Genesis 17: 1 – 7, 15 – 16 / Psalm 22: 22 – 30 / Romans 4: 13 – 25 / Mark 8: 31 – 38
This is the homily prepared for St. John’s,
Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker for Sunday, February 21, 2021.
“TAKE UP OUR WHAT?”
(Homily text:
Mark 8: 31 - 38)
“Take up our what?
“Take up our cross,” our Lord says to us this morning, at the outset
of the holy season of Lent, adding, “and follow me”.
My former Bishop tells the story of a time when he
was in a store, and he wandered over to the jewelry counter, where he was
looking at crosses. The young member of the sales staff comes up and says, “May
I help you, sir?” The Bishop replied, “I was looking at these crosses,” to
which the young lady says, “Oh, okay, do you want one with the little man on
it, or a plain one?”
The interchange my former Bishop had at that
jewelry counter that day can tell us a lot about the overall religious
consciousness of our society: Many in our society today have little or no knowledge
of the Good Friday and Easter story. (My, don’t we have a lot of work to do to
tell that story to those who don’t know it?) I also think it can tell us a lot
about how we view the symbol of the cross, for we often make good-looking
jewelry in the shape of various crosses. We adorn those pieces of art with
jewels or precious stones, occasionally. Crosses are often made of gold or
silver. They look nice.
But the disciples who heard the Lord speak the
words, “If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up
their cross, and follow me,” the cross was anything but a beautiful piece of
art, made of precious metals and adorned with expensive stones.
We don’t know for sure, but I think we can be
pretty sure that Jesus’ disciples knew full well what a cross was. They knew
what an ugly thing it was, in part because it represented Roman oppression and
the fact that those who wound up on a cross were members of a defeated,
conquered people. It’s possible that those disciples, walking the roadways of
the land, might have come upon a cross (or crosses) at a crossroads. Maybe
those crosses were just the uprights lacking the cross beam, standing silent
witness to anyone who would dare to confront Roman rule, standing witness as if
to say, “Try bucking Roman authority, and you’ll wind up here.” Maybe, even,
they’d seen a cross with a dead victim still hanging on it.
Perhaps, as they walked the land, and if they’d
come upon such a scene, they might have tried to avert their eyes. But they
couldn’t ignore the message and the horror that came with that message.
And perhaps, if they’d been fortunate enough not to
have ever seen such a sight, they might have heard about it from someone they
knew who had.
For the people living in the time of Jesus’ earthly
ministry, the cross, and the image and the reality the cross conveyed, were
very real. Isn’t it possible to imagine that there must’ve been a shudder that
went through the crowd when the Lord spoke those words about taking up one’s
own cross to follow Him? Perhaps so.
We’re at a turning point in Mark’s Gospel account
with the passage before us today.
Notice that Jesus said plainly what was going to happen to Him once He reached
Jerusalem (verse 32). The Lord’s prediction that He will suffer, will be
mocked, will be scourged, and will die, is the first of three such predictions
we find in Mark’s account.[1]
Up until now, the Lord had been very clear about
keeping His identity and His mission a secret.[2] Oftentimes
when He had done a healing, or had done some other work, He would tell those
who’d been involved not to say anything to anyone about it. But now, the secret
is disclosed, the mantle which had been wrapped around the Lord’s work has been
pulled off, making His purpose plain for all to see.
“Take up your cross, and follow me,” the Lord says,
because He’s just told us that that’s what He’s going to do in Jerusalem.
Let’s return to the raw meaning and symbolism of
the cross. Yes, I mean that ugly picture we painted a bit ago.
What did the cross involve? What did dying on a
cross involve?
Here is my own short list:
·
The loss of
everything, one’s dignity, one’s possessions, and perhaps one’s family and
friends (who’d deserted the victim). Crucifixion meant being utterly cut off
from everything.
·
A long,
slow, lingering and painful death, as the victim struggled against the forces
of gravity to breathe (I had a seminary professor who described crucifixion as
“drowning without the water”.)
·
Time between
the time the victim was nailed to the cross until they’d taken their last
breath (or until they lost consciousness) to think about why they’d wound up
where they had.
For us, as believing Christians, the cross has come
to mean so much more than the raw, ugly, reality that it was to those first
century people who’d encountered the Lord in Judea and in Galilee.
Over time, the theological and spiritual
significance of the cross has overtaken the ugly, original reality. Now, the
cross represents self-denial for us, the willingness to risk losing everything
for the sake of gaining new life in Christ. The cross represents the deepest of
all loves, that love that our Savior has for us, we who are often unloving and
unworthy of that divine love. After all, we need to remember the Lord’s words,
spoken in connection with this, His first prediction of His coming suffering
and death. Recall that He said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, will save it.”
The cross means being willing to face up to the
reality that we are to undergo a long, slow and often painful process of dying
to those things that do not bring credit to the Lord. (What a perfect Lenten
message!) Lent gives us plenty of time to think about that process, and to be
able, with God’s help, to stay the course, in order that new life might appear
on Easter Sunday morning
There is a wonderful Collect in our Prayer Book
which captures what we’ve been saying quite well. It’s a Collect for Fridays in
the Office of Morning Prayer. It reads like this:
Almighty
God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and
entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we,
walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life
and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
[1] The other two may be found at 9:30-31 and at 10:33–34.
[2] Biblical scholars often refer to this seemingly deliberate pattern in Mark’s account as the “Messianic Secret”. Mark 8:31 marks the change in the text.
