St. Paul’s United Church Sunday, August 5, 2007
Every Day With the Cross – Rev. David Mundy
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Mark 8:27-37
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You may have seen the rather gruesome Good Friday photographs and film
footage. Each year they come to us from a small town in the Philippines where a
handful of men commemorate the
crucifixion of Jesus by actually being nailed to crosses. Many communities
around the world remember the solemn events of Good Friday with processions
which reenact Jesus’ walk to Golgotha carrying his own cross. There is one on
St. Clair Ave in Toronto’s Italian district which attracts thousands of people.
But it seems almost beyond belief that anyone would actually choose to
have nails driven through their hands and feet as a sign of devotion to Christ.
One of the news service reports this year began this way: “More than
a dozen Filipinos were nailed to crosses and scores more whipped their backs
into a bloody pulp on Friday in a gory ritual to mark the death of Jesus
Christ.” Reuters
To add to the bizarre character of this annual event, it has become a
tourist attraction bringing 20,000 curious onlookers from neighbouring villages
and around the world. There are concession stands which sell beer and ice cream
and souvenir whips to the onlookers. This year the rock group Led Zeppelin’s
classic Stairway to Heaven was blaring through a loudspeaker system as
the seven people were nailed to their crosses, one by one.
We might consider all of this both crass and sacrilegious, yet it may be
fairly close to the carnival atmosphere which has been part of public death
through the centuries. In the time of the Roman Empire crucifixion was an
effective form of execution because the victims didn’t die immediately. The
very nature of being suspended from the crossbar meant that death usually
occurred slowly from a combination of dehydration and asphyxiation over a
period of hours. Crowds would gather to be part of the spectacle and they would
be reminded that it was not a wise thing to challenge the authority of the
Roman Empire.
Crucifixion was often the form of capital punishment for those who led
an insurrection against the authorities in various outposts of the empire. Some
of you might recall the movie blockbuster Spartacus from the 1960's
which had the scene of the slaves hanging from crosses along a Roman road.
There really was a first century ringleader of an uprising whose name was
Spartacus and history tells us that 6,000 rebellious slaves were crucified
along the Appian Way. When we read the
gospels we get the picture in words of Jesus who is perceived as a threat to
religious and political authorities, even though he says that the kingdom he
represents is not one of worldly power.
Take up your cross and follow me. This morning I want to direct your
attention to one of the stained glass windows in our sanctuary as we continue
through the summer series on the images and phrases from scripture which they
represent. I have mentioned before that I will address five of the eight –this
is the fifth Sunday – while our new staff member, the Reverend Cathy Russell,
will speak on two more.
I’m not sure why I have left this window to the last on my watch,
although the sombre subject matter may have been a deterrent. Who wants to
speak about the crucifixion in the more relaxed days of summer? Yet the passion of Christ and the cross on
which he was put to death are pivotal –we could say crucial – to our faith.
“Take up the cross and follow me” is the inscription beneath the
image of Jesus bowed beneath the weight of the cross as he made his way to the
place of execution. This Jesus wears a crown of thorns yet there is no evidence
of blood, no signs of the scourging he received at the hands of the Roman
soldiers. It is hard to know how to respond to this. In the film The Passion
of the Christ Jesus is so brutalized it is almost sickening. Yet this
figure seems not to have suffered at all, even though he is on a journey toward
death. I have mentioned before that in the earliest Christian symbols were the
fish and the ship rather than the cross because of its shameful and bloody
connotations.
The first mention of the cross in the sequence of the gospel story is
long before the events of that black Friday while Jesus and his companions are
in the hills to the north of Galilee. I have been to Caesarea Philippi and it
is a pleasant spot of trees and a spring with fresh flowing water. The
impression we get is that Jesus has some teaching time with his disciples in
this place. It becomes intense when they are told that if they want to be true
followers they will deny themselves and take up the cross. They don’t want to
hear this, but Jesus tells them there is no detour around the cross.
What do we make of the crucifixion and the reminder we heard in the
gospel of Mark that if we want to follow Jesus, it won’t come easily or without
cost? Our rather polite Canadian
response to Jesus’ words might well be “Thank you very much for the
invitation but no thank you.” We certainly aren’t willing to be literally
nailed to a cross and I would probably encourage any of you to get professional counselling if you
had the inclination! If you notice, Jesus doesn’t say we have to take up his
cross. We take up our own and in a figurative rather than a literal way. But even the notion of losing our lives in
order to find them is rather ominous.
There is an expression which I’m sure you all know “Everyone has
his/her cross to bear” which usually means that there is something in our
lives which is difficult to live with, and it weighs heavily on us. We could
probably all name something: health problems or rifts in relationships or
financial woes. These are usually unforeseen circumstances, but Jesus is not
saying here that when life serves up lemons we should make lemonade.
Rather, we hear Christ’s call and choose to follow the way of the cross
in everything, including the often mundane concerns of every day. What is clear
is that Christianity is not meant to be an occasional stroll through the church
doors. It is not social club faith which keeps God-talk at a safe distance.
Christianity is following Jesus. It is a costly choice to adopt a life of
reordered priorities which may not be convenient or socially acceptable.
Taking up our personal cross may mean the awkwardness of making
uncomfortable decisions in our work life that don’t always result in our
benefit. During my time at St. Paul’s I got a phone call from someone who was
wrestling with a personal dilemma. She had been asked to say something in a public
setting which she felt was inconsistent with her convictions as a Christian.
She told her boss that she was uncomfortable doing this and he was less than
sympathetic. What should she do? I was touched by her desire to do the right
thing and in the end it worked out all right.
Taking up the cross may have financial implications which don’t make
sense to other people. The choice to support Christ’s mission and ministry with
our money can seem like foolishness to those who want to stay in a certain
comfort zone. When our children were still young but old enough to value a
dollar, they wanted to know how much we put in our church envelope on Sunday
mornings. When one of them found out she was outraged! Did we realize what we
could do with this money? Of course the
“we” was very personal.
Taking up the cross can mean actually saying that we are Christians. It
is common for people to speak of their spirituality these days without getting
any more specific. It we want it can all be rather vague and soft focus. There
was an article in the Christian Century magazine recently by a mainline
church Christian who was wondering why in our tradition we will make bold and
sometimes controversial decisions about same-gender marriage and fighting in
the Middle East but we won’t tell our next-door neighbour that we love Jesus
because it might be offensive.
Taking up our cross alongside Jesus is not an act of physical stamina
and bravado once a year but the call to a different way of living and dying to
self every single day. We may end being misunderstood or considered silly or
even rejected, yet Christ will be with us each step of the way.
In our other reading today the apostle Paul also faced what has been
called the scandal of the cross as he
wrote to the first Christian communities. Paul realizes that the cross isn’t a
very good “brand” for this emerging religion. He knew that Jesus’ crucifixion
at Golgotha was considered a humiliating end to life by many, but he turns
things around by boldly claiming that the cross is foolishness to those who are
perishing, not those who have chosen the way of life.
Perhaps those of us who live in a land where there isn’t much pressure
to be or not be people of the cross can ask what this foolishness means for
us. Taking up the cross suggests that we
will be active and visible in our faith, willing to be known as a follower of
Christ.
The Good News is that the cross has not gone away, nearly two thousand
years after that fateful walk to Jesus’ place of execution and it never will,
whatever the cost. Earlier this year Ruth and I were in Havana, Cuba, and we
visited the national art gallery. You may be aware that while religious freedom
is the official policy of Cuba, through the years people have found that living
as Christians has not been easy. They have been passed over for jobs and
shunned by neighbours. Only in the past few years has there been greater
tolerance and freedom to worship. As we were leaving the gallery, we noticed a stone wall with an array of
striking crosses by a variety of Cuban artists. It was a worshipful moment in
this bustling city and a reminder that the cross of Christ is still a powerful
symbol of costly love and new life.
There is a Prayer for Holy Week (#150) in our Voices United
hymn book which reminds us of Christ’s love for us and it can be our call to
costly love as well:
God of passionate and vulnerable love,
whose body, broken on the cross
rebukes us still:
Save us, hold us, and forgive us,
that you as victor and victim
might lead us from death to life:
through Jesus, the Crucified. Amen.
This can be our prayer as people of the everyday cross.