To put our Gospel reading for this morning in context a little bit, immediately before this reading Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” To which Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.” Which is the first, and I think only, time in the Gospel when the disciples actually seemed to understand just how amazing Jesus is. Mark chapter eight, verse twenty-nine is the moment of greatest clarity for the disciples, it is the point in the story when all of Jesus’ teachings finally clicked, when they finally grasped that Jesus is the promised salvation of God.
But then, today’s reading shows us, fresh off what seemed like understanding, actually the disciples still had no idea what Jesus was about. Because Peter called him the Messiah, he told them what being the Messiah meant, that he “must undergo great suffering… be killed, and after three days rise again.” And Peter was immediately like, no way. “Took him aside and began to rebuke him,” the Gospel said. And this word “rebuke,” that’s the same word Jesus used to cast out demons. Peter was literally trying to cast out the demon of salvation out of Jesus, clearly he missed the boat on this one.
Then Jesus rebuked Peter, but he didn’t stop there. “He called the crowd together with his disciples” and gave what may go down as one of the worst motivational speeches in history. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and lose your life. I’ve been watching a lot of Olympics recently, and I can’t imagine anyone’s coach using that as the pump up talk before the competition. From a purely numbers-gathering standpoint, this speech seems like it wouldn’t do it. I think part of the reason Peter rebuked Jesus was Peter knew Jesus was trying to start a movement, and he couldn’t see, “give up everything you love and die anyway” as the best rallying cry. Wouldn’t it have been better for the movement if Jesus had said, “If any want to become my followers, come along, and you will get everything you ever wanted, and we’ll overthrow Rome and everyone will get a new chariot and a nice sundial and it will always be sunny and never rain on your picnic.” Who wouldn’t sign up for that! Or, maybe, “If any want to become my followers, if you do these things in this specific way, and follow this set of expectations, then you’ll win. And if you don’t, you’ll lose. Your choice.” A little more work involved, but still a clear cause and effect path to success.
Peter was probably right; Jesus may have gotten more followers that way. But it wouldn’t have been honest, and in the end it wouldn’t have been helpful. Because you don’t have to be an attentive human for too long to notice that life does not have clear cause and effect paths. Following Jesus does not always mean puppies and rainbows and everybody gets a new chariot. And telling someone that it will leads to false hope, a hope that, when the real world interferes, all too easily falls apart. I honestly think giving someone false hope is worse than giving them no hope at all, because the fall from false hope is so much longer and more painful. Honesty, however painful, really is the best policy.
And honesty is exactly what Jesus delivered. Peter wanted Jesus to paint a rosier future, but Jesus was like, look, there will be suffering. You will suffer, I will suffer. But, and here’s the huge, important but, but resurrection follows. That, dear friends in Christ, is real hope. Real hope does not ignore or push away the reality of suffering, real hope looks suffering right in the face and says yes, you are real, yes, there is pain, but life always follows death. I’m guessing that Peter and the others listening to Jesus could not understand what he was talking about in that moment, when everything seemed to be going as planned. But I have to believe that at the toughest times in Peter’s life, as he worked to spread the good news of God throughout the world and as he eventually faced his own persecution and death, that this powerful promise of God’s presence in the midst of suffering helped sustain him for the work ahead. I have to believe that when Peter was at his darkest moments, he remembered Jesus’ words, he remembered Jesus’ death and resurrection, and he found the strength and the courage and the hope to persevere.
In a time such as this one, I find tremendous hope and strength in these words of Jesus. Peter’s naïve hopefulness is nice, but when I look around this world, I see a lot of suffering. Suffering that breaks my heart and makes me afraid. I see a lot of suffering and I feel powerless to do anything in the face of it. After all, what can one soft-spoken Lutheran pastor in small-city Michigan possibly accomplish? It is all too easy for me to set my mind on human accomplishments and feel defeated.
But in this passage, Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Now first off, I always want to give a caution when we read this text, because it has been used in ways that are harmful, and we need to acknowledge and unpack that. Notice Jesus said “take up their cross.” He didn’t say what cross they were to take up, he said their cross. Which means, the cross we bear is the cross we chose. You pick what cross you’re going to pick up. If someone tells you, “this is your cross to bear,” unless that person is actually Jesus, ignore them. Burdens are different, burdens get put on us whether we want them or not, and we know from Matthew that a) Jesus’ burden on us is light and b) Jesus helps us bear burdens. So if you feel like you’re carrying something you don’t want to be carrying but you can’t put it down, that’s a burden. But crosses, crosses we choose.
And before we get too metaphorical here, let’s name what a cross was. A cross was a method of torturous execution of political prisoners. Common criminals, thieves and the like, were not executed on a cross. Jesus was not killed because Rome considered him a common criminal, he was killed because Rome considered him a political threat, a challenge to their power. So a cross is not an individual decision. A cross is an active decision to engage in systemic change in order to bring about the kingdom of God. And when you engage the system, as Jesus well knew, the system fights back. Jesus literally chose the cross. And following in that example, Martin Luther was excommunicated from the church for preaching salvation by grace, Bonhoeffer died in a concentration camp for standing up to Hitler, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot in Memphis for picking up the cross of civil rights. Now those are extreme examples of what it can look like to pick up ones cross and follow Jesus. Not all of us are called to a life of martyrdom and persecution to this degree. But all of us are called, in our own way, to bring about the kingdom of God, and what this passage promises us is 1) there will be risk involved, but 2) whatever risk we face, whatever suffering we endure, God is with us, and no suffering, no defeat, not even death, is the end of the story. The end is never the end, for “those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Life follows death, hope follows despair, this is the weird and wonderful paradox of our faith. Reading this passage fills me with a powerful sense of hope that I can engage the suffering in the world, that the work that I engage in to bring about the kingdom does matter, because God is in that work. Suffering is not the absence of God, for God is present with in suffering, and the work we do in carrying our cross matters. That feels like some powerful good news in the midst of despair.
In the midst of the darkness of our time, one powerful example of hope I’ve seen has been the emerging youth movement led by the students in Parkland, Florida. That is a powerful example of the difference between a burden and a cross, and the power picking up a cross can have. Those kids did not choose the burden of being part of a school shooting. They did not choose the burden of losing seventeen of their friends and teachers. That is a burden laid on them, and I know that Jesus is with them carrying that burden. But what they have chosen is from that burden, to pick up the cross of advocacy, so that no other students have to bear the burden placed on them. They chose that work. Not all of them, of course. For some students, the burden of grief is still too great to bear, and for those students, I know Jesus is with them, helping them grieve. Because again, crosses are our choice. No one can pick your cross for you. But they are choices we make that liberate not only ourselves, but the world around us. Carrying the cross means being part of bringing about the kingdom of God.
The good news I hear this morning is an invitation to pick up a cross and engage in changing the structures of our world. The one caution I will give is, choose wisely, because you only get one. The bishop used to joke with us in preaching class, because new pastors always want to try all the things, to pick our battles carefully, because you only get one cross, and you don’t want to accidentally pick up the cross of, like, carpet colors. So choose wisely, but when you choose. When you find the thing that engages you, that captures your passion, that fills you with determination, then pick it up and go forth boldly. I don’t know what cross energizes you, if you are called to dismantling poverty or working towards safety and security for all of God’s children, or caring for God’s creation, or the list goes on. Whatever you pick, here’s what this passage promises. The work will not be easy. But is anything easy ever really worth it. The work will not be easy, but the reward will be great. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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