Grace to you and peace from God our Father
and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen
“It’s the cross that I have to bear.”
What a statement.
When people make that statement they may mean
many different things.
Merriam-Webster
defines “cross to bear” in the following way:
a problem that causes trouble or worry for someone over a long period of
time We all have our crosses to bear. The loss was a
heavy cross for her to bear.”
Often when people us the phrase “cross to
bear” they do so with deep resentment.
A woman in a
difficult marriage declares that putting up with her husband is her ‘cross to
bear’.
Or sometimes it is used with respect to
suffering that we experience.
He viewed his
cancer as his ‘cross to bear’.
Often, when people say that they have a
cross to bear, they do so resigning themselves to put up with someone or
something undesirable.
And most often, when people see their
situation as a cross to bear, they are not talking about something that they
want to do, but rather they are talking about a situation that is thrust upon
them, something that they have no other choice but to put up with it.
But is this what Jesus is talking about when
he says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their cross and follow me.”
Jesus is talking
about something different than just the miscellaneous suffering that we
sometimes must endure in life.
He’s not just
talking about and undesirable circumstance that we must endure and most
certainly resent.
Nor is he talking
about some fatalistic resignation to dying a humiliating death.
Our cross to bear
is simply this, that we love others as he first loved us.
That’s it. It’s that simple.
Father Robert
Barron writes:
“Jesus summed
up his teaching with a word that must have been gut-wrenching to his first
century audience: "Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple." Now, his listeners knew what the cross meant. It
meant a death in utter agony, nakedness, and humiliation. They didn't think of
the cross automatically in religious terms, as we do, for they knew it in all
of its awful power.
Yet Jesus places
this terrible image at the foundation of the spiritual life. Unless you crucify
your ego, you cannot be my follower.
But how should
we take up our own cross? It requires not just being willing to suffer, but
being willing to suffer as Jesus did, absorbing violence and hatred through our
forgiveness and non-violent love, thereby transforming it.
We turn to
Jesus on his cross and carry ours in imitation--loving what he loved, despising
what he despised. We "come after him" through own sacrificial love.”
- Fr. Robert
Barron, Lenten Reflection Day 17
We follow Jesus,
by loving as he loved, caring more for the other than we do for our selves, to
the extent that we are willing to suffer for their sake, and to forgive them as
he has forgiven us.
When I first
visited St. Nikolai’s Lutheran Church in Novgorod, Russia the delegation from
our congregation sat down one evening after dinner for a conversation. One of the topics that evening was to address
some of the things that Russians thought about us, and we about them.
During that
conversation, one of the Russians made the statement: “Americans wonder why people around the world
don’t like them. But we hear, that you
don’t even like yourselves, so why would the rest of the world like you?”
That’s an
interesting statement, isn’t it?
One of the things
that followed in the conversation was the issue of privacy that is so important
for Americans, and so foreign for Russians.
One of the
differences they pointed out was how important it was for them to live in a village. Even when Russians live out in the country
side, as farmers, for example, they build their houses in villages. They can’t imagine anyone wanting anything
different. Who would want to live alone.
We had to admit
that American’s value privacy so much that in a variety of ways we erect fences
so that we don’t have to deal with our neighbors. This desire for privacy has often resulted in
our isolating ourselves in a variety of ways.
And I would say
that it’s one of the ways that we seek to avoid ‘taking up our crosses and
following Jesus.
We live in a time
that we have become increasingly polarized.
The divisions
among us are so pronounced that they are on public display for everyone to
see.
And we are
becoming less tolerant of each other.
We see this in
the harshness of the politics of our land.
We see this in
the Church.
For decades our
Church wrestled with questions surrounding human sexuality. And the differences could not be more
pronounced.
And there is
hardly a congregation that has not been affected by that conversation.
The one thing
that is clear is that we do not agree.
“hate what is
evil, hold fast to what is good” Paul says.
The problem is
that we don’t agree what is evil and what is good.
That’s why our
Church has been divided over the question of homosexuality.
One side sees
homosexuality as the evil that we should hate, and heterosexuality as the good
that we should hold fast to.
The other side
sees prejudice against gay and lesbian persons as the evil to be opposed, and
love and acceptance of all people as the good to hold fast to.
What happened in
our Church was that through our decision making process, we agreed that
congregations could make the decision, specifically regarding what role gay and
lesbian people could play in the Church.
In making this
decision, the Church lifted up the concept of ‘reconciled diversity’. We could have different positions and
convictions and still be one in Christ.
Well that didn’t
work out as planned.
There were
winners and losers.
And those who
felt deep within their hearts that they lost, left.
At the deepest
level, though, it was not about winning and losing, it was about a fundamental
difference about what is good and what is evil.
When the Church
decided that congregations could call gay and lesbian pastors, in committed
relationships, and could also bless same sex unions—there were those who were
convinced that we no longer hated what was evil and held fast to what was good,
but just the opposite.
There was a
belief that the Church now loved what was evil, and abandoned what was good.
This disagreement
is so great, that we have suffered as a Church because of it.
Congregation
after congregation has been divided.
And many,
including our own, have lost members.
Jesus said: “If any want to become my
followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
“But how
should we take up our own cross?” Father Bannon writes, “It requires not just
being willing to suffer, but being willing to suffer as Jesus did, absorbing
violence and hatred through our forgiveness and non-violent love, thereby
transforming it.”
To take up our
cross, means to love and forgive.
What does
forgiveness mean?
It means simply
this:
That we do not
count someone’s trespasses against them.
That’s what Paul
writes in 2 Corinthians 5:19.
We are called to
so passionately love one another that we do not hold their trespasses against
them.
We may and will
disagree on many things.
And because of
our disagreements we will do things that are harmful to each other.
But if we are to
be one in Christ, as we are called to be, we need only agree on one thing, and
that is to love as we have been loved.
OK, I lied.
We also need to
agree that loving as Christ loved, also means forgiving as Christ forgave.
Behind my house
in Sandpoint is a cemetery. Lakeview
Cemetery.
And one of the
nearest graves in the cemetery is that of George Chatfield, a dear parishioner
of mine at First Lutheran.
George retired as
a full bird colonel in the Air Force.
He was a pilot. He flew jet fighters in the Korean War, and
tankers for the rest of his career.
George would brag
that politically he was a little to the right of Attila the Hun. He had a pocket radio that he was always
listening to lest he miss something that Rush Limbaugh said.
George and I
couldn’t be more different.
But one thing
George said, as a man of faith, that I deeply respected was this:
That if someone
asks for our forgiveness, we must give it.
We have no choice. For that’s
what Jesus commanded.
In some ways,
George was indeed ‘my cross to bear’, and I was ‘his cross to bear’.
What does it mean
to take up our cross and follow Jesus?
It means to so
love one another that we do not allow our differences to divide us.
It means that we
so love one another that we do not count trespasses against each other.
It means that we
bear one another’s burdens and above all, care for one another.
It means that
when they suffer, we suffer with them.
But more that, it
means that we are willing even to suffer because of them, yet still love them.
May this peace
that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen
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