Jesus said to his disciples: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." His reference to a cross was not so much to his own crucifixion but to what was a common sight throughout the Roman provinces where thousands of murderers, thieves, and rebels were executed in this manner. However, every criminal on his way to die was forced to carry his cross or at least the patibulum (the cross beam) to the place of his execution.
Jesus' remark that whosoever would be his disciple must pick up his cross and follow him was an explicit command for each person to willingly and freely put oneself into the position of a condemned man on the way to his death. He himself was facing death- were THEY willing to take a cross BESIDE him? It is as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the twentieth century theologian and Christian martyr, put it, "When Christ calls one, he bids him come and die." And yet frankly speaking, as soon as there appears any kind of a cost or risk in following Christ, that’s when our commitment to him begins to flag and fail. After having been delivered from slavery in Egypt, the Israelites were finally brought to the borders of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. However, when they learned that occupying it would involve some risk and sacrifice, they complained to Moses and demanded that he take them to Egypt, back to the servitude God had earlier delivered them FROM. We also saw this with the disciples themselves when they abandoned Jesus at the time of his arrest and trial for fear of their own safety.
I know that the call to die isn’t a message that wins many converts or brings many people into our churches- if ANYTHING, it is precisely the kind of message that will scare people OFF! Therefore, as preachers, we alter our message to make it more palatable to our congregations’ tastes. Instead of speaking about the cost of discipleship, the price of bearing one's own cross, it becomes a message on "positive thinking" or helping us to feel better about ourselves or how much God wants to bless us with unlimited riches and material goods as though God is some kind of genie or giant ATM. However, unless we take up our cross daily, unless we're willing to lay down our will for the cause of Christ, our Christian witness will gradually deteriorate and the power of Christ will eventually die within us.
What do such churches or even such CHRISTIANS know of carrying crosses and dying with Christ? In fact, if we’re honest with ourselves, what do ANY of us know about laying our lives down on behalf of him even as he laid down his life for US? For instance, here in America, our churches are SO acceptable that we and our church buildings receive tax-exemptions from the government. It is an unstated fact that it would be hard for ANY candidate to be elected President if he or she wasn’t a person of faith and affiliated with SOME Christian body. Or go to Europe and you’ll find that it is the state and NOT the church that often pays the ministers’ salaries with the result that most houses of worship there remain relatively empty on any given Sunday. Still, in light of all the acceptance the church has received, the result has been the same- a glut of nominal Christians adhering to a Christianity without any cost, without any sacrifice. On the OTHER hand, visit China or the Middle East or parts of Africa where Christians often face intense persecution and you’d be surprised to find the churches there are much TOO SMALL to contain all the persons who want to worship in them.
Approximately 10% of the two billion Christians in the world suffer from some form of persecution. Human rights watchers estimate that each month 322 Christians are killed, 214 churches and Christian properties are destroyed, and 772 forms of violence are committed against them- solely for reasons of their faith. ISIS militants made a custom of beheading persons for no other reason than that they were Christians and they refused to convert to their particular brand of Islam. In Nigeria, militants from Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic sect, has routinely carried out a series of massacres against Christians and the Church. Our Lord never promised that the way would be fun and easy for those who would follow him- if ANYTHING, it would lead to a CROSS!
Several years ago, my wife and I were honored to hostRev. Mano Rumalshah--the Bishop of the United Church of Pakistan—in our home. I had invited him to address my church where he made it perfectly clear that to be a Christian in his country is to virtually have a bounty upon one’s head. Christians in that country remain a persecuted minority in the middle of one of the largest Muslim nations on earth. Three weeks after 9/11 in 2001, terrorists attacked a group of Christians during a church service killing 17 congregants- 13 of whom belonged to the same family. Since then, armed guards are now required at every church in order to protect worshipers from terrorist attacks which continue to grow with greater frequency. And yet what’s MOST amazing is how the Christians there possess a devotion and a love that I dare say few of US could ever HOPE to have.
The next day, as I was driving him to another church at the opposite end of the presbytery for his next engagement, he was telling me how after years of ministry in London, he left the safety of England to return to Pakistan to assume a small church there in one of the most dangerous areas in the world. By doing so, he forfeited a significant chunk of his pension because he felt his own country needed him more than his adopted homeland did. Even today, he receives but a small stipend because the Church of Pakistan is so poor and much of his ministry is not even subsidized. Still, he said that he has no regrets because he has never done ANYTHING for money but to serve God in whatever capacity God has wanted him.
Thirty-five years ago, I was privileged to spend a week serving as the personal chaperon to Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, a Rumanian pastor and seminary professor who languished 14 years in Communist prisons until his release in 1964. Taken away from his wife and family (who had also been arrested), he had no knowledge in all those years of what had happened to them. Months of solitary confinement, years of periodic physical torture, constant suffering from hunger and cold, the anguish of brainwashing and mental cruelty had left him in constant pain and made it difficult for him to walk. Each afternoon, I would take him for a long slow walk around the neighborhood and he would tell me stories about his imprisonment and the lessons he learned from them.
He shared with me how he and other Christians were beaten badly with red-hot iron pokers and stabbed with knives, how starving rats were driven into their cells through a large pipe, and handcuffs with sharp nails on the insides were put on their wrists. Christians were hung upside down on ropes and struck so severely that their bodies swung back and forth under the blows. They were put in ice-box "refrigerator cells" which were so cold, frost and ice covered the inside. Freezing to within a few minutes of death, guards would then drag them out and warm them only to repeat the process again and again. They were put in wooden boxes only slightly larger than they were leaving them unable to move. Dozens of sharp nails were then driven into every side of the box, with their razor-sharp points sticking into the box. While they stood perfectly still, it was all right but they were forced to stand in these boxes for endless hours. When they became fatigued and swayed with tiredness, the nails would go into their bodies. What the Communists did to Christians surpasses any possibility of human understanding.
Pastor Wurmbrand said he has often been asked how after seventeen hours a day, year after year, being forced to hear:
"Communism is good!
Communism is good!
Communism is good!
Communism is good!
Christianity is stupid!
Christianity is stupid!
Christianity is stupid!
Give up!
Give up!
Give up!
Give up!"
how was at all possible to resist the brainwashing? His response was that there was only one method of resistance and that was "heartwashing":
If the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ, and if the heart loves Him, you can resist all tortures. What would a loving bride not do for a loving bridegroom? What would a loving mother not do for her child? If you love Christ as Mary did, who had Christ as a baby in her arms, if you love Jesus as a bride loves her bridegroom, then you CAN resist such tortures. God will judge us not according to how much we endured, but how much we could love. I am a witness for the Christians in communist prisons that they could love. They could love God and men.
Jesus shows us that the way to life MUST go through death. But what does it mean to pick up OUR crosses and die in western Pennsylvania in the year 2018 where we all fat and happy, safe and secure? Despite the fact that none of us ever has to worry much about being persecuted for our faith, that none of us is ever going to be martyred for declaring ourselves a Presbyterian or Methodist or Roman Catholic, we are STILL summoned by our Lord to die in ANOTHER way. He calls each of us every day to die to ourselves, to die to our own wills, to put to death our selfish personal desires when it conflicts with God's desires for us. It is to deny ourselves for the cause of Christ and thus turn away from the idolatry of self-centeredness that so drives and consumes us. Only after we have begun subordinating our own will and desires in the interests of others will we then learn to give of ourselves selflessly and to love self-sacrificially. Only as our pride and selfishness die within will we ever begin to see the needs of other more clearly. This is the life to which we as cross-bearers are consistently called to- to love one another as Christ loved us, to even lay down our lives on behalf of one another, as Christ did for us.
But this leads me to one last point. How many times have you heard it said by persons that they have been forced to carry a cross throughout their lives, whether it is a cross of pain or ill health that never goes away, or the cross of an unhappy marriage that they must endure, or the cross of having to deal with the death of a child or loved one that they’ve never quite gotten over. People will often talk of their cross as something they bear without having had a choice about it such as when they learn they have cancer or Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s- they will frequently refer to such occasions as "my cross to bear."
But “tragedy” and the “cross” are not the same thing. Tragedy and suffering inevitably come to EVERYONE because it is, in general, a normal part of life. However, because we happen to be suffering at any given time, that does not make that our cross- it just happens to be part of LIFE; we have no choice in the matter when tragedy strikes. A CROSS, however, is something else ENTIRELY. A cross is something we VOLUNTARILY do for SOMEONE ELSE. It is to hoist SOMEONE ELSE'S cross-beam upon our shoulders to ease the load for that person. To bear a cross is to voluntarily accept someone ELSE'S suffering and burden so they never have to suffer alone. Bearing a cross involves self-giving service to God and others whether it means looking after an ailing child or parent, or attending to the wounds of a stranger, or offering someone a meal. Perhaps it is voluntarily helping in the rebuilding of homes as a volunteer for Habitat For Humanity, or maybe it just might mean praying for people who are often too weak and faithless to pray for THEMSELVES. This is what it means to bear one's cross REGARDLESS of the sacrifice and inconvenience it might mean to ourselves.
One of my oldest, dearest friends who presently pastors a congregation just outside of San Jose, California, told me a story some years ago which has never left me. He had an elder in a former church in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula who had become for him one of the greatest examples of faith and love he had ever seen. Growing up in a profoundly dysfunctional household, this woman had been beaten mercilessly as a child and constantly told by her mother that she was no-good, that she was stupid, that she would never amount to anything in this life. This daughter married well before she was ready to in order to escape the daily abuse. In time, she was able to overcome the scars of her early years and have a happy and healthy marriage, blessed with several beautiful children. She became a devout Christian and loved serving her church.
Then one day, she received word that her mother--the same who had beaten and berated her so often as a child--had developed Alzheimer’s Disease and would have to be permanently placed into an institution. But rather than allow this to happen, this daughter made room for her in her own home, moved her in, and tenderly cared for her to the end of her life. Every day, she fed her, clothed her, changed her diapers, and took her for walks- all because she believed that this was what Jesus would have wanted her to do.
My friends, the cross this woman had to bear was not the terribly abusive upbringing that would have crushed and defeated most anyone else- no, that was just part of life itself with all its tragedy and brokenness and injustice. No, the cross in this woman’s life was the voluntary decision to love and care for her mother. She tenderly raised that cross-beam to her OWN shoulder, and then slowly and sure-footedly she proceeded up that hill on behalf of her ailing mother, never once looking back. And she knew that if SHE were to faint or stumble under its weight, there would be ANOTHER there to give her all the strength she needed- and that would be Jesus Christ himself!
And we CAN bear someone else's troubles because there is someone close by to help US shoulder OUR cross- Jesus Christ. Just as WE never have to walk alone, we can make sure SOMEONE ELSE never has to walk that mile alone EITHER. When Christ said, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you...for my yoke is easy, and my load is light," he was assuring his followers that he would always be present to help them bear their cross, that it would never become so great as to crush them.
I tell you that there is a cross in EVERYONE’S life, in fact, a cross that awaits each one of OUR shoulders THIS VERY EVENING. And even before we leave this service, may we ALREADY be thinking of someone struggling beneath the weight of his or her OWN crossbeam whose load can be made all the lighter because of OUR offer of love and support. Let us pray...
Gracious God, our Heavenly Father, give us the faith and the courage to reach out and carry another person’s cross this day, knowing that by being faithful to your summons and to our calling, you promise to make the way easy and light for US with your Son’s personal presence. In his name we pray. Amen.