|
The Rev. Frank Logue
The Crossroads “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” These words of advice from Yogi Berra point us to the same turning point that Jesus’ words bring us to this morning. “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It is a crossroads for all how have been following Jesus up to this point as Mark tells us, “Then Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.” Whatever the disciples think their mission is, Jesus now tells them that they are headed toward his death. He does say he will rise again, but that’s not what they hear. They hear suffering and death. We know this because Peter reacts by taking Jesus off to the side in order to scold his teacher for talking like this. Jesus then looks back to the rest of the disciples and gives a scolding of his own saying, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” This is a key for this whole scene at a crossroads. When Peter tries to stop Jesus from talking about his own suffering and death, Jesus tells Peter to set his mind on divine things rather than human things. Then he goes on to say some very tough words, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? This is the point in following Jesus when it would be tempting to just sort of drop back in the line when walking, let the others get ahead for a while, and then turn around and go home. Jump off this train bound for Calvary and crucifixion before things ever get that far. Walk on back home to worry about tending fishing nets, or collecting taxes, or whatever it was you were doing before Jesus said, “Follow me.” It is interesting that none of the twelve took this option. Jesus knew the men he picked when he picked them, for not one of them turned their backs on Jesus when he started to talk about his death. They tried to misunderstand. They wondered if he were talking in metaphor or analogies, like the man who goes out and sows seeds, but really he is a preacher spreading the Good News of Jesus. In that same way, they wondered what Jesus meant by suffering and death and rising again. But whatever, they thought, the disciples kept following. Yet, Yogi Bera might have pointed out that this was the fork in the road and they should take it. Knowing that following Jesus means taking up one’s own cross should have been a clue. If taking up your cross doesn’t sound difficult enough, imagine taking up one’s hangman’s noose or one’s electric chair, or one’s firing squad and following Jesus. To make matters worse, Jesus applies this to anyone who wants to become his follower. Today we baptize young Jonathan Feeley into Christ’s Body, the Church. If it wasn’t already clear that baptism is as ritual drowning as ritual bathing, this passage should make that clear. Baptism is ritual bathing as in baptism we are washed clean of our sins. Yet baptism is also ritual drowning in that we are united with Christ in his death and come out of the waters united with Christ in his resurrection. That’s all well and good until we tell young Jonathan that he is to take up his cross, or noose, or electric chair, or firing Squad and jump in line behind us all as we march off to our deaths. The only good news for Jonathan is that none of the rest of us is doing that. We are not marching off to our deaths. While in many places this morning, there are Christians whose faith puts them at risk of death, that is not true for us. Christians in the Sudan, or India, or any one of a number of other nations face persecution and possible death for following Jesus, we don’t face anything quite so drastic as a moment of decision in which we must deny Christ or die. This passage in Mark’s Gospel was written at a time when following Jesus put one at odds with the Roman Empire and the Empire didn’t mind lining up crossing along the roadside until the populace fell in line with what Rome wanted. If the disciples had been really listening and understanding that day, they would have not been so surprised that nearly all of them would be put to death for their faith in Jesus. The sole exceptions seem to have been Judas who hanged himself and John who faced persecution, but died of natural causes well advanced in years. All those who followed Jesus faced persecution. Most of the early leaders faced death. Jesus’ call was not a metaphor. Those who followed him may as well realize that they had just shouldered their own cross and were now following him to death. Jesus did not, however, call his disciples to suffer for nothing. He didn’t ask them to simply suffer. He pointed to carrying their cross. This was a specific way of suffering. This was the Empire of Rome’s response to put anything but Rome as the foundation for one’s security and safety. Jesus was showing his followers that if the divine agenda was going to come first that the Roman agenda could be to make them suffer for it. Try to live and love as God wants you to and the Empire might strike back. (Okay. That was painful, I know.) So how then do we hear these words this morning? If we do not likely face persecution or death for following Jesus, do his words “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” hold no meaning for us? Often this saying gets watered down by calling nuisances or difficulties the cross I bear. If you have ongoing difficulties with your parents, you can say that’s a cross I bear. Or you can call your cross trouble in raising your kids, or problems with your job or something else quite minor in the grand scheme of things and more or less unrelated to the fact that you say you are following Jesus. Whatever, we mean by taking up our cross and following Jesus, it can’t just mean deal with the minor problems and annoyances of life and follow me. Fred Craddock wrote for the journal Leadership that by way of analogy we can see our lives as worth $1,000. Of course, your worth is measureless, but for sake of analogy and a number with which we can work, let’s accept $1,000. He writes, “We think giving our all to the Lord is like taking a $1,000 bill and laying it on the table—‘Here’s my life Lord. I’m giving it all.’” He goes on to write, But the reality for most of us is that he sends us to the bank and has us cash in the $1,000 for quarters. We go through life putting out 25 cents here and 50 cents there…Usually giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love, 25 cents at a time. We do not face persecution and death for the faith that brings us here to worship this morning. But that does not mean that the grace God has so freely given to us was not bought at a great price. Our salvation was costly and our loving response should not be cheap or free. We may not be called to pour out our lives in a great act of self-sacrifice as Jesus did. But we are called to respond to what Jesus has done by dying to our selves day by day. This does not mean losing yourselves in others, or trying to become someone else’s savior. It does mean loving others and changing how you live in response to divine will instead of just doing what you want. I have tried to teach this before in different ways. I remember years ago wanting to show how we should let what happens in church infuse our whole week. I talked about how families can lose their religion on the way to church trying to get everyone up and dressed and in the car and all the way through these doors on time. No matter what happened on the morning or en route, the children would all look like angels once on church soil. I bagged up dirt from the yard here at the church and offered to send it home to spread on the yard at home as silly sign that we are to act at home as we do at church. I didn’t consider how little baggies of dirt might not look innocent to law enforcement. But we didn’t run into any trouble with the Empire that week. I did later that day wonder about a scene in which someone would get pulled over for some traffic violation. The policeman would see a baggie full of a suspicious substance and not trust the driver that claimed the baggie to contain dirt from the church yard. Then in the style of TV cops, one policeman would dip a finger into the bag. The other would ask, “cocaine? Heroin?” No the taste tester would reply, “Topsoil.” Probably not my best teachable moment. This week, I wish I could send everyone out in clericals. Everyone would get nice black shirts and white dog collars and I would send you out into the world this week to see how folks treat you once you are marked quite visibly as someone who intends to be serious about your faith in Jesus Christ. You find in a collar both that you know you can’t honk your horn and yell at others in traffic, or give that signal that I think means “You’re number one, or something like that.” You will discover also that no one is going to tell you an inappropriate joke or cuss around you. Wearing a collar changes things. But why? Shouldn’t we all live out the faith that is in us so that it changes the way people react to us? Shouldn’t we all be marked somehow by our faith in Jesus? Taking up our cross and following him still holds some meaning. For if we really follow Jesus in such a way as to really change how we act each day, then others will notice. A tea bag infuses the tea into all of the water in a cup. If we really let the faith that is in us infuse our whole week there will be a noticeable difference in our lives. This path may not lead to suffering and death in the way that Jesus suffered and died, but if we have taken the fork in the road that Jesus took, then it will lead to a difference that others will notice. We don’t get the gift of dying for Jesus in which we only make one decision not to deny him when faced with death and then all is over. Instead, we are given the choice to follow him in such a way that we have to see how our every day lives can be lived differently because we are Christ followers. We don’t put the $1,000 down all at once. Instead we pour out our lives 25 cents and 50 cents at a time, with acts of love and self sacrifice that show our faith in Jesus to all the people in our lives. If we do this, the people in our lives will see that when we came to the fork in the road, we took it and that we took the path at the crossroads that led us to follow Jesus more closely in our actions as well as in words. Amen.
|
|
