Take Up Your Cross

Take Up Your Cross

(Philippians 3:4b-14; Luke 9:18-27)

10:30 am, Sunday, March 17, 2013; Windsor UBC; J G White

The tale is told in many ways of the boy who came home from Sunday school talking about an animal that needed glasses. It was a bear, with it's eyes crossed, named Gladly. Actually, the class had leaned a Fanny Crosby Hymn that sings Gladly the cross I'd bear.

As we listen carefully to lessons about the Cross of Jesus, we can hear the call of our Saviour to take up and bear our cross.

That great pioneer of Christianity, the Apostle Paul, wrote the book we call Philippians. As Andrew read, Paul speaks of counting former achievements as losses, because life with Jesus is so much more valuable. Paul wrote, (3:10-11) I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Life with Jesus follows Him to the Cross. It includes the teaching of 'taking up your cross.' What does this mean? What does taking up your cross, or me taking up my cross, look like?

We talk of 'the cross I have to bear' once in a while. It's a common enough idiom in English. Look it up online and you even get examples like this: Someone has to look after mother and because I live the closest it's a cross I have to bear. The phrase gets attached to all manner of hardships and troubles that good people must endure: illnesses, extra demands placed upon us, personal weaknesses or flaws. Crosses we have to bear?

These are really poor uses of the word cross. For the Bible is not speaking of these circumstances when we read of bearing our cross. The late John Stott, British scholar and preacher, in his book, The Cross of Christ, wrote: Our 'cross', then, is not an irritable husband or a cantankerous wife. It is instead the symbol of death to the self. (p. 279) Death to the self. To take up my cross is to take the path, like Jesus, with Jesus, that lets go of getting my own way, for the sake of many others.

Look with me for a moment into Christ's words in Luke 9, what Judy read.

If any want to become my followers... Want to follow Jesus? He calls you: come follow me. Want to be more than a fan?

...Let them deny themselves, He says. Deny yourself. This might be a big learning curve for you, or you may know enough of this now to sense what the rest of your denial may be. You must give up on your kingdom in this world – it gets handed over into the Kingdom of Jesus. You let go of getting your own way from moment to moment. You drop the game of working to have people to like you and do good to you. You get set free from needing to have enough willpower to make personal changes. All this can get taken over by Jesus and God's provision – as we deny ourselves. You get to live in His Kingdom, where He gets His way, God loves and esteems you highly, and the Lord has grace to do more in you than you can do yourself. How great is that?!

...let them... take up their cross daily and follow me. There it is, a daily plan; a moment-by-moment journey with the Saviour. And the image for it is Jesus with His Cross. I like to keep this as a picture, a real story, rather than mere explanations and theologies. Jesus, bearing the cross, for the sake of millions of us. There He is, going to His execution. And He invites us.

John Stott (can you tell I skimmed his book?) wrote, one might say, every Christian is both a Simon of Cyrene and a Barabbas. Like Barabbas we escape the cross, for Christ died in our place. Like Simon of Cyrene we carry the cross, for he calls us to take it up and follow him. (pp. 278-9)

We follow, we follow; and keep learning more of what this is. Look again to what Paul wrote about pressing on, in Philippians 3:13&14 ...this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul has such enthusiastic persistence. There is energy and hope in his walk with the Lord. Because it is all about Jesus.

Our Faith has this amazing claim upon people's souls. We hear and answer the call of Jesus to a great and challenging life. Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, follow me. Do you know the deep appeal of this invitation?

It is claimed that the following ad appeared in a London newspaper: "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success." Signed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer. Apparently, the ad drew many respondents, eager to risk everything for the prospect of meaningful adventure.

The adventure with Christ is meaningful because it is about human souls: your soul, and the souls of all the others. “Follow me and take up your cross daily” fits hand-in-glove with Jesus' earlier call, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of wo/men.”

Close to twenty years ago, Dr. Harold Mitton was interviewed about his life story. At one time he was Pastor here; at another he was professor of Preaching and Worship at Acadia Divinity College. With great interest I watched these interviews on Youtube a few weeks ago. Among his insights at the close of the interviews, Dr. Mitton spoke of his concern with some congregations about the lack of redemptive passion. He said, The churches tend to become inward looking instead of outward looking. ...It seems to me that the church of Jesus Christ should be providing answers to the deep spiritual hungers that are gnawing at people today. But it seems to me there is this lack of passion to reach people with the Gospel of Christ, which bothers me sometimes.

The Cross of Jesus shows us Jesus' deep compassion for all the people of the world. As we follow in His steps, that loving compassion is supplied to our own hearts and minds.

John Stott wrote, It is only when we look at the cross that we see the true worth of human beings. (1986, p. 282) Canadian Theologian Douglas John Hall, in his book, The Cross In Our Context, makes the same point by saying, The [theology of the] cross… is [nevertheless] first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious [in its intention and its potentiality], that its actualization, its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for. (2003, p.24) We humans may be said to be unworthy, but we are not worthless; we are worth a great deal to our Lord. Remember Jesus' words – from His so-called Sermon on the Mount? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Yes.

Elizabeth Clephane composed the well-known hymn, Beneath the Cross of Jesus, in 1868, with this phrase in it:

And from my smitten heart with tears

Two wonders I confess,

The wonders of His glorious love,

And my own worthlessness.

This is the original, what we sing from Favorite Hymns of Praise. But recent edits, such as in our 1973 Baptist Hymnal, have us sing this: The wonders of His glorious love,

And my unworthiness.

John Stott, and other theologians, suggest this change is for the better, because God does find us so valuable and precious that the Son is sent to die for us. As William Temple pointed out: My worth is what I am worth to God; and that is a marvellous great deal, for Christ died for me. (Citizen and Churchman, p 74)

To take up our own cross is to give up our lives out of love for the lives of others, just as Jesus did. Looking to Jesus, we see how worthwhile the others around us, and around the world, truly are. With God we value people more and more. Our hearts break for them. Our lives bless them. Our priorities grow greater. Our pleasure and satisfaction shifts: we rejoice in those who need the Shepherd. My life is no longer mostly about me, anymore; it is about everyone, and about our God.

Douglas John Hall says …in the scriptural sources we never hear of a Jesus preoccupied with his own pain. Even on the cross itself he is conscious, chiefly, of the pain of others – of the thieves on either side, and of the pathetic little group of his followers standing beneath the cross, devastated. (p. 154)

And to know the power of Jesus' resurrection, and share his sufferings is a corporate thing. We walk the way of the Cross together.

Nineteenth Century Danish Theologian and Philosopher, Soren Kierkagaard, wrote, I went into church and sat on the velvet pew. I watched as the sun came shining through the stained glass windows. The minister dressed in a velvet robe opened the golden gilded Bible, marked it with a silk bookmark and said, ‘If any man will be my disciple, said Jesus, let him deny himself, take up his cross, sell what he has, give it to the poor, and follow me.’ And I looked around and Nobody was Laughing.

When we are together, what distracts us from the mission? To follow Jesus by taking up the cross means we must drop other things. I do, you do, together we do this.

So, for the sake of our community of people – and beyond – what do we shed, that we may carry our Cross, Windsor Baptist? How does a Church family deny itself, daily? How do we find our priority in Dr. Mitton's redemptive passion? That inner energy and motivation to help people be set free by Jesus.

I fear there may be many things to shed, to let go of, to drop. And I am enthused that the new priorities we gain are so worthwhile. From a ministry like our house of Hospitality we can perhaps see what we sacrifice so that it can happen, or the After School Program, or the ministry of funerals.

We learn about love and care first of all among ourselves, within this very room. We carry the cross because of one another. It was at a Drive-in Service I first heard this song sung by the Rev. Dan Green of Chester Baptist Church.

In this very room there's quite enough love for all of us.

And in this very room there's quite enough joy for all of us.

And in this very room there's quite enough power to share

wherever we go.

For Jesus, Lord Jesus, is in this very room.

(Ron & Carol Harris, 1979)

Take up your cross... it leads to the resurrection of Jesus!

It is for the sake of one another, and the whole world.