Episodes
Sunday Aug 31, 2014
Take It Up Together
Sunday Aug 31, 2014
Sunday Aug 31, 2014
Take It Up Together
A meditation shared by Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, August 31, 2014, the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 16:21-26
The call of Jesus to those first disciples is our call today: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Now there is much that can be said about this teaching of Jesus—much more than we have time to explore today. But I’d like for us to consider for a few moments what it means to “take up our cross.”
Let’s begin by identifying some of what it doesn’t mean. This teaching of Jesus is not primarily about an individual’s personal problems. This personal application can lead to a trivialization of the teaching. For example, someone could complain about their crummy commute to work as “the cross they have to bear.” I’m not suggesting that a long, crummy commute isn’t difficult; but I don’t believe that such things are what Jesus had in mind when he asks us to follow him by taking up our cross. The other problem with applying this teaching of Jesus to individuals is that it allows the interpretation of “take up your cross” to be that we are required to endure suffering or abuse, that we must suffer alone, in silence, because this is the “cross” we have been given to bear. This interpretation of Jesus’s teaching can keep persons in situations and cycles of abuse. An abusive relationship is not, in any way, a life-giving, life-affirming situation (which is what Jesus is ultimately describing in the teaching). To “deny yourself” is not about allowing someone to emotionally or physically do you harm. Any interpretation of this word of scripture that suggests otherwise is not of God.
Jesus’ admonition to “deny self and take up our cross and follow” is not ultimately about individuals. It has deeply personal implications, of course. But ultimately what Jesus calls us to do is to see ourselves in relationship to something larger than just our individual daily rounds. The invitation is to follow Jesus into the drama of God’s saving work in the world. And that drama is and always has been played out in community FOR community. The cross is about the saving work of God for all people. From the beginning of what we call salvation history, God has called a holy PEOPLE (for a purpose!). Yes, individual leaders have been called to serve among the people, leaders like Moses and Peter; but the story of God’s saving work has always been about how to live TOGETHER. The cross stands at a crucial point in salvation history. It is the ultimate symbol of God’s self-giving love, and of the lengths to which our God goes to accomplish reconciliation and to restore wholeness—between God and humankind and between broken humanity. Jesus calls people to follow him, and teaches us how to love each other, how to live humbly and justly and peacefully with each other, how to listen for God’s voice of wisdom through prayer so that we would be able to be who we are for each other. God’s saving work is about more than just our individual, personal salvation—God’s salvation is this vision of people being reconciled one to the other and living in peace and mercy and justice TOGETHER. And Jesus took up his cross for the sake of this vision of God’s salvation; he took up his cross every time he challenged the ways of the world that said that people should be ignored because they are poor and when they are blamed for their poverty, when he challenged the powers that taught that the sick and suffering were untouchable, when he loved the despised, when he honored the children as real people worthy of his time, when he chose nonviolence in the face of violence, when he confronted the conceit of those who claimed that they had God all figured out. Jesus was crucified because he loved God’s people and wanted us to learn how to receive that love and then to love and care for each other.
And so the cross that we are called to take up is that same cross. It has everything to do with living together in love and mercy and compassion and justice, with sharing our lives with others generously and freely, with doing the harder thing for the sake of the greater good. This is not something that we do on our own, this taking up our cross. The cross we take up is something that we can only learn, can only achieve in community with each other. // One day, my colleague walked into his church’s fellowship hall as some church members were preparing for a Lenten Passion Play. The place was alive with activity; folks were building props and rehearsing their parts. The pastor looked over to one corner of the room and saw a life-sized cross made of real trunks of trees. Its beams were rough and a bit crooked, as some trees often are. He commented about what a powerful cross it was to the men who were working nearby. One of the men said, “Yeah, I’m going to carry it in the play and I’m glad it really turned out well. But you know we created it out of Styrofoam and paper mache´. If it were the real thing, I’d never be able to manage it.” We, as individuals, would never be able to manage the cross alone. It is simply too heavy. We are called to take up the cross together, which means that we are to follow Jesus’ Way of living and loving and serving.
The church is our primary place to learn how to follow Jesus Christ, not just to learn with our heads, but to learn through what we do, how we act, how we treat one another. We need each other—to support us when we are struggling, to encourage us to take risks and to develop and offer our gifts, to hold us accountable when we lose sight of the larger vision, to celebrate with us when signs of the Kin-dom break in. We get to practice together the ways of giving, loving, serving, risking that Jesus models for us as we create and live in Christian community. And, like Jesus, we will be tempted to “opt out,” to turn away from the hard work of risking love, of being about the work of reconciliation, and of standing up to injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. But, oh, how the world needs us to take up the cross together and continue to carry it with gentleness, with strength, and with love. It has been a long, hard summer in our world. We are so far from living the vision of God’s Reign of peace and justice that Jesus lived and died to establish. But we are assured that as we offer our lives in service to that vision, not only will we gain life if its truest and fullest sense, but we will also ourselves be a sign of hope for others.
The founder of the Taizé community in France, Brother Roger, once said, “Since my youth, I think that I have never lost the intuition that community life could be a sign that God is love, and love alone” (God is Love Alone, GIA Publications, 2014) That is what it means to take up the cross—to be (like the cross itself) a sign that God is love. In a world so broken, let us now enter into a time of extended prayer, through music and word, taking up the cross together, making this Christian community through our prayer today and through all our life a tangible sign for all people that “God is love, and love alone…”
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