Lent 2 B: Take Up Your Cross
Dear Partner in Preaching,
Some will see in this Sunday’s passage a call to be patient and long-suffering in the just cause, and in this sense to take up one’s cross, and I’m sympathetic to that counsel. Others will hear the promise that all things, even something as awful as the cross, work together, in the words of the Apostle, “for the good of the one who believes” (Rom. 8:28) and so invite us to take up our cross trusting that God is in control, and I’ve seen that counsel provide comfort during difficult times. Still others will ask what things we’ve used to try to save our lives rather than giving ourselves over to the solitary and difficult work of justice and ask whether we are ashamed of Jesus’ words, and that’s certainly a reading that demands our attention. Yet while all of these are possible interpretations, none quite captured my imagination this week.
Rather, I think the call of these week’s passage, particularly amid the brutality and violence that seem to permeate the world, is to be willing to embrace the pain of others – rather than explain it, simply seek to comfort it, fit it into some larger plan, or even merely decry it – trusting that God is in the midst of our brokenness, working for and calling us to life. Let me unpack that just a little bit more.
I have been struck over my years of ministry that perhaps the one thing that unifies us most fully is that each of us has experienced brokenness: it may be the abandonment of a parent, the betrayal of a loved one, the loss of a child, the death of a dream, the oppression of those who hold power over us, or any number of other things. Yet this fact remains: to live is to struggle, to hurt, and to experience loss and brokenness.
I have also been struck by the reality that on most occasions we would prefer to hide that brokenness from others. Perhaps that desire comes from a kind of embarrassment – we do not know if others will respect us if we show our wounds. Or perhaps it comes from a fear of being vulnerable – we wonder if others will take advantage of us when our guard is down. Or perhaps it comes from a fear of being overwhelmed by our loss and grief. I don’t know; I suspect it is all of these and more, varying from occasion to occasion. But I do know that we tend to favor strength, health, and self-sufficiency, or at least the appearance of these things, over weakness, pain, and dependence.
But while this predisposition may be understandable, I think that ultimately it is neither faithful to the Gospel nor likely to draw us more deeply toward becoming the persons we have been called to be. Indeed, my reading of this passage this week is that we are called to take up our cross expecting that God is most clearly and fully present in the suffering and brokenness of the world. We are called to take up our cross by being honest about our brokenness and thereby demonstrate our willingness to enter into the brokenness of others. We are called to take up our cross because we follow the One who not only took up his cross but also revealed that nothing in this world, not even the hate and darkness and death that seemed so omnipresent on that Friday we dare call good, can defeat the love and light and life of God.
Denying brokenness and pain may indeed be so incredibly understandable. Just as understandable as Peter being struck sideways by the possibility that God’s promised Messiah had come not to conquer and rule but rather to suffer and die. No wonder Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter knew where to look for God and it was in places of strength. (Isn’t that almost exactly what we mean when we speak of God’s omnipotence?) For this reason, he could only imagine that grief, loss, betrayal, suffering, and death were things to avoid at all costs because they seemed to him to be, quite literally, God-forsaken. Yet in the cross God demonstrates that there is no place God refuses to go in the quest to love and redeem us.
Yet here we should be both clear and careful: entering into another’s pain and loss is not the end of the story. When we embrace each other’s brokenness, we experience first that God is with us through the cross and then also hear and experience God calling us to life and courage in and through the resurrection. How that resurrection call will take shape is hard to predict. Perhaps it will be to believe without question the person who has shared a story of sexual assault or to stand unflinchingly with a person seeking fair treatment. Perhaps it will be to keep faith with the one who no longer remembers you because of dementia or to hold vigil with the one near death’s door. Perhaps it will be to call for action when action needs to be taken. However God’s cross and resurrection call comes, embracing another’s pain will not stop with “thoughts and prayers” but moves also to love for, and action with and on behalf of, those for whom we are praying.
Why? Two reasons. First, I don’t think we can stand with people by standing over them, that is, reaching from our places of strength to comfort or help them. We meet people most truly when we admit and embrace that we are like them (sounds like incarnation, doesn’t it?). Second, when we discover that God is not absent but indeed fully and powerfully present in our brokenness, it transforms how we look at everything and emboldens us in the struggles of this life. After all, if loss and suffering and death cannot separate us from God’s love, then what is there to fear?
This is not an easy road, Dear Partner, and it will not all be travelled in a single sermon, or even in a season of sermons, but it can start – actually needs to start – by recognizing that what unites us – to each other and to Christ – is our suffering, suffering that should not be glorified but yet is nevertheless hallowed by God’s commitment to be joined to it. And if we can offer and create the possibility for a moment of candor and vulnerability, we will make room for the God of cross and resurrection to encounter, call, and eventually transform us and our people. Thank you for your part in this process, for the steps you help us take in this journey. I could not imagine taking this road without you.
Yours in Christ,
David
Brilliant!
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This so much put me in mind of the miracles achieved in AA meetings, where people feel they can at last be real and open about their problems without condemnation. There’s healing in the words, “me, too.”
I hear what you’re saying. This week I faced the anger of a grieving widow who expressed her anger about people who say to her, “Call me if you need anything.” Anger that she knows they will never call her, that they’ve only said it to say “something” and they want to get as far away from her grief as possible. Having worked as a hospice chaplain, I’m deeply aware of the complaints of the terminally ill who say that their friends have disappeared from their lives. Often, it’s because they don’t know what to say, afraid it will be the wrong thing, worried that it will upset. But also, I believe, that the terminally ill’s misfortune is a reminder that their health, their welfare, their “good fortune” is and will always be precarious and fragile. We are all one disease, one bad business deal, one catastrophe away from being broken. So, our stance is to “deny, deny, deny” but how much more helpful it is to embrace our own brokenness and fragility so that we can face it with others. An we can face it with the one who chose brokenness for the salvation of the world. We are not alone on this journey…
…and i believe most of all the demand to be productive. Literally, to produce something – this demand above all others stands between me and being present with those who suffer.
I’m trying to focus on how we deny ourselves, even suffer, for the sake of the Gospel. (This is different from the pain that gets everyone, like disease, loss, etc.) Or do we suffer for the sake of ministry at all by giving up chocolate for Lent? What cross-bearing spiritual disciplines are we practicing as disciples of Jesus? And, as a preacher, if I cannot name those things for myself, how can I preach Jesus’ words here?
This is too late to be useful, Ben, but I think the issue (for me, at least), is less about cross-bearing spiritual exercises but rather being open – and encouraging each other as a community to be open – to actively and intentionally entering into the pain of others. It’s not so much that we have to bear crosses of our on (disease, etc.), but that we come along side others to help them bear theirs, as they do ours. Perhaps we’re all called to be Simon of Cyrene to each other.
Thank you. You always have an interesting & thought provoking take, which is why I study your blog almost weekly. After moving from an under served neighborhood (poor, urban, very racially diverse) in my first call to a more privileged area (middle class, much more white, suburban) in my second call, I just feel the Church benefits from very clear, mind-blowingly high challenges that speaks the truthful reality of People many of us ignore, pretend not to see, don’t understand. The passage last week was a perfect text for that kind of challenge. I was looking for an effective way to challenge people to the blood, sweat, and tears service that I think Christ was emphasizing. I ultimately preached on religiously persecuted Iraqi refugees that were baptized and joined my church in my first call – something I fear my second call congregation (and most ELCA congregations) may never experience. I’m searching for ways to communicate the pains of poverty effectively to people – including myself! – who don’t fully understand. Not sure if the message was heard (2 people commented on the sermon, interestingly on one-liners they heard which were not directly related to my Iraqi-American friends), but I tried, and I certainly appreciate your encouraging words at the end of each of your posts, David!
I needed this for my faith this week….thank you so much for all of your writing and inspiration. I pray to meet you one day….I love reading your sermons on Sunday morning as my devotional before I preach!
here’s where I went with the text:’Living is for the Losing…”
Losing pretense, resistance, all that act-as-if, phony, “I’m okay,” mess when our real liberation comes when we hold our brokeness and the brokeness of others and experience God there. I’ve been there, ain’t pretty, but who said God was pretty?
He went through the forgotten parts of the country and spread healing in the places of brokenness. He started out in the distant Nazareth, and declared His mission: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me To preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn, 3 To console those who mourn in Zion, To give them beauty for ashes, The oil of joy for mourning, The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;” (Isa 61:1-3, NKJV) Our Lord is still finding us in our brokenness. He still sees our grief and reaches out to comfort those who mourn.
The identity with suffering. God in Jesus, incarnate, receives the full treatment of what it is to be human- and his words are powerful in that Jesus stands with those who suffer in a profound way.
There is so much suffering in the world, and it is important to sense that God calls us to a way of being, a path which welcomes others not simply in their happiness or good times, but in all times. It is all to easy when on the journey and things start to collect that are not “smooth sailing” to wonder where God is, and where faith leads. Jesus expresses things that were shocking to the disciples. Jesus comes to stand with those who suffer- and often we do respond as Peter. We stand our ground- what ever that may be – rather than stand with others
I am working on this text to supply preach… and working how to pray, listen, speak and hear the Spirit. Even so, come Lord Jesus.