Embracing the Cross in a risk-averse world

Proper 17 A (30.08.26) –
Jeremiah 15.15-21; Romans 12.9-end); Matthew 16.21-end.

The invitation in today’s Gospel to take up our Cross and follow Christ is certainly countercultural. We have become an increasingly risk-averse society, keen on risk assessments in schools, health and safety requirements at work and safeguarding the young and vulnerable everywhere.

Furthermore, we live in an era of personal fulfilment and self-preservation, so we are perhaps not natural candidates for carrying the Cross of Christ. We must find some sort of pathway between risk-aversion and Calvary if we are to commend the Cross to contemporary society.

I would not wish to go back to gung-ho 1950s carelessness. I want people to have a life in which home and work are balanced, in which children see their parents at both ends of the day; and a world in which employees have a reasonable expectation of getting home in one piece. And, of course, I want a world in which the vulnerable can enjoy every stage of their life without being preyed on or abused.

But I also believe that Jesus’ words about taking up our Cross and expending our life for his sake are words which we not only may safely, but must absolutely follow if we are to remain faithful (see e.g. Romans 12.1-2, Matthew 16.18).

This week’s Gospel makes three points:

1. Jesus – whether Saint Peter likes it or not – is embarked on a course of action that will lead to his suffering and death.

2. We must follow in his footsteps and participate in his suffering if we hope for his abundant and eternal life.

3. Our judgement and reward (pay-back time) are very near indeed.

Indeed, the judgement of God (with mercy) is permanently and urgently imminent, not as a vindictive or vengeful act, but simply because God is as God is, and because we are as we are. And our response to that reality is to take the Cross seriously.

Jesus’ Cross is literal. It places him at a certain point in history and geography, illustrating the consequences of upsetting Jerusalem’s religiously powerful caste and their Roman sponsors. It is also given additional heft by its association with Redemption and Atonement, expressed in the language of the Passover and Temple sacrifices.

Our own experience of the Cross will not – obviously enough – be like his. Our Cross is metaphorical and, as Paul puts it in Romans 12.9-21, a Cross-shaped life will demonstrate love of goodness; love of neighbour; a hopeful and joyful service of the Lord (and therefore service of the servants of the Lord); it will entail overcoming evil with good; living in harmony, hospitality, humility, generosity; living in peace, without vengefulness, focusing on the lowly and not the highfalutin’; in short, it will involve being an abundant blessing to others.

As we meditate on each of these elements, we consider that there are – conveniently – three aspects our taking-up of the Cross.

1. It will of course be corporate: Christianity is always a game for two or more players. We will learn and grow as one, transformed through our communal and worshipping lives; and we serve the world as one.

2. It will have moral urgency. Taking up the Cross isn’t just a nice thing to do when we’re not too busy. It is a necessary component of any Christian life. The aim is not to run ourselves into the ground but to lift others from it (and to be lifted in turn by them). This is the urgent and joyful task to which our attention is habitually turned, focusing not on doing, but on being the people we are called to be.

3. Embracing the Cross has levels, gradations. It will not be about what we do, but how we do it. We do not need to live heroically: it is enough to look out for the neighbour on our street, to put in a kind word when everyone else is putting in the boot. We begin by choosing to live our lives not as a helter-skelter exercise in self-enrichment, nor as something to be benignly snoozed through. We thereby learn through grace to be a blessing, in whatever context that arises, and to be an agent of God’s peace.

All of which is why the Cross is a central symbol in Church life; and why so many millions of Christians make the sign of the Cross on their own bodies as prayer. At the Gospel reading, some trace a small Cross on head, lips and heart, signifying a desire to ponder, proclaim and practise the Gospel they are about to hear. At other times, they make a Cross by touching head, heart and shoulders, a physical expression of the desire to think of God, love God, and labour for the Kingdom of God, like a yoked beast pulling the plough.

This is the calling of every Christian. As Bonhoeffer puts it, when Christ calls disciples, he calls them to die. If we would follow Christ faithfully, we follow him into his death and resurrection; and we take up our own Cross every day, yielding him our life as a blessing to others; and receiving from him the greatest imaginable blessing: abundant and eternal life in his presence.