Take up Your Cross
13th
September 2015
Prayers……..
“Whoever wants to
be my Disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”
Are we ready for this
challenge? Is humanity ready for
this revolutionary take on life?
And there are 2 answers to this question.
1) No we are not
2) Yes we are.
NO we are:
Not ready to be disciples
Not ready to deny ourselves
Not ready to take up whatever maybe our particular cross.
Not ready to:
Be disciples
Fear perhaps, that we are not good enough, but remember the
disciples were just human and had plenty of faults they fell short we all
fall down on this one too.
Not Ready to:
Deny Ourselves, this ones more difficult, how do you deny
yourself, in the Epistle reading this morning James speaks of “taming the
tongue” ( go home and read the passage 3: 1-12) of how we can tame the creatures but not
ourselves, we are “a restless evil full of deadly poison”
And we have to realise it, we, the human species are capable
of the most horrendous acts of violence and barbarity, because seemingly we
cannot deny ourselves anything, and when someone manages it
Such as Nelson Mandela deny himself the vengeance for those
years on Robben Island
the example succeeds but only up to a point.
And what about the instruction to “Take up our cross and follow him”
What about those who seem to be ready there is a
Cartoon that has stuck in my mind which
I saw a few years ago.. This stated that most famous assassinations happened to
people who had argued, preached peace and reconciliation & justice.
Jesus
Lincoln
Ghandi
Anwar Sadat
Yitzak Rabin
Martin Luther King
“If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught
us anything, it is that you can kill anybody.” So said Michael Corleone in “The
Godfather, Part II.” He was right. Indeed you can and indeed we do.
In other words those who had been brave enough to do exactly
what Jesus told them to do in this
passage will suffer ( next week we will see how Jesus speaks of his own death) and the reading from Isaiah this morning predicts
this
Now I am sorry if this is all upsetting, but remember our
faith does not promise an easy life ‘take up you cross and follow me’ says
Jesus. Effectively following me will get you into trouble at best, persecuted
and killed at worst.
YES
It would seem on the surface that all this is hopeless but here comes the good news, on all three counts
we often succeed but the downside to this is that we don’t recognise what we are doing.
How many of you have stood up for what is right, have fought for what you believe in, like a true disciple?,
how many have denied yourself to help someone? How many have readily
shouldered a burden for a family member or friend.
Thinking about mine own experiences here are a few of mine.
- Looking
after my mother for 14 years.
- Missing
2 of my youngest daughters birthdays because I was training (and that was
hard) Being away from family for long periods (I’d never done it before)
- Being
seen as somehow different and not fitting in with the crowd.
- Standing
with the parents of a stillborn baby and then going to conduct a wedding,
I couldn’t get the face of that little dead child out of my mind.
.
Each one of these and the equivalent in your own lives is an
act of discipleship, and act of denial, a desire to lift your cross and carry it
if imperfectly. So we are not just full of deadly poison, we are also full of
and capable of, love, kindness, truth and justice and we have a great example to follow. Its not easy to be a Christian,
to follow the teachings of Jesus, but when we try the reward is great. I'll end today with this poem, written when I began to realise the totality of becoming a priest.
The Shadow
The shadow grew out
of the sun
Rising with the light
of dawn,
it tipped the city’s
towers with darkness.
Lengthening with the
growing of the day,
it stole across the
grass and stones,
beyond the hills,
into the very sky.
Tall it stood,
greater than anything,
dominating sky and
land with dreadful power.
No shadow of
gentleness at noon,
no peaceful, sleepy
shadow of eventide,
this shadow looms,
absorbing the cosmos
in its blinding depths.
In darkness of moon
and starlight it gleams,
solid and cold,
uncompromisingly alive,
a very terror to
behold, so many
beholding it flee and
hide,
to find refuge in the
abyss
of emptiness.
The shadow grew out
of the Son,
lifted high above the
city.
Longer it grew as
night followed day,
and centuries and
ages passed away.
Longer it grew, until
the shadow of the cross,
lay the burden of its
liberation upon my heart.Amen.
