Sermon for February 28, 2021 – Second Sunday in Lent

“Taking up your cross – believing, trusting and acting.”

Let us bow our heads in prayer.  Holy and gracious God, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us and in all the locations we are gathered this day.  Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

The Gospel passage that you have just heard from Mark has equivalence in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke as well.  And all three of them share this line, “If you want to become my followers (or disciples) deny yourself, and take up you cross, and follow me.”  They’re probably familiar words to most of us – we’ve heard them read in church enough.  But what do they mean, because a cross was a cruel instrument of death that the Romans used?  So perhaps, in its extreme, what Jesus is saying may be that we have to become martyrs – dying for being Christian.  Now, for most of us, thankfully, that’s very much the exception in our day and age rather than the rule.  So what does it mean then for us - “to take up our cross”?

Often, in a kind of colloquial way, it’s interpreted as referring to the difficulties we have to be willing to bear, to live with - things like cranky and difficult bosses – people saying ‘it’s a good job but this is the cross I have to bear.’  Or, perhaps it’s a cranky mother-in-law, or a son-in-law, that you have difficulty dealing with, and you refer to them, out of their presence of course, as “my cross to bear.”  So it becomes interpreted as difficult people and difficult situations that we have to live with because we’re trying to be patient and nice.  Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Jesus or Mark’s Gospel is referring to.

In this scene, Jesus has just chastised, strongly, his head lead disciple, Peter.  He’s done it publicly because Peter was trying to reinterpret what Jesus’ path as the Messiah should look like.  Jesus has just described the sacrificial life that lay ahead, including his execution.  And now, in no uncertain terms, he says, “If you want to be my disciple, take up your cross”, and in Luke’s Gospel adds, “daily” – “take up your cross daily and follow me.”  Now if this journey of Jesus that he has laid out was a show on television, it would earn one of those labels: “contains scenes of violence and mature adult themes.  Viewer discretion is advised.”  So what, just what, does it mean for 21st century disciples like us?

Well we need to go back to today’s First Reading from Genesis – part of the story in which God, Abraham and Sarah interact, because that’s where it starts - the ancient peoples.  In those cultures, they were big on the notion of making covenants.  Because if you could make a covenant with your neighbouring nations, you could live next to them safely and in peace.  There would be an understanding and good will between you.  And if you were really fortunate, God could enter into covenant with you as well.  Last week we read a little passage near the end of the Noah story and the flood.  And God covenants with all of humanity not to repeat the annihilation of the flood, and puts the rainbow in the sky as a sign of his covenant.

In today’s reading, God is going to covenant with Abram.  This is what he says, “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you, throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant - to be God to you and to your offspring after you.  God promises to make Abraham an ancestor of a multitude of nations.  He gives him a new name – Abram becomes Abraham – because that’s what his new name means – “ancestor of a multitude of nations.”  And in this new relationship, God will ensure God’s promise by giving Abraham and Sarah a son which they do not have – an heir – even though Sarah has been barren all of her life and Abraham is 99 years old.  And notice in this story that everyone gets a new name.  You can’t tell it in English, but the name that God reveals for God’s self in Hebrew is El Shaddai.  It means “God Almighty”, and it is new to Abraham and to the book of Genesis. Abram becomes Abraham; Sarai becomes Sarah.  This is a new, personal, and everlasting relationship in this covenant God has made.

Now we move on a few centuries and Moses and the Hebrew people trace their ancestry back to this same Abraham and Sarah.  They claimed as the People of God to be in this covenant and they now frame this covenant in the Law, given to Moses and the Exodus people. 

In today’s 2nd reading, St. Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, gives us a lot more detail about this covenant with God and how to understand it.  It is unconditional, but in order for it to be fulfilled, Abraham and Sarah have to believe it; they have to trust it, and they have to act on it.  Here’s Saint Paul’s words – he says speaking of Abraham, “He did not weaken in faith but when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead for he was about 100 years old, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb, no distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.  Now this sounds really gallant and glorious doesn’t it?  So what was the great deed he had to do?  He and Sarah had to make love – they had to attempt to have a child after decades of not being able to conceive.  They believed God; they trusted God, and they acted on it.  And Paul states the conclusion from the Genesis account, “Therefore, his faith (Abraham’s faith) was reckoned to him as righteousness” by God.  Abraham’s faith put into action cemented his relationship with God in covenant love.

Then Paul makes a connection for us to the disciples of Jesus Christ – both the 1st century disciples and the 21st century disciples.  He says these words, “Now the words ‘it was reckoned to him’ (Abraham) were written not for his sake alone but for ours also.  It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus, our Lord, from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”  We are included in the same covenant of love via Jesus Christ.  God’s gift of his life, death, resurrection and ascension is the demonstrable act of love for us and for all creation.

Now Jesus, himself, first fulfilled God’s covenant.  He believed God’s call on his life; he trusted it, and acted on it, even though it involved his own persecution and eventually execution.  He put accepting and obeying God’s will for his life first, before any human will he might have had – he ‘took up his cross.’  And the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to do the same thing.  Jesus says, “if any want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  Now the word that we translate as ‘deny’ can also mean ‘disown’, and that may actually be a more accurate way of understanding it.  It means ‘giving up my right to my life’ and placing it – myself – in God’s hands.  And to do that we have to do what Abraham and Sarah did; what Jesus did; and what St. Paul did and taught.  First – believe in the covenant of God’s love – that God loves you and me perfectly and eternally – that God’s will for each of us will be good and loving.  Trust in that covenant love – that God will be entirely and eternally faithful to you and to me.  And then act on that trust.  For instance, it’s one thing on an early winter morning to stand on the shore of a frozen lake and say, “Oh I believe the ice is thick enough to walk on.”  It’s another to act and walk out on the lake and trust that the ice is thick enough.

That action of ‘taking up our cross’ and acting is denying or disowning our right to our own life and entrusting ourselves to God’s will.  We say it every time we say the Lord’s Prayer – “thy will be done.”  But sometimes that choice to receive and accept and act on God’s will involves sacrifice – putting another’s needs ahead of our own; refraining from retaliating when we’ve been hurt; choosing the higher ground; not insisting on getting our own way; making the move to extend grace and forgiveness to someone else, whether they’ve asked for it, or deserve it, or not.

This is taking up your cross and following Jesus – believing that God is leading you, showing you the way in your life; trusting that the love of God is providing the grace and strength to sustain you; and acting on that trust by disowning your right to your life and placing it in God’s hands.  That is what Jesus did, and God was completely and totally faithful to him.  That is what you and I need to do.  God will be completely and totally faithful in that same love for us.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.