losing control over our own lives and the lives of others, a control that brings us a sense of security in this world.
In other words, fear of losing what we have and who we think we are motivates us to try to save our lives.
Yet Jesus said, this is precisely how we lose our lives. This is how we lose our soul. This is how we lose the deepest, most vital, most God-connected part of who we truly are. This is what keeps us from following Jesus. This is what keeps us from becoming Christ-like in our very being, in our presence, in our daily living.
Pick up the cross and follow me.
Stop trying to save what you have and who you are.
Pick up the cross and follow me.
Lose yourself to find yourself.
These are incredibly deep, powerful, challenging words.
For me, there is a powerful existential dimension to Jesus' words, pick up your cross and follow me. They compel me to look deeply at my own existence--at my heart, my mind, my will, as we are doing in our Lenten series. To look at my deepest motivations and aspirations, my hopes and fears. At my efforts to save what I have and who I think I am.
I think every one of us has our own cross. Our own set of fears. Those fears that immobilize us, keep us in line, keep us obedient in the midst of systems that oppress and exploit people, create suffering, and diminish the earth. Those fears that prevent us from following Jesus as our heart of hearts, our spirit and soul, calls us to follow him. Those fears that keep us from losing ourselves so we can truly find our Christ-like selves.
But I also think our personal crosses are not all that different. And that if we were to develop the trust to share deeply and honestly with one another, we'd discover that many of us share some of the same deep-seated fundamental fears--fear of death, fear of losing what we have, fear of losing who we are, fear of change. And that in sharing our fears, and facing them together, embracing them together, carrying them together, we could be even more of a cross-bearing church together, more of a discipleship church together, a stronger Christ-like presence in this world.
Of course, to do that, we must first overcome our fear of facing our fears together. And that is my Lenten prayer. That we may overcome our fear of facing our fears together, and together, pick up our crosses to follow Jesus.
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