TURNING TO THE CROSS
Luke 9:23-27

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
March 28, 2004 / Fifth Sunday in Lent

'Take up [your] cross daily and follow me.'

In our modern liberal churches we are often so taken up with what it means to live a religious life in this modern world, that we glide right over Biblical passages that anchor us in the past. And we are often so dead set on making things better that we sometimes think that is achieved by avoiding conversations about problems, pains, difficulties.

And yet, even here in Beneficent Church, when you look forward you see a cross. We don’t often talk about the cross, but there it is. We are a religion that stands under the cross.

The writer John Stott has said, "I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the one Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the Cross.’ In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?"1

Stott goes on to compare his experience of Buddhism and Christianity. Now I don’t want to be in any way disrespectful of another religion. I, as many of you may have, have often been interested in Buddhism. I have read from their writers. I have taken courses from Tibetan monks. I have quietly contemplated their art. I have drawn from their writings and images in sermons. There is much beauty and truth in Buddhism, and I believe God has worked through Buddhism. But Buddhism and Christianity are still different.

There is an inner peace in Buddhism, an "immunity to pain," a reality that rejects conflict and seeks personal calm. We might see this reflected in the enigmatic smile usually seen on the Buddha's face.

A religion with a cross, with a man dying, with stories of betrayal, sell outs, denials, scape-goating, intrigue, treachery is quite something else.

And yet some how I am drawn back to the cross. Maybe it is only the way I was raised. But I hope it is something more. To me the God of the cross is the God who has some real connection to the world as I know it. I remember my aunt's friend Herta Rosendorf who was in a German concentration camp. I think of my college room-mate "Sonny" Ruth who died in Vietnam. I think of battered wives who have come to talk with me – covered with visible bruises. I remember parishioners in terrible pains, with rare diseases, often lonely and forgotten.

For such people, and they are legion, to suggest a simple smile and inner peace does not seem a strong enough response for the conflicts they are living out. Instead a God of the cross offers empathy, struggle, identification, and an imagination focused on change. There is something about seeking inner peace which blesses and endorses the status quo, and fails to challenge the world with the possibility of real change, resurrection.

Indeed the cross is more than just a symbol. And it is more than what Jesus happened to experience on a given day in 30 AD, for whatever reason. Cross living is actually a method of living, a way of responding to the world that Jesus actually encourages to take up. "Take up your cross daily and follow me."

Thomas a Kempis, the fifteenth century mystic wrote:

"There will always be many who love Christ’s heavenly kingdom, but few who will bear his cross. Jesus has many who desire consolation, but few who care for adversity. He finds many to share his table, but few who will join him in fasting. Many are eager to be happy with him; few wish to suffer anything for him. Many will follow him as far as the breaking of the bread, but few will remain to drink from his passion. Many are awed by his miracles, few accept the shame of his cross."2

Indeed most of us get involved in religion or stay in because of the advantages it gives us. We enjoy the people and the friends. We love the music and singing or intellectually sparring with the sermons. Its nice to help a few hungry or homeless people from time to time. Plus its like being part of an historical society, as we keep up an old building and its traditions. But what does this have to do with following Jesus? What has this to do with taking up a cross?

How many of us are actually ready to leave our boats by the lakeside and take on a new job? How many of us could respond to the request to the rich young ruler to sell everything and give to the poor? How many of us are willing to be seen publicly with difficult people, troubled people, prostitutes, strange lunatics who live on the fringe of society and eat locusts, and dangerous foreigners – like Samaritans? How many of us are willing to become refugees in Egypt because we disagree with the national policies of our nation? How many of us are willing to publicly argue with powerful people like Caiaphas? How many of us are willing to imagine that there might be limits on what "belongs to Caesar?"

How many of us are willing to break local custom and eat on the Sabbath? How many of us are willing to hug people with strange diseases? How many of us grow angry with the money changers and the money powers in the center courts of our cities?

The way of the cross is a difficult way. It is no wonder that many people prefer a religion of quiet smiles.

But don’t kid yourself, the way of plastic smiles is not the way to avoid pain, conflict, disaster. Say you avoid all the conflicts of the world, and place yourself in a hermetically sealed jar of peace and light. Death will still come. Rioting crowds may get to your neighborhood. Untested food may show up in your diet, pollutants of all varieties may intrude your air. Death, intrigue, and violence may knock down your doors, break the jar and hurt your loved ones. "Arrange and order everything to suit your desires and you will still have to bear some kind of suffering, willingly or unwillingly."3

So we have a choice. We can try to avoid suffering, and experience it anyway. Or we can assume it will be with us – take it on – live it in. As Bonhoeffer says of Jesus, we can decide to drink the chalice set in front of us.

So says Thomas, "Take up your cross, therefore, and follow Jesus, and you will inherit eternal life. Behold in the cross is everything, and upon your dying on the cross everything depends. There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the cross. Go where you will, seek what you want, you will not find a higher way, nor a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the cross."4

Jump into life. Risk yourself in dangerous places. Enter into profound and pregnant possibility for the world. True, be as wise as serpents and harmless as doves. But do it with blazing direction, unshakable goal, and wonderful hope. Do not merely admire Jesus,5 follow him. Amen.

1 – Stott, John, quoted by Peter Kreeft in Shared Hells, (in Bread and Wine, Plough Publishing Company, Farmington, PA, 2003, pp.156-161.), p. 156.
2 – a Kempis, Thomas, The Royal Road, (in Bread and Wine, ob.cit., pp.36-42), p.36.
3 – Ibid., p.39.
4 – Ibid.
5 – An allusion to a principle set forth by Soren Kierkegaard in Followers, Not Admirers, (in Bread and Wine, ob.cit., pp.55-60)