It was the first day of first grade.  At about ten minutes to noon, Bobby put his crayons into his cubby, found his take-home folder, and went to the door to be first in line to go home.  His teacher came over and said, ‘What are you doing, Bobby?”  Bobby said, “I’m getting ready to go home.”  His teacher knelt beside him and said, “Bobby, you’re in first grade now.  In kindergarten, you went home at lunch time, but in first grade, you stay here for lunch and the rest of the afternoon.”  Bobby’s eyes got wide and his lower lip started to tremble, and he looked up at her and he said, “Who the heck signed me up for this?” 

 

I think Peter can relate to Bobby.  He’s been following Jesus for a while now, and there have been some ups and downs, but this latest change is really out of the blue.  It’s like having to stay the whole day at school.  Or like someone moving to New York without being warned to expect earthquakes . . .or hurricanes . . . or snow before Halloween.

 

Poor Peter.  He has seen Jesus do amazing miracles.  He has watched the crowds of people turn out wherever they go.  He knows that Jesus is someone the people will follow.  He will be a successful leader.   Peter is probably already thinking of himself as an aide to the Messiah, one of the inner circle who offers him advice, kind of like the team of advisors surrounding presidential candidates.  So when Jesus starts talking about suffering and being killed, Peter knows that he has to act quickly.  Whatever it is that Jesus is talking about, a good advisor, a good campaign manager, would certainly put a different spin on it.  He doesn’t want to correct Jesus in public, so the text says that he took him aside.  He gets him off in a corner alone and says, “Jesus, let’s talk about this before you start losing points in the opinion polls.  People today are just not into suffering and death.  I think your best bet is to stick with miracles and healing.  It’s been working real well in Galilee and I think it will work in Jerusalem too.”

 

Poor Peter.  When he says, “God forbid,” that is probably a real prayer.   He thinks that he knows God’s will in this situation and that it certainly doesn’t involve the Messiah going to the cross.  Just five verses earlier, Jesus called him the rock, the foundation of the church, but now Jesus calls him a stumbling block, Satan even.  Does that seem a tad bit harsh?  Peter is Satan because he doesn’t want Jesus to die?  Perhaps the strength of Jesus’ response is an indication that this is a real temptation for Jesus too. 

 

Jesus doesn’t want to die, but he understands some things that Peter doesn’t yet.  So he refuses to put a better spin on it and he says, “If any of you want to follow me, you must deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me.”

 

We have heard these words so often that they may have lost some power for us.  We are used to seeing crosses everywhere --in churches and hospitals, on T-shirts, as tattoos, made into all kinds of jewelry -- we don’t always think about what a strange thing it is to try to make the cross into something beautiful.  How many of us would buy a miniature gallows rope and wear it as jewelry?  Or what if instead of a cross on the communion table, there was a giant hypodermic syringe to symbolize a lethal injection?  Or a guillotine or an electric chair?  That kind of puts a different light on it, doesn’t it?

That is the kind of image the people in the crowd understood when Jesus said “Take up your cross.”   The Jewish historian Josephus who lived in the first century tells of thousands of crucifixions in the area of Jerusalem.  It was primarily a political and military punishment.  It was inflicted above all on the lower classes, slaves, violent criminals, people that the Roman government perceived as dangerous if they got out of control.  Death by crucifixion was a long painful death designed to terrify all who saw it.  It was done publically for a purpose – as a deterrent to keep others from committing the same crimes. 

 

This is the meaning that we must understand about the cross.  It is about death and degradation.  It is the stripping away of dignity; it is the denial of humanness as well as the extinguishing of life.  This is the cross; this is what it means.  This is why Peter and the others reacted so strongly when Jesus said he was going to a cross: they were scared to death.  It was probably the last thing they expected when they left their homes and jobs and followed him.

 

Sometimes people refer to this passage when life seems hard.  When we encounter a tough time: caring for a sick or dying relative, being out of work and unable to pay the bills, something as major as cancer or something as trivial as putting up with our in-laws.  In everyday conversation we might hear, “We all have our crosses to bear.”  It may help us to cope with unpleasant things to say that, but it is not what Jesus means.  Everyone experiences some kind of suffering, whether they follow Jesus or not.  What Jesus is talking about here is not the things that just happen in life, even the most painful things that may be part of our lives.  What he is talking about is something that we volunteer for, that we take on, when we decide to follow him.  Taking up the cross means being willing to suffer and perhaps even die because we are followers of Jesus.

 

I was nine years old when I first said I wanted to follow Jesus.  I didn’t have a clue what I was signing up for.  I didn’t know what bearing my cross meant then, and I’m pretty sure I still don’t know what it means.  Let’s face it; most of us in this room will not have to die for our faith.   I know there are still people in places in the world who are killed for their faith, for daring to follow Jesus, but that’s not our context and not likely to become our context soon. 

 

So does this idea of taking up a cross have any real bearing on our lives?   I’d like to offer three thoughts on that question.

 

Fred Gaiser, who is professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, made an impromptu survey of church mission statements. He looked at websites and old bulletins to see what churches were saying about themselves, and how they presented themselves to the world. What he found, he says, astonished him. The churches generally described their mission in terms of being warm and welcoming communities. They wrote of their commitment to serve Jesus by ministering to the needs of the community. They described their efforts to provide excellent educational programs, fellowship opportunities, and weekly worship. They declared themselves committed to inspiring, biblical preaching. But he did not find a church which mentioned the call to suffer in Jesus’ name. What was missing from practically every mission statement was the cross.[1]

 

It is right and good that we voluntarily enter into the suffering of others because of our faith.  Jesus confronted the abuse and injustice being done by the political and social and religious powers of his day, and suffered for it.  Following him, we may do the same.  And I know you get that.  To your credit, Emmanuel’s mission statement says that “we gather to celebrate, to struggle, to serve, and to tell the good news of God’s love.” Maybe we don’t specifically invite people to join us in suffering for Jesus, but we understand that there are struggles in this life of faith we share. That’s my first answer to the question of what it means to take up the cross. 

 

Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”  I’ve already said that I don’t expect to be killed for my faith, so I don’t think I’ll lose my life in that sense.  What else might this mean?  It might mean that I need to live as if I’m willing to lose my life for Jesus’ sake.  To take up the cross is to give control of my life over to God.  Notice that Peter, the rock of the church, doesn’t get to tell Jesus what God’s will is or how to accomplish God’s purposes.  So instead of literally losing my life, it might mean loosening my grip on MY life – giving up my need to control my daily schedule, laying aside my ambitions, my desire for comfort, or for a peaceful household.  Not clinging to My desires, MY needs, MY stuff, but holding it all loosely, open-handedly, as I follow Jesus.  So my second answer is that to take up the cross is to be willing to lose my life and to loosen my claim on my life.

 

Crucifixion was not just a form of torture and execution.  It was intimidation.  The Roman authorities used it to terrorize and to maintain the status quo.   Barbara Brown Taylor says, “It reinforced the idea that death was the most awful thing in the world and that people with any sense should do anything in their power to avoid it. By telling his disciples to pick up their crosses, Jesus defied that idea.  He suggested that there were things worse than death in the world, and that living in fear was near the top of the list.  If they were going to let fear run their lives, then fear would become their god. . . . And when their anxious days finally came to an end (death cannot be avoided forever after all) they would discover that they had really never lived at all.”[2]