September 3, 2023 + Lectionary 22 + Pr. Michelle Sevig
Today we hear some tough words from Jesus. Just last week, in the preceding verses from Matthew, Jesus calls Peter the Rock on which God will build the church. And today, just a few short verses later he tells Peter, “Get behind me satan!” What a switch! From The Rock to Satan.
Jesus is explaining to his followers just what it means that he is the Messiah; that he will undergo suffering and death and three days later rise again. But Peter doesn’t want to hear any talk about suffering and he gets a good scolding. And then come these mysterious words from Jesus: Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Those who lose their lives will find them.
Imagine what it would be like to lose everything. It’s actually not that hard to imagine lately. I watched in horror, as did many of you, the fires in Maui burn to ashes an entire community. Climate change continues to threaten communities all over the world with increased fires and floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, and earthquakes, increasing our anxiety and the threat of great loss. What would it look like to lose everything and start over? To be without our homes and our belongings?
Most of us will likely never experience a great loss due to a natural disaster, but all of us at some point will experience a great loss of some sort. We are not immune to the suffering of this world. Spiritual writer Richard Rohr contends that eventually all of us will have to “lose” at something. Eventually, there will be at least one situation that we “cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand.” We will be led to the edge of our resources. No longer able to depend on what we know or what we can will. It will feel like losing everything; like losing our lives. But it will also be the beginning of a spiritual adventure that will lead to an even deeper, more meaningful life.
On Wednesday this week during Bible Study, we asked each other, “What does it mean, these mysterious words of Jesus, to deny ourselves and take up the cross? To lose our lives, and in the process save them?”
Jesus is the one who loses everything for our sake, after all. The one who doesn’t repay evil with evil, but offers forgiveness to those who persecute him. To take up a cross as Jesus did is to stand, always, in the center of the world’s pain. Not just to glance in the general direction of suffering and then slide away, but to dwell there. To identify ourselves with those who are aching, weeping, screaming, and dying. To insist that our comfort isn't worth it unless the least and the lost can share in that comfort, too.
Taking up the cross means recognizing Christ crucified in every suffering soul and body that surrounds us, and pouring our energies and our lives into alleviating their pain — no matter what it costs. It means accepting — against all the lies of our culture — that we will die. It means following up that courageous acceptance with the most important question we can ask: Given my inevitable death, how shall I spend this brief, singular, God-breathed life?
I think we find the answer, at least some of it in the reading from Romans this morning. How shall we live our life to the fullest, knowing that we too are journeying to our own deaths? We are called to let love be genuine, hate what is evil, and hold fast to what is good. We are invited to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer. We are to extend hospitality not just to our friends, but even to strangers or those who are not typically welcomed. To take up the cross and deny self means we bless others, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep, and live in harmony with one another, and do not repay evil with evil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, activist, writer, and martyr during WWII, wrote challenging, oft-quoted words about the cost of discipleship in his book by the same name. He wrote, “As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death….the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. … As Christ bears our burdens, so ought we to bear the burdens of our fellow man (sic)…The call to follow Christ always means a call to share the word of forgiveness—the Christlike suffering that is the Christian’s duty to bear.”
In short, Christ calls us to die. He is our death and our life. We suffer with Christ by bearing the burdens of one another.
We come to this table with hands wide open. Life is filled with danger and risk. Over and over again we are called to let go and trust. And to receive gifts of grace that will sustain us amid anxiety and struggle. We are given a community of support. Words of hope. A meal that satisfies. And even empty silence that is full of promise.
Sometimes losing everything is what leads us to our truest selves. Or a deeper, simpler, fuller life. Sometimes losing everything means finding God.