Lent 2, Year B

Genesis 17: 1–7, 15-16; Psalm 22: 22-30; Romans 4: 13-25; Mark 8: 31-38

A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John's Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 1, 2015.

“THE WAY OF THE CROSS, THE WAY OF LIFE AND PEACE”

(Homily text:  Mark 8: 31 - 38)

Jesus said, “If any would become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

The story is told of a shopper who came into a store, looking for the jewelry counter.  Once there, the shopper is greeted by a member of the sales staff, who asks if they need any help.  The shopper says in reply, “Yes, I’m looking for a cross.”  The sales associate says, “Please come this way, they’re down here at the end of the display case….now what are you looking for?  Do you want a plain cross, or one with the little man on it?”

If your reaction to this story is anything like mine, perhaps you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry….or maybe to do both.

            This story tells us a lot about our understanding of the meaning of the cross: 

·         For one thing, we’ve made the cross into an object of beauty….we create crosses out of precious metals.  We adorn crosses with jewels and precious stones.  We make elaborate designs out of our crosses.  (Please note that I’m not saying that doing such things is a bad thing, so long as we don’t lose sight of the basic meaning of the cross.)

·         For another, many on our society today don’t know who the “little man” is on the cross.  The reason for that is that many in our society don’t know who Jesus is.  (I suspect that number would include some who are in our churches.)

The meaning of the cross wasn’t at all obscure to those who heard Jesus say, “Take up your cross and follow me.”  For those first century hearers, the meaning of the cross was quite clear, for the threat of crucifixion was – most likely – an ever-present reality for them.

This assertion needs a bit of explanation.

The Romans didn’t invent crucifixion (it was invented many centuries earlier), but they were, perhaps, the most famous and frequent practitioners of this most awful way of executing someone.

This method of execution was reserved for slaves, conquered peoples (like the Jews) and for those who had been convicted of treason.  A Roman citizen could not (except in cases of treason) be crucified.  (Of course, it should be noted that the Romans could invent any number of other awful ways of killing someone other than by crucifixion, as the annals of the early Christian martyrs bear witness.)

And so it is quite likely that many of Jesus’ hearers on the day that He made the comment about taking up one’s cross knew exactly what taking up one’s cross involved.  It’s likely that many, if not most, of them had witnessed a crucifixion, or had passed by the upright poles to which the crossbeams were attached, for many road intersections had such poles standing in silent witness to the reality of crucifixion.  It may even have been possible that the bodies of crucified persons were still hanging on their crosses, waiting to be seen by anyone who passed by…..The Romans used crucifixion as state-sponsored terrorism.  It was their way of keeping subjected peoples in line.  Put another way, it was the Romans’ way of saying, “Step out of line, and we’ve got a place (on a cross) reserved for you.”

To find oneself on a cross meant:

·         The loss of all things:  dignity, possessions (including clothing…remember that Jesus’ garments were parceled out to the soldiers by the casting of lots), family and friends, and finally, life itself.

·         A descent to the depths of shame, and a descent into a state of complete and utter helplessness.

·         A slow descent into death, which allowed the crucified one time to contemplate the trajectory of events that had brought them to their place on a cross.

If it is true that – in our contemporary culture – much of the meaning of the cross has been obscured (as our opening story attempts to point out), then what does the cross mean to us as Christian believers today?

St. Paul offers us an explanation.  Writing in the last chapter of his letter to the Galatians, he says this:  “Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  (Galatians 6: 14)

What Paul is saying is that the cross of Christ creates a barrier, a boundary, which now separates him from all that the world meant formerly, and all that the world might now mean, to him.

Paul will express this reality in another way, as we read in Romans, chapter six.  There, he says this about the boundary line which has been created by our passage through the waters of baptism:  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”  (Romans 6: 3 – 4)

And so, if we apply the observations that we made a moment ago about the meaning of the cross to our current struggle to live into the reality that we have died with Christ in a death like His in baptism, in order that we might rise to a new life in a resurrection like His, then perhaps we can make the following observations about our Christian life from that perspective:

·         The loss of all things:  We must be willing to allow ourselves to let loose of everything and anything that might hinder our walk with God. That means that our relationships to the things we possess (including our relationships to other people, the objects we own, e.g.) will change.  No, it doesn’t mean – for most of us anyway – that we will give away all the objects that we own, or that we will our relationships to other people will end completely (though some Christians are called to do just that), but it does mean that we must alter our understanding that everything we own, everything we possess, is held with the understanding that we might be called to either be willing to lose it entirely, or to put it to use in service to God and to others.  As the saying goes, “There are no U Hauls in heaven.”  For the reality is that, once this life is over and done, the only thing that will remain is our relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ.

·         Shame and utter helplessness:  If we’re willing to be honest about it, our spiritual condition, absent God’s intervention in the person of Jesus Christ, is one in which we are called to admit our shamefulness and our helplessness in being able to rescue ourselves from our slavery to sin. The only thing we have to offer to God in this condition is ourselves, complete with the reality that we are totally and completely dependent upon God for rescue.

·         A slow descent into death:  The Christian life is a constant struggle, as our old ways of thinking and living seek to maintain their hold on our attitudes and behaviors.  And yet, the cross calls us to allow those things to die in us. The cross calls us to recognize the reality that, if we are willing to face the death of those things, we will find ourselves rising to new life in Christ.  Out of this death arises a new being, created in the image of Christ, imbued with a new way of thinking, being and believing.  This slowly unfolding dying process allows us time to consider just how it is that we have come to this place in our faith life, and to consider our helplessness in being able to fix that problem ourselves, as we’ve just said.

Lent offers us a chance to face death squarely, head-on.  This holy season allows us to let those things that create boundaries between us and God to die away, in order that new life might arise in us as we greet the Lord’s rising from the tomb on Easter Sunday morning.  We claim this power of God to be the power that can raise us to new life, conquering all those death-creating circumstances that would suffocate the breath of faith in us.

Thanks be to God!

            

AMEN.