Romans 12.9-21; Matthew 16.21-27
Trinity 11, 31 August 2014, West Camel w. Queen Camel, Sparkford w. Weston Bampfylde
Trinity 12, 3 September 2017, Queen Camel
Jesus said, ‘Take up [your] cross and follow me’. Today I say, take off your cross - to examine it awhile.
One story which well illustrates the lack of religious understanding in our post-Christian society is the story of the young woman who goes into a jewellers shop and tells the assistant that she’d like to buy a cross. ‘What sort of cross?’ asks the assistant. After giving this a bit of thought the girl replies, ‘I’d like one of those with the little man on it’.
Now before we too quickly dismiss this young woman in condemnation of her ignorance, let us ask ourselves - when was the last time I explained to someone of her generation the meaning and significance of the cross, for me?
Another story which we hear from time to time is that of the person banned from wearing a cross at work. One of these, NHS nurse Shirley Chaplin, was quoted as saying that ‘My Christian faith isn’t something that you put on and then take off to go to work. It is with you 24/7. It is my identity, it is who I am, I cannot chop and change it.’ But a Government lawyer James Eadie QC argued that wearing a cross was not a Christian ‘scriptural requirement’, so employers had no obligation to recognise it. [1]
Why indeed did nurse Chaplain regard the cross as essential to her Christian identity? Do we feel the same way about the cross ourselves?
Jesus said, ‘Take up [your] cross and follow me’. Today I say, take off your cross - to examine it awhile. Because the way we regard the cross reflects the way we think about God, and the way we act towards others.
The cross has come to mean so many different things that it’s hard for us to fix on what Jesus meant when he invited his followers to take up theirs. The cross has been misused in so many terrible ways that it’s hard for the world to see anything positive in it at all.
Notice that when Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,’ they didn’t have the hindsight we have; they hadn’t been through the trauma of Calvary or the delight of seeing the risen Christ ascend. To them the cross was the plain old Roman instrument of execution, by crucifixion, which ‘political and military leaders regarded […] as a chilling deterrent - brutal and bloody, yet cheap and effective. […] In Roman practice, the victims of crucifixion were nearly always dangerous criminals and members of the lowest classes’. [2]
So when Jesus told them to take up their cross, his disciples would have known this meant, position yourselves alongside the poorest and most reviled members of society; because of the gospel message that you bring, prepare yourselves to stand opposed to the powers that be, and to bear the punishment of their wrath against you when it comes.
‘For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’
How different a view of the cross this is, than that which Christians have taken over the centuries. It’s fascinating to look back in history to see how ‘the cross rarely appeared as a public symbol of Christianity until the fourth century; more typically, Jesus was represented as the good shepherd. The crucifixion does not appear earlier than the fifth century, and was relatively infrequent until the tenth century.’ [3]
What changed in the fourth century was that Christianity became wedded to empire after the Roman Emperor Constantine, in the midst of a battle, saw a vision of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, CONQUER BY THIS. [4]
At first, Constantine did not know the meaning of the apparition, but on the following night, he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign of the cross against his enemies. [5]
From then on, the emperor ordered that the banner of the cross be carried at the head of each of his armies as it went into battle. Taking up one’s cross came to mean bearing your military standard; the cross, the Chi-Rho sign, meant that God was fighting on your side. Those determined to save their lives at the expense of others, march as to war ‘with the cross of Jesus going on before’. [6]
The history of the cross then becomes the story of a symbol used to violently put down the enemies of Christ: in the Crusades, where the cross became a clarion call to liberate the 'Holy Land' from 'infidels,' i.e., the Muslims, and during which time crusaders also raped, and pillaged, and murdered 'infidels' closer to home, i.e., the Jews. From the earliest of times the Jews had been accused by Christians of the charge of deicide: that is, in crucifying Jesus the Jews have murdered God. This accusation took a fierce hold on the Christian imagination and 'the cross, the symbol in which the massacres were perpetrated, acquired powerful negative associations for Jews that linger to this day.’ [7] A Holocaust survivor Naftali Lavie has spoken of ‘the presence of [an eight-metre high] cross at Auschwitz as a provocation directed at the Jewish people, and as a desecration of the Holocaust’ [8]
The songwriter Sydney Carter, best known for ‘Lord of the Dance’, also penned these lines:
The Devil wore a Crucifix,
'The Christians they are right,’
The Devil said, 'So let us burn
A heretic tonight . . .'
The stars and stripes or swastika
The crescent or a star
The Devil he will wear them all,
no matter what they are. . . [9]
Jesus said, ‘Take up [your] cross and follow me’. Today I say, take off your cross - to examine it awhile.
The way we regard the cross reflects the way we think about God. And about others, especially those of other faiths, and how we treat them. The way we regard the cross reflects the way we understand ourselves. And how we deal with our differences. How do you regard the cross today?
An often-used phrase is this one: ‘It’s the cross I have to bear’.
What do I mean when I say this? Do I mean: It’s the burden loaded onto me by a gratuitous God who wants to let me suffer? Or do I mean: It’s the predetermined path to self-improvement directed by a severe God who wants to make my journey hard?
Or, when I say, ’It’s the cross I have to bear’, do I mean that I see it as a symbol of a gracious God who once suffered crucifixion out of sheer self-giving love for me, and who now stands with me in my suffering? Do I regard the cross as the sign that there will be something better at the other end of my struggle, a resurrection, if I hold on to my hope?
I suggest the latter. For let us remember that Jesus said, ‘For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.’ He is saying that the cross leads to life. It leads through suffering, for sure, but it leads to life.
This gives us hope that the cross - a symbol so often used to oppose and oppress others, a symbol so often felt as a burden to ourselves, is a symbol which can be transformed today.
We have the opportunity now to strip away all the violence and oppression which history has loaded into the cross. We have the opportunity today to translate ‘taking up our cross’ back into its original meaning, in which Jesus proposes we walk with him a path which will lead us peaceably through our confrontations with enemies, learning to see people of other faiths not as infidels but as fellow-travellers.
In inviting us to take up our cross Jesus proposes we walk with him a path which will lead us graciously through our struggles for ourselves and alongside alongside the poorest and most reviled members of society, against the powers that be.
In inviting us to take up our cross Jesus proposes we walk with him a path which will lead us patiently through our suffering, just as his loving Father led him patiently, graciously, through his. It is a path which Jesus will walk with us, and bring us out, beyond - into life.
Jesus said, ‘Take up [your] cross and follow me’. Today I say, take off your cross - to examine it awhile.
Notes
[1] Anil Dawar, No right to wear a cross at work, Daily Express, September 5, 2012
[2] Mary C. Boys, The Cross: Should a Symbol Betrayed be Reclaimed?, paper presented to the Christian Scholars Group on Jews and Judaism in Baltimore, March 28, 1992. I’m indebted to Paul Neuchterlein for providing the reference to this, in Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Year A, Proper17a, ‘Reflections and Questions’, note 6.
[3] Mary C. Boys, (n6.)
[4] Mary C. Boys
[5] Wikipedia: In hoc signo vinces.
[6] A line from Sabine Baring-Gould, Onward Christian Soldiers.
[7] Mary C. Boys, quoting Marc Saperstein, Moments of Crisis in Jewish-Christian Relations, p.19.
[8] Mary C. Boys carries a full account of Naftali Lavie’s reflections on the presence of a cross at Auschwitz.
[9] Sydney Carter, ‘The Devil wore a Crucifix’: sung by Franciscus Henri on YouTube.
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