Sermon thoughts and other musings

"Take up your cross and follow me."

Wow. What a command from Christ! One of the things we thank God for every day is the fact that we live in a society where we don't have to risk our lives in order to worship as we choose. So what do we do when we hear Christ's call to take up our own cross?

First, we have to remember the difference between being called to die and being called to be willing to die. These are really two separate concepts. Everyone knows the difference between someone who risks his/her life and someone who has a death wish. A race car driver risks death willingly, but would never knowingly get into an unsafe car or refuse to wear safety gear.

It's easy to get the two confused. The early Church, which honored martyrs, had to also decree that it was a sin to seek martyrdom. A willingness to be martyred was the epitome of faith. To seek martyrdom was a sin.

We're called to be willing to take up a cross. We aren't called to seek crucifixion. We have to remember that Jesus died on the cross for us, so we don't have to. The power of our sins (the guilt, the shame) - all that also died on the cross with Jesus. It would be an insult to the crucifixion for us to believe that it somehow wasn't enough. So if Jesus was the agnus Dei, the lamb of God, the last sacrifice ... why do we need to take up a cross?

The answer is in passion and purpose. What defines our lives more than anything is what we're willing to die for. Would you die for your family? Would you die for your friends? Would you die for Jesus? Would you die for the people Jesus called us to love? A race car driver risks death because he/she finds meaning and purpose in taking on that risk. Would you risk your life to bring food to the poor?

Are your Christian principles worth dying for? How about worth going to jail for? Or maybe losing your job for? For how many of us (me included!) does that cross we're willing to take up get smaller and smaller ... until it's just the right size to fit on a necklace and no bigger?

Where will this willingness to die lead us? In Ethics, Dietrich Bonhoeffer posed the question: "Will the church merely gather up those whom the wheel has crushed or will it prevent the wheel from crushing them?" Helping those whom the wheel has crushed is good work. Preventing the wheel from crushing them is good, dangerous work. It puts us into the path of the wheel.

Helping those who are crushed is compassion. But we're called to go even further - to move beyond compassion to passion. Compassion will have us trailing the wheel. Passion will put us into the wheel's path to stop it. Where do you think you'll find Jesus - behind the wheel or in its path?

Reality. I think "reality TV" helps us take a fresh look at the word "reality" because reality TV is so ... unreal. (By the way, Mark Burnett, who started it all with "Survivor" and also created "The Apprentice", uses the phrase "unscripted drama" instead. And I think he's right - these are not reality, these are dramas created in the editing room, based on players who were operating without a script.)

So what is the "real world"? Is the real world one where we are bound by the laws of nature - or one where we are not? After all, God's world is one where walking on water is a normal occurrence. The Hebrew Scriptures understand walking on water to be God's thing: "He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea." (Job 9:8, NIV)

When Jesus beckons Peter onto the water, Jesus is inviting Peter into God's world. Peter, if only for a few steps, gets to live in God's world - a world where the restrictions we've been taught to submit to no longer apply, and where scary storms are no longer to be feared. On the water, the impossible becomes possible, and "can't" becomes "will".

Sure, at one level we probably think it would be cool to live in that world. But remember, God's world - the world where walking on water is normal; in other words, a world where those who would sink will rise above the waves - is also the world where the last are first, the poor and the lame have the best seats at the banquet, and the last workers in the vineyard are paid as much as the first. Are you still ready to get out of the boat? Jesus is calling us!