“If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8.34).
When you read this, you should remember that Jesus said these words at least one or two years before His Crucifixion. It is sad that the Cross even then had become a symbol of a martyr’s death: it is a “double symbol,” in that the Cross was the martyr’s instrument of death … but it was also the martyr’s burden on his way toward his place of execution.
Here is another important point: Jesus told His followers to take up their cross, not the Holy Cross that only the Son of God could carry. Everyone has their own particular, individual cross that the are called to carry, following after Jesus Christ and in the self-sacrificing ways of Christian love.
For “love” is what your particular cross is all about. Love -- true love -- always requires the sacrifice of self. It requires the sacrifice of comfort, security, rights and privileges, self-preservation, and self-importance.
As anyone will tell you, this kind of sacrifice is painful. It is a necessary, holy sacrifice. But it is a sacrifice made in the face of much resistance from your heart. Your heart does not want to give up its right to complain about others, or its right to insist on its own rights. Your heart rather likes anger and the energy it brings. It enjoys keeping long accounts of how you’ve been done wrong. It likes the idea of being a “victim.”
These passions (for that is what all forms of self-centeredness are) are not worthy of your soul. Your soul is God’s holy Temple, and in it reverence must grow for it to stay alive.
Many are unwilling to make such a sacrifice, given the difficulties and the cost of the Cross. Most are fully willing to play their passions on an endless repeat cycle. This is the problem of the Servant that received only one “talent.” “Many are called,” Our Lord said, “but few are chosen.”
“God is willing that no man should perish,” St. Paul told St. Timothy. Yes, this is true, but not many are willing to deny self. Not many are willing to love God and his fellow man, to believe God and to work out his salvation with fear and trembling.
Those who repent and deny self … those who rise above self-centeredness and love God … these are the people who are “chosen.” Everyone is called, but not everyone will repent and believe.
Not everyone will take up their Cross.
Every Cross that is carried for the sake of Christ is mystically linked to the Cross of Golgotha. There was a time in the Exodus when the entire camp of Israelites became ill. God told Moses to make a sculpture of a bronze snake, and to set it high upon a pole in the middle of the great camp.
Whenever any looked upon the snake, they were immediately healed.
The Cross is very much like this bronze snake: or rather, the bronze figure is very much like the Cross. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus told Nicodemus (in John 3.14), “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”
There was another time in the Exodus when the Israelites were being attacked by a mob of killers called the Amalekites. This fight was a life-and-death struggle. If the Israelites lost, it was utter destruction by the evil powers.
God told Moses to stand on a cliff high above the battle. Whenever Moses raised his arms, stretched out wide, the Israelites would get the upper hand over the Amalekites. Whenever he tired and dropped his arms, the Israelites weakened and became overwhelmed by the enemy.
Moses got some help: on one side, Joshua stood, and on the other side, a man called Hur. Together, they helped Moses hold his arms out, stretched wide like a Cross. And Israel won the victory that day against the enemy -- under the sign of the Cross.
On both occasions, God early on impressed upon the world the victorious and mystical shape of the Cross. The Cross, later on Golgotha, would become the symbol of victory for all time against sin and death. Far worse than the plague in the wilderness is the total degradation of death. Far worse than the Amalekites is the total oppression of the evil powers.
The Cross is the act of Divine victory over sin and death. The Cross is the Place, and it is the infinite Moment, when the Son of God swallowed up Death in His Divinity, and when the Son of Man overcame sin by His perfect obedience to the Father. The Son of God and the Son of Man are One Person, Who died for your life … and rose again, for your life.
And when you hold the Cross -- when you bear your individual cross that reflects the True Cross -- you scatter the evil powers in fear and panic. When you bear the Cross and follow Jesus Christ, you overcome your self-centered passions. You climb up over the ruts of self-pity and complaint. You turn off the “tapes” and the broken record-players of old worn-out self-justifying myths. You, in true Christian faith, become a noble soldier of the True Cross, and you stand mightily against the ancient Enemies of Sin and Death: you prevail under the Sign of the Cross.
For it is Jesus this time, not Moses, Who holds His arms open wide on a hilltop on Good Friday afternoon. Fight under His Sign.
For it is Jesus, not the bronze snake, that is lifted up between the earth and the sky on the Holy Cross.
Instead of looking at the bronze figure, bear your own cross of self-denial, and believe. And renounce anger. Forgive. Love. Serve. Believe. Belief and selfishness are opposites: so are love and passion. So are the Cross and despair.
Take up the Cross and plant it deeply down in the depths of your soul. Plant it in the middle of your relationships. Set it deep within your marriage. Place it at the center of your home. Carry it at the very middle of all your thoughts and dreams and emotions. Look at your friend and neighbor, your children and spouse and parent, only under the shadow of the Cross: then, you can only look with self-sacrificial love, and the peace that passes all understanding.
Take up the Cross of Jesus Christ. Die to the cold world. Live for Him. Love, and live forever.
Amen.
Thank you.
Posted by: Ricky | October 01, 2011 at 07:47 PM