Luke 9:23 (NIV)
Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
This doesn't seem like that hopeful a prospect, but just prior to this statement, Jesus had asked Peter who Peter thought Jesus was. "The Christ of God," he said. Then Jesus told the disciples what was going to happen to Him in the near future. So he wasn't simply telling the disciples what to do, he was telling them what He was going to do--leading by example.
All the disciples knew what a cross was and what it meant, but I kind of doubt any of them had thought in terms of all this ending up on a cross, until now. If anything, maybe they thought that the worst possible outcome would be to die in some glorious way while coming to Jesus's defense as he made his way toward his rightful throne. Knowing what the cross was--an instrument of execution--it must have given them pause to hear that they were to "take up their cross" not just once, but every day.
What does this mean? Does it mean that we must carry the means by which we kill off our own sin along with us everywhere we go? Does it mean that we need to be ready to die for our faith at any time? Is it what I think is the more common meaning, that whatever our burden in life--ill health, poverty, disappointment in relationships, career, etc.--we must shoulder that burden and carry it along because that's the only way we can follow Jesus? After all, he carried that same burden we carry to the cross with Him, and the burdens of every other human that has ever lived as well.
Why on earth would we want to do this? You know, I think that trying to avoid taking up our cross, whatever that might mean, is in the end rather futile and going to cause us more pain than avoidance. Picking up our cross means facing our problems rather than trying to deny them, it means facing our responsibilities instead of trying to weasel out of them. Really, it's part of being an adult. Trying to pretend you don't have problems and duties just makes everything worse.
But taking up the cross means a lot more than that. After telling us to daily take up our cross, Jesus says: "For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?
It doesn't seem like much good to me. As Christians, taking up our cross is integral to our very identities. We can't be who we truly are if we try to avoid the difficult aspects of that. How is this? In His next words, Jesus links the taking up of the cross with our identification with Him. If we refuse our cross, we are showing we are ashamed of Him, and losing our connection with God.
Eight days after he said this came the Transfiguration. First Peter, James, and John heard the bad side of things, then they saw the glory of who Christ truly is with their own eyes. I'm not going to try to draw a specific cause-effect connection, but I do think it's true that if we don't take up our cross first, we will certainly never experience God's help with that cross. If we spend our energy crying about the existence of the cross instead of simply picking it up and moving along with it, we'll never see anything but the cross itself. We'll never see the glory waiting at the end of the road, and all along the way too, for those who have the eyes to see.
It seems rather odd that in Matthew 11:30 Jesus says, "...my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Not to mix metaphors, but how can a yoke that is a cross be easy and light? Jesus even promises "rest" for those who take on His yoke. I think that when we take on our cross, whatever that means: cheerfully shouldering whatever responsibilities God sends us, being willing to give up our sin nature in exchange for something better (our true nature), even being willing to suffer for the God who has suffered so much for us--it's really Jesus who is carrying it. We take on a lot when we take on Jesus, but we know He'll give us more than enough strength for anything that comes from that decision. If we avoid our cross, we end up with nothing at all; if we take up our cross we end up with ourselves and with God, with a meaningful life well-lived, and with all the fruits the Spirit can bless us with.
Posted by michele at July 30, 2007 1:08 PM