People of the Cross

"Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”

(Luke 14: 26-27)

These words of our Beloved Savior are some of what many call “the hard sayings of Jesus.”

They are referred to as such because many of us Jesus Followers who would like to follow him in the Way of Love find such words jarring. We might even flinch at the thought of hating anyone. Especially our parents and friends and family.

Upon hearing Jesus say these words for the first time, one can imagine someone in the crowd raising their hand saying…

                       

“Hold up.  Can you repeat that?

I mean, I would prefer to not be alienated from my relations and… did you say carry a… cross?  Yeah… I’m out.”

For us would-be followers of Jesus Christ, such hard sayings do challenge us… but that’s the kind of the point.

Disciples of Christ throughout the ages have been led to the Way seeking different things, but when we finally encounter the Living Christ our assumptions about the path set before us are usually quite different then the reality that we are faced with.

The Way of Love is the Way of the Cross.

Now, again, these are hard sayings; but they also show us something about the nature of this man, Jesus.

           

For one:  They do a pretty good job at establishing the authenticity of Jesus. If he were just a figure made-up by those early Christians, you would think that he would have more pleasant things to say.

Specifically, you get to keep your possessions and friends and relations and you will not be crucified. Hooray!

But that’s not what he says. He’s real about the situation.

The Way of Love that he is establishing means that people will have to give up everything.

He’s real. And he’s not mincing words. Jesus means business.

Now, here in the post-industrialized, Western World, Christians have it easy.

To the point where – if sacrifice is mentioned - people begin to worry that the Church is about to launch a stewardship campaign and start handing out pledge cards again. But here, Jesus is talking about much greater sacrifices - Of letting everything go - even the value we place in our own individual lives.

In the past couple of decades, many of our brothers and sisters in Christ have done and said terrible and hurtful things in the name of our Lord Jesus. (Not to mention the terrible legacy of Church-sanctioned colonialism)

For very good reasons, many have not only lost faith in the Church, but have grown to severely mistrust anyone bearing the name of Christ.

For some ungodly reason, however, Many Christians in the West have cried persecution! And many otherwise well-meaning Christians have dropped the title entirely so as not so damage their social relationships.

I actually don’t have words for how unfortunate and tragic that is. That the people of Christ would ever drop Christ from the equation?

Christians are not under persecution in this country. People mistrust the Church. Many have been hurt by those who claim to be the Church. But if we shy away from the saving name of Jesus - from our calling to be Christians (“Little Christs”) - then we have lost our way…

                       

Not only that, but we are denying our fellow human being the chance to even encounter the Living Christ (through us) if we refuse to bring Jesus to the Table. Or, perhaps more precisely, we are denying our fellow human being the chance to come to our Table at all.      

Bearing the name of Christ in the face of much greater persecution is what got this whole thing going in the first place. There is even a saying:

“The Blood of the Martyrs is the Seed of the Church.”

Our Lord Jesus himself was persecuted by the authorities because his Way threatened to upset the status quo. He challenged them with the reality that the coming of God’s anointed one involved a scandalous marriage in the lower classes of society and a birth in the straw among animals – the reality that the arrival of God’s kingdom on Earth did not look like the powers of a mighty empire, but rather a man getting down on his hands and knees, washing the feet of his own disciples, feeding the poor, healing the sick , and telling the least of our brothers and sisters that the kingdom of God belongs to them.

None of that could be abided.

And so the final humiliation.

Our Lord Jesus, the One who was meant to establish a new Way on the Earth was beaten, mocked, and killed. Not at all the way any of this was supposed to go… or so we thought…

The Death of Jesus was not his greatest humiliation, but perhaps one of his most climactic achievements. Now some theologians have sometimes made it seem that Jesus was only born so that he could die - to me that seems a bit silly. However, in a person’s death we often see exactly who they are and how they have lived their lives.

Jesus could have easily escaped death, but he was so sure in his purpose, so steadfast in his mission, that death was not something to be avoided, but rather seen as the final ultimate sacrifice. The final gift that he had to give.

And he gave his life willingly.

“Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter and opened not his mouth.”

He gave himself freely because he knew that his life was ultimately not his own. As the Expression of God’s Love in this world, his entire life was meant to show us who God is: Completely Self-Sacrificing.

By his incarnation, Christ has embodied that Self-Sacrificing Love of God in human flesh and he has invited us to do the same.

Because there’s a secret. Something else that no one seemed to expect.

The Sacrifice of Christ, and all Sacrifices made in the Name of Christ, are not the giving up of things and comforts (and indeed our very lives) to a cruel God who demands things and servants, but rather the offering of ourselves so that we might be Transformed by the Love of God.

The Way of the Cross is the Way of Glory.

For we know that although the Cross was the Ultimate sacrifice, the story does not end with the bloody wood of Calvary. Christ rose victorious from the grave on the third day. His offering of his own life (an offering which culminated on the Cross) was seen and honored by God the Father who then raised him up to a new and glorified kind of Life.

So as we follow Christ on the Path of Life - that Path which will (inevitably) lead to us to our own cross - we are assured that his Resurrection is ours as well. We are not just followers of a man who went around 2000 years ago and said some interesting things... one who just happened to rise from the dead. Through baptism we ourselves pass from death to life. As we enter the water we are giving up ourselves and returning to the realm where there is no form - to the watery realm from which life first emerged - and we return to a state of non-being; but as we emerge and dry off we are reborn from the primal waters: New Beings in Christ Jesus.

His life becomes our life.

His death becomes our death.

His Resurrection is our resurrection.

And from then on we are commanded to gather, again and again, that we might approach the Altar, offer up our selves, and be transformed by taking Christ’ s own Body (Christ’s own self) into our bodies… into our own physicality.

His earthly witness, therefore, continues on in our flesh.

We become (in spite of our manifold faults and shortcomings), the Living Body of Christ in this world. And when we let the Holy Spirit guide us and actually live into that identity… people tend to notice.

The True Gospel of our Savior Christ is offensive to those who would claim to be Gods in this world. For when someone has ambitions to be God (to put themselves in the place of God) it doesn’t usually involve sitting around with the sick and the homeless and the poor and the dying. Setting oneself up as God does not usually involve loving those whom we deem unlovable…

So when someone comes along and tells an emperor that a homeless carpenter is not only the Image of God, but in fact a better image of Who-God-Is  than the emperor could ever be… the Powers of Empire naturally have a hard time accepting that as truth.

Throughout the ages this Truth has been offensive to the powers-that-be and inspired social change.

Hospitals, orphanages, burials for the penniless dead - all of these things come out of the revelation that the Image of God would appear as an ordinary human being (the broke and homeless son of a woman accused of adultery and the foster-son of a carpenter from the middle of nowhere).

Not only that, but this Image of God did not exalt himself. Instead this Jesus exalted the lowliest members of society, he considered their well-being coterminous with his own well-being. God looked the most unlovable wretch in the face and said we’re in this together.

If that is what the Kingdom of God looks like on Earth - if that is what being the Image of God in the world actually looks like… Then those who seek power and glory for themselves are in trouble.

Throughout the ages the Body of Christ has been persecuted for embodying the self-sacrificial way of love and for challenging the claim that Power and Wealth make one more worthy or more god-like.

We should all, of course, be aware of the mass persecutions and during those first few centuries of the Church’s existence.

Yet in the face of Persecution the Body of Christ has always found greater glory. For we know that, although the Powers of oppression and hunger and poverty and even death stand in our path, the Final Word is the Word of Life. The Body of Christ will never stay down for long.

All over the world, Persecuted Christians to this day continue to practice their faith in spite of the consequences. They continue to serve the poor, the sick, the lonely, and the unloved even though it might draw attention to their community.

All over the world, to this day, Christians are looking their murderers in the eye and saying “God forgives you.”

A few years ago I found myself in the village of Al-Qosh in the Kurdish region of Iraq (the same Al-Qosh, it is said, as the one which produced the biblical prophet Nahum). For centuries this has been a primarily Christian Village; and when ISIS came sweeping through the Nineveh Plain to wipe out all who did not accept their interpretation of Islam, the People of Al-Qosh did not surrender their faith or their home. They welcomed refugees from throughout the area and set up a trauma center for those who were suffering.

Al-Qosh is only about 50 miles away from Mosul and built onto the side of a mountain. On a clear day in Al-Qosh you can see Mosul across the plain...

And on a clear night in Mosul… ISIS soldiers could see a giant, luminescent cross set up on the side of the mountain where the village was. The villagers of Al-Qosh put it there to serve as a beacon of hope to all who were suffering and as a challenge to ISIS. As if to say: “We are the People of the Cross. The People of Christ. Even in death you can never defeat us.”

The Village of Al-Qosh, despite its proximity to Mosul, was never taken by ISIS and continues to serve as a refuge for those seeking aid and trauma treatment.

             

Persecuted Christians throughout the world have given up everything for the cause of the Christ and the care of those whom Christ loves. They have stared death in the face and sometimes even embraced death - for they know that even then Christ stands with them.

May those Christians - those who bear the Name of Christ in the face of death and persecution - always be for us an embodied example of Christ’s sacrifice and steadfastness in the Face of Death.

As the leaves of the trees flash with the most brilliant of all colors just before they fall, so too do those persecuted and martyred for their faith show to us the most glorious and striking Images of God’s Self-Sacrificing Love… even as they fall.