The Way of the Cross

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and
take up their cross and follow me.”  Mk 8:34

Did you know that life could not be sustained without death?  Did you know that in order to remain physically healthy, parts of us must die?   Without death, we would not be alive today.

Cells are dying all the time in our bodies. And these are not random deaths — they are necessary deaths for our very life and vitality.   Look at your hand. It has five fingers because the cells that used to live between them died way back when you were a fetus in the womb. Embryos as small as eight to 16 cells in size depend on cell death for life.  If it did not occur, our human development would have ceased.  

Cell death is what keeps us from being overrun with cancer. Miraculous built-in natural surveillance systems detect almost all cancerous mutations and direct the affected cells to commit suicide.   These cancer cells die so that we might live.

The skin you see is not the same skin that covered your body just a month or two ago.  Every 28 days or so, the skins renews itself.   The outer layers of cells die in order that your skin will renew and remain vital and healthy. When your immune system has finished defeating an infection, the excess white blood cells die, allowing inflammation to go down.   The human body stays vital, in large part, because of death.  We might say there is an upside to death when it comes to the human body.

Jesus knows that there is an upside to death when it comes to our spiritual life.   In our gospel Jesus says to his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed” (Mark 8:31). He says this quite openly and plainly, but Peter is not about to tolerate such outrageous talk, so he takes Jesus aside and attempts to silence him. Jesus then turns the tables on Peter and sternly rebukes him, saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (8:33).

Jesus knew that he must undergo great suffering and die in Jerusalem. He died for the benefit of the greater whole. Jesus died to pay the price for our sins. Jesus died to reconcile us to God. Jesus died to show us how much God loves us. Jesus died to call us to follow him in suffering service. Jesus died to achieve victory over death. Jesus died so that we might live!  

Like the programmed cell death in the human body, the death of Jesus brings benefit to the greater whole. It may look like foolishness to the world, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God,” says Paul in 1 Corinthians. (1:18).

But it didn’t stop with Jesus.  Jesus passes his cross on to us, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  (Mk 8:34)  One of my teachers in seminary used to say it this way, “Jesus didn’t die instead of us.  He died ahead of us, and now makes taking up the cross the focus of the Christian life.”    The challenge for us is to trust how the upside of death can take begin to take shape in our lives of faith each day.  The challenge for us is how are we become people of the cross. 

In the Small Catechism Martin Luther discusses a similar thing in relation to baptism, “What does baptism mean for daily living?”   He answered saying, “It means that our sinful self, with all of its evil deeds and desires, should be drowned through daily repentance; and that day after day a new self should arise to live with God in righteousness and purity forever.” 

For Luther, death and resurrection go together and is something the Christian experiences in a repeating rhythm day after day in the real world, as the old sinful dies and a new creation is raised to life by the grace and power of God in Jesus Christ.

But I really think all this talk about denial of self and taking up a cross is hard for people like us to accept.  It was hard for Peter, and it’s hard for us.  We live in a selfish world that encourages self-everything: self-absorption, self-actualization, self-advancement, self-assurance, self-improvement, self-interest, self-realization, self-respect, self-righteousness, and self-fulfillment. Is it any wonder that our obsession is to be healthy, wealthy and secure? We set our own agenda and follow where our ambitions lead just like everybody else.

It creeps into our beliefs and, in my mind, there is no better example of it that in a little book that came out four years ago entitled “The Prayer of Jabez,” by Bruce Wilkenson.  The Prayer of Jabez is based on a passage out of the book of Chronicles, in which a devoted man named Jabez asks God for a favor: "Oh that you would bless me and enlarge my border, and that your hand might be with me, and that you would keep me from hurt and harm!" The fact that God honors Jabez' prayer and blesses him with great riches indicates to Wilkinson a God-principle. If with a pure heart you ask God for a blessing, using the very words that Jabez prayed, then God will bring wondrous gifts into your life. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Wilkinson interprets the wild commercial success of his books (roughly 20 million copies sold combined) as proof of the miraculous power of the Jabez prayer. In other words, it worked for Jabez, it worked for Wilkinson, and now it should work for you.

Someone gave me a copy of the book four years ago and wanted me to critique it.  So I did, and my critique was not very complimentary.  I critiqued the book as basically a self-indulgent, self-help book disguised in religious garb that conveniently left out the most fundamental teaching of the Christian Faith; that being the teaching of self-sacrifice and taking up one’s cross and following.  To me the book is nothing more than another expression of a “me-centered” faith, not a Christ-centered faith.  The person who gave me the book was so incensed with my critique she left Holy Love for another congregation who subscribed to such teachings.

I have since learned that in 2002 Wilkinson, the author of the book, heard God's call and moved to Africa and announced his intention to save tens of thousands of children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. Now that is a noble cause.  However, last year Wilkinson resigned and abandoned his effort to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, Bible College, industrial park and Disneyesque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland.  What happened between 2002 and 2005 is a story of grand hopes dashed by unrealistic expectations, inexperience, bad theology and human foibles.  His departure left the indigenous peoples convinced he was just another in a long parade of outsiders who have come to Africa making big promises and gave up when things didn’t go as wished and expected.

It is not my purpose to take pot-shots at Wilkenson this morning, but to only illustrate how hard it is for us to trust Jesus when he says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  This is not a formula for success as the world defines it, but a way of living that emanates from the heart of God through Jesus Christ.  I don’t know of anything Jesus said that is harder to accept than this.   That is why this is not merely a principle for us to accept, but it is the very life of Jesus given to us by grace through faith; it is the life Christ desires to live in and through your life and my life and our lives together as a servant community of faith.   

The apostle Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified by Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.  The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”

T.S. Eliot's play, The Cocktail Party, explores the empty lives of people living out the delusions of the good life. These people spend their lives in pursuit of pleasure, but they end up in despair. They go from relationship to relationship, happy hour to happy hour, psychologist to psychologist. Then one young woman discovers the self-emptying life of Jesus, and begins serving others. She disappears from the social scene, and after two years the word comes back that she has died. She was crucified on an anthill on a faraway island where she had been nursing plague-infested natives who would have died anyway. Her friends sip their martinis and murmur, "What a waste!"

What would you say?  Was her life a waste? Maybe it was a waste as the world defines things, but not in the kingdom of God.

Like those at Eliot's cocktail party, we have trouble even thinking in terms of real sacrifice.  We keep a safe distance from the Lord we claim to be following who says “take up your cross and follow me.”  We find it hard to admit that self-denial and sacrifice is the truth which lies at the core of the Christian life. Following Jesus is hard, and it can only be done by faith in the crucified Lord.

It can only be done in faith because every logical and rational sensibility within us, and every instinct for self-preservation, and every desire for a self-centered life says it is totally nuts!  It is foolishness!  It is so much stupidity.

Or is it?  Or is it the miracle and wonder and glory of the gospel that can only be experienced when every inclination within you says “don’t do it,” and you do it anyway.  You do it anyway, in spite of yourself.  You do it!  You “take up your cross” because through faith in the one who took up his cross for you and who lives within you, you find that you are mysteriously compelled and driven to follow him on the path he leads you upon – the way of the cross – and it’s along that way you will discover the miracle and wonder of the gospel life – the life given for others for the sake of Jesus Christ. 

Amen.