Take Up the Cross

August 28, 2005 (Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 17)

By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean

• Jeremiah 15:15-21
• Psalm 26 or 26:1-8
• Romans 12:1-8
• Matthew 16:21-27

(From The Lectionary Page)

In the past few weeks, in our town of Liberty, at several businesses, digital signs have replaced traditional signs. A digital sign allows you to immediately change a message. For example, Bartle Hall’s digital sign tells you what event is currently going on.

These new signs are of great to concern to many of us in Liberty, not because the older signs were necessarily more attractive. The concern is that all of the businesses installing new digital signs are gas stations, which now allows the price per gallon to be changed with the push of a button!

I am guessing that OSHA – the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – may be warning gas station owners to be aware of the alarming number of injuries being suffered by employees who must manually change numbers—not once a week as before—but daily, and I swear, within the hour of every time I fill up. Using those long poles with all those numbers, and bigger numbers to boot, must be creating a definite health hazard!

Signs and symbols are plentiful in our scriptures, in tradition, and in our liturgy. Today’s Gospel lesson presents a well-known admonition of Jesus: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Taking up the cross is a central theme of Lent. Self-denial, discipline, and suffering are generally associated with this theme.

But what else is a part of this symbol of the Cross?

We are in phase two of our wedding season here and I have read the wedding service many times lately. In the prayer book liturgy, after a couple has exchanged vows, been pronounced husband and wife, and following the litany of prayers, comes the nuptial blessing. That blessing begins: “Most gracious God, we give you thanks for your tender love in sending Jesus Christ to come among us, to be born of a human mother, and to make the way of the cross to be the way of life.” This is how the blessing of a marriage begins.

On Palm Sunday, once the palm procession has ended and the liturgy of the Passion is about to begin, the collect says: Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him and suffer death upon the cross…”

In two very different settings, Passion Sunday and at a celebration of holy matrimony, the tender love of God is tied to the cross.

So when Jesus tells us to take up the cross, we are being asked to take up God’s tender love for the human race, and show the way of the cross to be the way of life. At the Cross, God’s unconditional, sacrificial love defeated the sting of death, and transformed our greatest fear into the gate we pass through on our way home to God and eternal life.

Taking up the cross means to take up a total commitment to live for others, to see life as a series of unending opportunities to seek and serve Christ in all people.

As we make the Sign of the Cross in the liturgy, we trace upon ourselves a sign of how we are to relate to the world. As we bow to the Cross as it passes in procession, we bow to the supremacy of unconditional love, and accept that we are called to live out this same love in varied and creative ways.

Thomas Troeger writes that “today’s Gospel can either enslave us or liberate us. It will enslave us if we distort the meaning of the cross. There are two major forms of distortion.” (New Proclamation, Series A, 1999, pp202-3.)

The first is to turn the cross into a symbol of violence. (Ibid.) Crusaders wore the cross on shields; in England whether Catholics or reformers had the monarch’s favor, in the name of correct belief people were killed. The Nazi swastika is an ancient form of a cross, and the KKK’s burning of the cross still is a sign of hatred. In less obvious ways, the Cross of Christ has been used to justify the mistreatment and exclusion of others, and surely Jesus weeps.

The other major distortion of the Cross, Troeger writes, is perhaps even more insidious because it can appear in the guise of Christian devotion. It is the cross of passivity. We say of someone who suffers in an abusive relationship, or of a group that suffers injustice: “it is their cross to bear.” The cross cannot become a symbol that justifies passive acceptance of wrong. The cross should not excuse us from responding to evil, but inspire us to claim the justice and respect God wills for all people. (Ibid.)

To be liberated by taking up the cross, means to know that the ultimate outcome of carrying this cross is not being crushed by its weight nor a life of suffering or penance. The ultimate end of carrying the cross is resurrection and life. (Ibid.)

Beloved in Christ, let us enter deeply into comprehending that the way of the cross is the way of life. As we sign our selves with the Cross, may we be refreshed with the same tender love of God who sent Jesus Christ to be among us, and may that love be shared in our worship and work.

It is said that price of gasoline rises when the demand increases. Then let us lift high the Cross of Christ, for there is an unprecedented need and demand for God’s grace and unconditional love.

May we be truly free. Take up the cross.