Take up your cross

Passage for reflection: Mark 8: 31 - 38 

Have we made our Christianity too cosy? Are we cross centred?

The cross is the symbol of the Christian church and it is empty. Alleluia! 

But imagine you don’t know the end of the story. Imagine you are in Palestine in Jesus’ day under Roman occupation. There would be cross posts at the side of the road to remind would be criminals what would happen to them if they were caught. They would have the post given them with a beam and would be forced to carry it through the crowds to a rubbish tip outside the city to be left to rot. Everyone knew what carrying a cross meant. There was only one destination. The cross meant blood, nails, abandonment and indescribable agony. 

We know Jesus went to a cross. He was condemned to die through the mockery of a trial. What did he do with his cross? He carried it to Golgotha and he died on it. So what does Jesus mean when he says we must “take up our cross”? 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor who was executed by the Germans three days before the end of World War II, put it best: “When Jesus Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

Jesus wept in agony at Gethsemane.

He was tried and convicted illegally and then beaten by the Pharisees. He was betrayed by his disciples and ridiculed and mocked by King Herod. Then he experienced the rejection of the crowds as they yelled “Crucify him! Crucify him! Then, he was scourged by Pilate and forced to carry his cross up to Golgotha. Can we imagine the pain? I think not. He must have screamed as three spikes were pounded into his flesh. Then, the cross was lifted vertically and the bottom dropped into a stabilising hole. He gasped and shook violently as the cross bottomed out. Three hours later he cried, “My God My God, why have you forsaken me?” Imagine the pain of separation. For the first time in all eternity he was separated from fellowship with his father. There are bits of the passion we would rather not think about.

Perhaps you saw the film a few years ago “The Passion of the Christ” which was very long and very bloody. It had an 18 certificate. It was a very hard watch. One of my churches in West Sussex had a licence to show films on our large screen in church. I showed them this film as part of their Holy Week programme. I was not happy when they decided to stop the film mid crucifixion to put the kettle on and have an interval! But watching someone die like that was almost unbearable.

What does it mean to “take up our cross?” Perhaps we need to remember Christianity in its truest sense is sacrificial and serves even where that costs us and hurts us. Perhaps we need to learn what it means to deny ourselves again, to be last not first. Perhaps we need to remember the suffering and journey to death of Jesus before we can rise with him. We need to carry our cross as an example to the world that worship of self is not the way to life. I’m thrilled that people are getting a vaccine. But I’m deeply worried as restrictions ease, people will naturally want to do what they’ve missed and do those things even when they aren’t quite allowed. To be sacrificial for a bit now will mean all of us can celebrate later. Cross carrying will bring us to points of pain and hurt in ourselves where we will be in a place of utter God dependence but it is often in those awful places God works.

I’ve got a new spiritual director who is brilliant. She suggested to me today I write a programme out to do Holy Week. I love to worship the whole of the week and will miss leading folk this year for the third year running. I was off sick in 2019, last year we were in lockdown and this year it’s very unlikely we will be able to gather safely. But I’ll still live the story somehow. I need to focus on the cross in order to know the wonder that it even with its brutality can be and is defeated.