This passage from Mark’s gospel is a metaphor for the church’s ongoing struggle to be faithful in every age. Prior to this passage, Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah. It is a confession built upon the belief that Jesus had come back as a warrior king and that is why Jesus rebukes him and tells him to keep quiet. It is into this silence that Jesus speaks of his suffering. This makes no sense to anyone who expects a warrior savior, so on our behalf, Peter rebukes Jesus. The struggle for Peter is the same struggle facing the church. We know about the cross but do our best to ignore the reality of a crucified savior.
Jesus makes it clear that faith in him does not mean the end of suffering and struggle. To believe that faith means the end of suffering ignores the cross. In our modern time, to talk about picking up our cross, has been reduced to individual struggles or personal challenges. However, in Jesus time, there was no other meaning of the cross than political. Historian John Dominic Crossan makes this point well when he writes: “I want to emphasize that Roman crucifixion was state terrorism; that its function was to deter resistance or revolt, especially among the lower classes; and that the body was usually left on the cross to be consumed eventually by the wild beasts.” So, when Jesus uses the image of the cross his listeners would understand the realities and struggles of being faithful.
Despite it being clear then, we cannot simply transport it into our culture uncritically. In other words, the call to pick up the cross is not a call to voluntarily submit to capital punishment. There are clear implications for the follower of Jesus and capital punishment but that is not the full extent of the meaning of the cross. To understand the words of Jesus we need to see the encounter as getting at the crossroads of state power and the people of faith. New Testament scholar Ched Meyer writes: “The threat to punish by death is the bottom line of the power of the state; fear of this threat keeps the dominant order intact.” So when Jesus calls his follower to pick up their cross he is inviting all people to pick up that which holds fear over our lives. Jesus is inviting his followers to be released from this fear of death. What does this mean? It means that when we are set free from fear we are free to act in ways that humanize the world around us.
I am reminded of a story about a cemetery in Belfast Northern Ireland. You can learn much from the stories of cemeteries. Many years ago the cemetery had consecrated and non-consecrated burial plots. The unconsecrated, and unmarked, burial plots were left for the poor. Unknown in life and unacknowledged by the church in death, so goes the life of the poor. However, despite knowing this is the way the world works, one of the presiding bishop’s of Belfast humanized that situation at his death. Unable to change the policy in life, his will stipulated that he was to be buried in the middle of the unconsecrated ground. Not only did he place himself with the unknown and unacknowledged, there was another consequence. Church policy also dictated that the place a bishop was to be buried must be consecrated. And, as a result, the burial plots of all the poor became holy ground. I have come to believe that the actions of the bishop show that we can always something we have the power to do in order to humanize the world around us.
Being a follower of Jesus and being called by God to follow means that our life is going to be different. After all, at the heart of our faith is a story of a God who chooses two old people, foreigners, and immigrants in a strange land, to be the parents of great nations. God chooses the unexpected and powerless to change the world. Our God has always taken what was despised of the world and redeemed it for new life.
It is a hard thing to admit that our savior died by the most horrific capital punishment known in the ancient world. It was hard for Peter and it has been hard for the church. This year, we have brought out the oversized cross. It is not pretty or polished but it is here. During Lent we must give it a more central place so we do not forget that there is no need to hide from the pain and suffering in the world. Instead, it should be a sign of liberation, one that lets us know we can be agents of new life by humanizing, in the tradition of the human one Jesus, the most despised places of the world. We may not have the power to transform the world but each one of us has the power to turn some unconsecrated place in our lives into holy ground. Pray that God reveals to each one of us and to our community of faith, the places in which we are being called to act. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment