– Sundays after Pentecost: We’re in this time of the liturgical year where we want to think about “Discipleship” – What it means to follow Jesus. I apologize in advance to those for whom I state the obvious but we sometimes need a little reminder: The liturgical year is really split in two cycles rather than 6 seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and then Ordinary time or Sundays after Pentecost). A year in two cycles that divides like this:
From Advent to Pentecost we look at Jesus’s life / Important moments in Jesus’s life, his death and R
From Pentecost to Advent: “Ordinary times”: What it means to be Jesus’s church / what it means to be a Christian or what it means to “Follow Jesus”
– and today in our Gospel this is what we hear about what it means to follow Jesus: It is “to take up our cross” – an expression we hear many times in the Gospel, an expression that is also one of the most misunderstood of all – so I would like to spend a little time with you on that today. I don’t pretend I have the right explanation to what it means to take up one’s cross, but there are a few things I can’t help noticing:
– First of all Jesus asks us to “take up” our cross and to me it sounds really different than saying “Accept your cross”. It is rather quite the opposite and we know what happened to Jesus when he “took up” his cross. The tradition tells us that he fell three times under the weight of the cross. He could have remained crushed, but he got up each time to finish the way / to give all he had to give.
To me “Taking up one’s cross” means that when we suffer, we don’t necessarily have to be passive. It does not mean that we have to be a “warrior”, to be at war with our pain or whatever causes our pain. Taking up our cross means that by the way we endure, or better, by the way we walk trough our sufferings we can be a sign of hope and resilience to others, and we can also make the choice to keep on being loving people instead of staying wrapped up in our pain. If you’re interested in thinking about suffering as a place where you can still make decisions, bear hope and eventually learn to be more loving and compassionate, I invite you to read the beautiful book “The choice” by Dr Edith Eva Eger who survived the concentration camps.
– The second thing I notice in the expression “Take up your cross”, is that it’s probably something Jesus never said at the time of his teaching on earth. To me, Jesus had probably a strong sense that he would be rejected and possibly be put to death, but I don’t think he knew with certainty he would be crucified. This expression comes from the other side of the cross, from resurrection – whether the risen Christ said it or the author of the Gospel put this expression into Jesus’s mouth.
And so when we “take up our cross” we don’t do it for the mere sake of suffering, we take up our cross because there is a horizon. It’s not that God wants you to suffer so you’ll become a more spiritual person detached from the flesh and the world. It means that there is still goodness and beauty to be found and that eventually life will have the last word. As Christians, we made the cross our symbol yet all the meaning of the cross is that the cross does not have the last word! We don’t give up. We don’t give up on the world, we don’t give up because of sin, we don’t give up on others and on ourselves. We don’t give up on God. Taking up our cross is about moving forward because we know that there is something beyond our pain.
– Third observation: The pain mentioned in the Gospel today / the context is more about the pain endured from rejection than from the hardships of life by themselves. When we bring our testimony about faith, we suffer. Jesus warns his disciples that they will be persecuted.
What does Jesus mean exactly? It can be tricky because some people come to believe, when they are hated, or when they meet opposition that “they must have done something right”. And maybe. Sometimes you do something right and it makes people mad. But we have to be very careful not to be arrogant with that. I am currently reading the book “Unfollow” by Megan Phelps-Roper about growing up in the Westboro Baptist Church, the very virulent anti-gay church, and she says that this is what they believed in her church: that they were hated because they did God’s work! It took her time to realize they were hated (back) because they were just a hateful church!
So what Jesus asks his disciples is not to judge or condemn others, to set the standards, rather it is to live with integrity, to have the courage to choose for ourselves what’s right over what’s comfortable – like being approved by people or pleasing your family and being a good son, daughter or daughter in law who goes with the flow. We say that every week in the Sunday school prayer: “Help me to stand for the hard right against the easy wrong”.
And you know, I believed for a long time that those words of the Gospel about being persecuted for the truth had not much to do with me. Not much to do with me because I live in a Christian country, and so if I say I believe in Christ, people are more likely to approve of me rather than criticize. It’s not very controversial, right? The thing is, it’s not about what you believe / your identity as Christian. It’s about what your belief sets in motion and how you live your daily life because of what you believe. Living with integrity is for all of us, every minute of our life we have to make this choice.
I have started talking about racism with a group of neighbors and our group opened in conversation with this simple question: How do you react when people make racists comments? Do you say nothing, do you pretend it’s not your problem (if you’re white) or if it is thrown at you (because you’re black) do you choose to ignore it because you’re so tired of it? And as we unpacked our experiences, we realized how hard it was to do something as simple as interrupting a conversation, as risking to be the troublemaker or the offended one by asking this simple question: “Why would you say that?”
“Why would you say that?” I think is a good example of what it means to take up one’s cross, to live with integrity for the Gospel at the risk of being criticized and rejected. Sometimes it seems like very little things, so small we think we can overlook them, but it is really what our daily lives are made of and eventually our society.
– As a conclusion on that, I would say that what it means to “Take up one’s cross” is perfectly summarized by Paul in the passage from Romans we have just heard: “We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life”
Taking up our cross is about walking in newness of life, for ourselves but not only – it’s for our community and for our world. Even if “taking up our cross” includes a level of acceptance, it has nothing to do with passivity, resignation and giving up. It’s about transformation and rebirth, it’s about “kicking the darkness until it bleeds light” (Nadia Bolz-weber)
– We have a beautiful example of what it means to walk in newness of life in the story of the OT today that tells us about Hagar and Ishmael’s rejection by Abraham and Sarah. When Abraham and Sarah finally obtain what they wanted – a son of theirs – they decide that Hagar and Ishmael don’t fit anymore into their plans and they get rid of them. And the story could end here. But we know that it isn’t where the story ends. God hears the boy and sees Hagar’s despair and provides the means for them to go back to their country where Ishmael will be able to start a new family. And we know that it is also the start of a brand new story of God with God’s people through the Ishmaelites and Arabian people.
The story does not have to end in despair. The bible shows us that God always provides a horizon whether for an individual or through an individual to her descendants / her people. Hagar moves from being a slave to being a matriarch. But yes, we may have to go through the pain. To take up our crosses. It may have been easier for Hagar to get used to her slavery rather than to walk through the wilderness with her son. But there was a horizon for her and God led her to new life beyond her humiliation, rejection and suffering. May it be so for us whatever the pain we’re going through.