I have found in my vocation that people are eager to share things with me: books they have found important, bulletins and publications from other churches, inspirational tracts that have come their way, and, in recent years, things they forward to me by e-mail. Often the e-mail begins with an apology in words similar to these – “I don’t usually forward these things, but this one I really like. I hope you do, too.” Often I do. I can’t read or listen to everything that comes my way, but I can usually tell quickly if it has some bearing on my current thoughts and interests.
That’s how one day last week began. I opened my e-mail inbox and found at the top a message from Casey Morriss whose family I spoke about a few minutes ago. Though the Morrisses are about to settle on a new Presbyterian church home in Terre Haute, they certainly still have emotional connections with us. And it was in that way that Casey began his message to me. “I just heard a story on NPR that I found moving,” he wrote, “and I needed to share it with someone. I thought of you.”
Well, what an honor. And it always is. When someone finds something that speaks to his or her spirit and reaches out to share it with me. Thank you if you’ve done that. So often something slipped into my mailbox or sent electronically finds its way not only into my thoughts but into a sermon I’m challenged to write. Thanks, Casey!
Perhaps you heard this story on “All Things Considered” on NPR if you’re a regular listener. It’s about a man named Chester Cook, a Methodist pastor whose congregation is made up of the employees and travelers passing through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. The commentator enjoyed suggesting that the Rev. Cook might have the largest congregation in the world: 56,000 airport employees and a half million travelers every day.
The story tells how Chaplain Cook begins each day just by hanging around the re-ticketing counter. He knows he’ll find people there who need help. Like the elderly woman whose plane has been changed and her seat number doesn’t even exist anymore. She’s beside herself with anxiety. Or the young woman who has flown to Atlanta to meet someone who hasn’t shown up and probably never will. There are runaways and victims of abuse trying to escape. There are people who don’t have the change-of-flight fee; the chaplain’s fund provides remedy for such emergencies.
Many who need help are servicemen and women on their way back to Iraq or Afghanistan for yet another tour of duty. The chaplain tells of one who the night before had stood on the third-story rooftop of a building ready to jump. His wife had left him, taking the children with her, and he was about to risk his life for a third time in the Middle East, far from any home he’d known. Chaplain Cook spent the better part of the day trying to convince the young soldier that he might still have a good reason to keep living. But as they parted he couldn’t be sure he’d been successful. In those instances particularly he counts on the grace of God. And then he goes home and tries to get a good night’s sleep to re-charge himself for whom he will meet the next day.
I could understand why Casey found this story moving, for I know him well enough to know that we share a Christian vision of living not just for ourselves but for others. And I use this story this morning to issue a challenge to all of us on this first Sunday of a new season. But I turn to the Gospel for the best words I know for such a challenge – the words of Jesus himself: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
Take up your cross, the Master said. That’s a line from an old hymn that our grandparents and their grandparents before them have been singing for generations, for we know all too well about Jesus and his cross and the cross he had in mind for us. Or do we? Let’s get this straight at the outset. “Picking up one’s cross” is not accepting just any burden, like a difficult relative or even a serious illness. The cross we pick up is not something that simply comes upon us without our participation.
Jesus’ cross was not arbitrary punishment by the political or religious authorities, though they conspired to do him in. Jesus’ cross was a natural outcome of the way he lived his life, which essentially was a willingness to put God’s will first and his own self-interest second. I can say that a lot more easily than he lived it. That’s for sure. But when Jesus tells us to deny ourselves and pick up our cross, he means at the least to take ourselves out of the center of the universe and to put God in.
That is, we must give up thinking that the goal of our life is our own pleasure and safety, without regard for others. Regard for others is among the first motivations that cause us to bend down and willingly, of our own free will, pick up the cross of concern for the general good as much as for our own. In today’s reading from Mark Jesus tells his disciples that they are indeed called to be prepared to share in the fate of the one they follow, and to recognize that it is there that true life is found.
And herein lies one of the great paradoxes of our Christian faith: that in suffering we often find real and true life. One of the reasons that is true is that God promises redemption through suffering, resurrection after crucifixion. A dear friend who is battling a serious illness right now yet has the resoluteness of faith to acknowledge that without the disease she wouldn’t be treasuring the relationships that have grown because of it. Her cross is not the disease itself but the willingness to engage it, open to God’s blessings even in her suffering.
And even death, our faith proclaims, is not the last word. New life springs up again after the forest has burned. The whole life cycle repeats itself. (Which, of course, is not to justify the arsonist’s fire; that’s a crime, not an act of God or of natural movements.)
Shocking, though, isn’t it, a faith that holds so central the tenet that suffering for others’ sake is not only efficacious but perhaps even necessary? What kind of scandalous faith is that? It’s the Christian faith, of course, when it is true to its founder and to the principles he taught us.
Those things are not always easy to understand, however, and even harder to live. Peter didn’t get it, did he? When he proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah he refuses to accept Jesus’ definition of what Messiah means. Peter may have the right title for Jesus, but he has the wrong understanding of what the title means for him. When Jesus declares “quite openly” that he is going to suffer and be rejected and killed, Peter does not want to listen. Peter does not want to hear about a suffering Messiah. He apparently is looking for a Messiah who will establish God’s rule on earth with power and authority and who will bring his followers glory and reward. But, enticing as that triumphal vision might be, even now and even for us, that is not Jesus’ way. And he lets Peter know that about as clearly as he can: “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Wow! Imagine yourself in Peter’s shoes. Not very pleasant, right? Well, my friends, that’s just where we stand – in Peter’s shoes. And Jesus is looking right in our eyes and challenging us to think of divine things, not of human things. I think we get it. It’s just a bit more difficult to live it.
But why not take a first – or next – step. Let’s try picking up the cross of self-denial and self-sacrifice. All of us have gifts to enable us. It need not be a heroic gesture in the conventional sense. We might begin simply by caring for someone who needs the touch of compassion, or by allowing ourselves to be chosen to make important decisions for the future of this church, or by enlisting in a cause toward making peace or relieving hunger or securing justice for the oppressed in society. There are more crosses to go around than there are people to pick them up, but more picked up than left to decay by the side of the road is yet another way of thinking about divine things rather than human things.
Come to think of it, we have any number of crosses even in this church that can be yours. Think of that call from the nominating committee in such a way, as an opportunity rather than a burden. You can make an impact on the life of this church for generations to come. You can help avoid mistakes others may have to correct later. Have you noticed the hallway that leads from the church office to the library and Loeffler Chapel? Have you seen how beautifully the original wood floor has been restored? It wasn’t easy to re-do. Somewhere along the line – perhaps in the era of “avocado green” and “harvest gold” – linoleum was put down over the wood. To level out uneven places they just filled in with glue and tar. To correct all that our own building people and the professional refinishers had to do some heavy scraping and sanding. But sometimes that’s what it takes to get back to where we should have always been.
On Friday afternoon a woman in the congregation called me. She had just received her Swarthmorean and was angry when she read that our local schools had postponed the address by the President to the children of the nation on the basis of scheduling. She didn’t believe that was the real reason, and she was angry. She wanted to share her anger with me. I get those sharing moments also. And I like them, too, for often they remind me of something that should already have stirred my ire.
Whether we agree or not with the school superintendent’s decision, the undeniable fact is that we are currently in an especially vitriolic time in our civil life. I would say discourse, but I have heard little discourse characterized by either good intention or civility around the large issues in which we are presently engaged. Much of the loudest noise comes from people who call themselves Christian. Jesus long ago said that we need to discern for ourselves who his true followers are, that not all who cry “Lord, Lord” are among those who follow him. One cross we are asked to pick up now is the one that challenges us to take a risk for Jesus’ sake even in the face of institutionalized opposition.
Perhaps that’s the one defining mark of any cross that Jesus offers us. It involves risk. It requires taking a risk for Jesus’ sake. I received an e-mail a few days ago from my friends at the Covenant Network. They told of the recent trial of one of our Presbyterian pastors before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Presbytery of Boston. Yes, such things do happen in our denomination. The gist of it is this: as you probably know, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts marriage between two people of the same sex is legal. And do not think of this as a distant or remote issue, far from here. As a matter of fact, a daughter of this congregation has had her same-gender relationship confirmed in marriage in Massachusetts’ civil law, though not blessed by the church.
What happened in the case I refer to, however, is that one of our pastors in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), despite the definition of marriage in our Book of Order as being only between a man and a woman, agreed to marry two women in her congregation in accordance with civil law. For that she was brought up on charges before the Permanent Judicial Commission of her presbytery. She took quite a risk for those two people who she felt were committed to a lifelong relationship that should be offered God’s blessing. She felt that her allegiance to Jesus Christ mandated that she go beyond church definition even if it meant risking her position and her ordination vows. Surprisingly, perhaps, the PJC agreed with her, saying that our Book of Order does not contain “mandatory language that would prohibit a Minister of Word and Sacrament from performing a same-gender marriage.”
That was good news for those of us who share the Massachusetts pastor’s views, but it only reminds us of the risks we continue to have to take in picking up our own cross and being ready to suffer for Christ’s sake. If this happened to me, I guess I could always hang out at the Philadelphia airport. God knows there are people there who need any help they can get.
The challenge to take up your cross, whatever cross it is, is yours, as well, all of ours, if we want to walk the walk that proceeds necessarily from the talk we talk. Amen.