Sermon for 9/3: The Cross-Shaped Life

Sermon for 9/3/17                                                                                               The Cross-Shaped Life
Matthew 16: 21-28                                                                                                        Jennifer M. Ginn

    “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” With these words, what cross do we think of? Jesus’ cross, of course.
    But at the moment Jesus says this to his disciples, they don’t have any idea that he will die ON a cross. He is just beginning to show them how the plan will unfold—and the plan is shocking. This will take lots of explaining!
    What THEY know of crosses:
* They stand outside the gates of a city: dying men on crosses lining the  road
* Agitators/insurgents/ criminals were typically forced to carry the cross-beam to the execution site, where it would be attached to the center pole and lifted up, with them on it.
* Crosses were a warning from Romans—don’t cause trouble inside this city or this is where you’ll end up, on a cross.
This would have been the image in the disciples’ minds.
    So today Jesus was full of hard news:
He would suffer, be killed, rise again—preposterous news, in their minds. They were to be eager to lose their lives for his sake, to take up a cross willingly, not as criminals but followers.
    No wonder Peter objected loudly. I would have, too. In realizing how much in the dark the disciples were at this point, I’ve begun to think more generously of Peter. He probably spoke what all of them were feeling.

    2,000 years after Jesus died on a cross, WE see the cross in ways they couldn’t have. We see the cross Jesus hung on. But we also see ….
* large shiny crosses on altars or small ones on a wall or desk
* white crosses on a roadside where someone has died in a wreck
* crosses in a cemetery
* crosses under glass at a jewelry counter.
My former pastor and mentor Steve Gerhard told a story about shopping for a cross for his daughter. He was shown all the crosses at the jewelry counter by a young female clerk. She said, “Be sure to check out the cross at the end of the counter—it’s very pretty. It’s the one with a little man on it.” Clearly she had no idea who that man was.
    This is the truth of our culture. Many people have no idea what the cross means or who died on it. Even among Christians, the cross has different meanings.  What does the cross mean to you? (a reminder of identity, a baptismal gift, a source of strength)
    But what does it mean to TAKE UP a cross?
In summer Confirmation camp, our students experience a Lenten practice—Stations of the Cross. The take turns carrying an actual cross: rough wood, large, and heavy.  But the cross-carrying Jesus means is more than physical. It’s a way of living: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

    What does a cross-shaped life look like?
Instead of being guided by its own desire and the current mantra, “You can be anything you want to be,” it’s a life that strives for the things Jesus taught: humility, kindness, generosity. The cross-shaped life finds its best self in those.
1. The cross-shaped life is a man named Jonathan Daniels, who in 1965, at 26 years old, gave his life away.
* A white Episcopal seminary student, active in the 60’s equal rights movement, arrested in Alabama at a nonviolent protest.
* After 6 days in a cell with no AC, running water or toilet, and without a court appearance, he was released with his group.
* They walked to a store 50 yds away to get a cold soda.
* A county deputy with a shotgun denied the group entrance, pointing it at 17 yr-old Ruby Sales, a black teen.
* Jonathan Daniels immediately pushed her aside and took a shotgun blast to the chest, intended for her.
* His death is commemorated annually, on 8/14, in the Episcopal Church.
I am thankful for his example, but would I give my life in that way? I don’t know.

2. The cross-shaped life may not die for someone else. But it yearns to help others.
* Pastor Richard Rhoads, former pastor of Kimball Memorial Lutheran in Kannapolis, now at First Lutheran, Galveston, TX, has been going out with his congregation to do cleanup and find housing for folks in flood-devastated areas nearby, hit by Hurricane Harvey.
* You and I can’t go there to pull out carpet or water-soaked drywall. But we can thank God for Pr. Rhoads and pray for families devastated by the hurricane. And we can give to Lutheran Disaster Response.

3. The cross-shaped life hungers to serve and does that, in places close by:
* mentoring a child at COSkids in Matthews, helping prepare a meal for the single-parent gatherings there on Thursday nights, working at a painting or landscaping project there on ‘God’s Work. Our Hands’ Sunday next week.
* cleaning up roadsides or bringing food for the Matthews Help Center (which we dedicate today).

4. The cross-shaped life prayerfully weighs possible actions.
* Is this action a God-pleasing one? you might ask. Or is this a path I should avoid?
* It doesn’t shy away from those decisions, fearful of choosing wrongly. God’s love in Christ makes us free, knowing that if our choice is wrong, the risen Jesus will forgive us and love us back to him.

    The cross-shaped life knows this: you and I don’t have to die on a cross. Jesus already did that. In that act of self-giving,
* he forgave even the worst of his persecutors.
* he offered his life in a way you and I never can.
* God brought him back from the dead for all to see, creating a faith in his followers that would change this world.
The forgiveness he gave, the resurrection he was given, the faith he created: those are OURS because of what he did on the cross.

When you and I live a cross-shaped life, we are responding joyfully to that gift.

And as with any gift that is too good to be true, we are eager share it. May you do that, boldly, with someone who may not even know who that little man on the cross is!

Thanks be to God. Amen.