What's Your Cross?

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Matthew 16:24.

In our age, we like to wear crosses on necklaces...we don't want the cross wearing us. In fact, the main goal in life for many seems to be to dodge as many crosses as possible like an obstacle course. I am very concerned that a lot of us, myself included at times (OK, most of the time), define our existence by the pain avoided and the pleasure accrued in this world. An ease index. 

The statement above directed to the Disciples in general and Peter specifically, is not hard to understand. Impossible to go, "Hey Jesus, what is your point?"  


Jesus is being clear, direct, and forceful. The apostles were well aware of what the cross signified....capital punishment by the Romans. Not just death, but a very public death, meant to humiliate and kill the criminal and send a message to anyone who might entertain such crimes against the Roman Empire. "Look here and see what we do to those who oppose us." Rome would force opponents to either cooperate or be killed. About 40 years after Jesus  said this, Rome decimated Jerusalem to a pile of rubble and a graveyard for what they perceived an the unrelenting and incessant insurrectionist spirit of the Jewish province and people. 


History suggests that Peter asked to be crucified upside down as he was unworthy to die like Jesus...so death by the cross was perhaps a literal reality for him. Every other apostle, besides John, died martyrs death. Joel Osteen can try to sell the faith as an up and up, but for the faithful throughout history, a downward death has been God's primary methodology in disarming darkness. When innocent blood is shed, the Devil loses his grip on humanity because it runs so counter to the underpinnings of his realm: self-sufficiency, self-justification, self-_____, and plain old self-self.  


Jesus is insistent that we will have crosses to bear and that we must carry them to be a disciple. Everyone has crosses, perhaps multiple ones. Though not literal, they crucify us. There are crosses that one gets when accepting Christ--like the world thinking that we are idiots, but some of them are just life in action and not specifically because of our faith (i.e. Christians get cancer, have car accidents, get audited by the IRS, etc.). Spiritual maturity starts to take hold when we acknowledge that crosses are a fact of life, and that we are not the only ones carrying them. Empathy is the ability to see that all in this life suffer to one degree or another and we shall all die soon enough. Some people act as if there own trials and tribulations are particularly difficult and that God is singling them out for enhanced torture. And maybe He is. But, we also tend to exaggerate our sufferings beyond reality and act as a modern day Job.  


The Greek word for Follow (akaloutheitô) is in the Present tense. It means "Keep on following." We don't drop the Cross off. We keep carrying it. The following quotes do well to elucidate these concepts of crucifixion:                 

"Crosses are so frequent, that whoever makes advantage of them, will soon be a great gainer.  Great crosses are occasions of great improvement: and the little ones, which come daily, and even hourly, make up in number what they want in weight." John Wesley  


"We must not make crosses to ourselves, but must accommodate ourselves to those which God has made for us. Our rule is, not to go a step out of the way of duty, either to meet a cross, or to miss one." Matthew Henry


Just as a PS, I am seriously considering dropping the pictures and photos in this blog because I am consistently using images where the ownership is definitely not mine. It is essentially stealing at least some of the time. I am contemplating just using the bierkergaard header and you can bring to the text whatever images you have in your imagination.  Those are royalty free and get me off the hook.   I also want to get back to using a Bible verse at the beginning of my missives vs. after the fact or not at all. I sense God is calling me back to first bring His Word and then write about the ideas contained in a manner of contextualizing the concepts through the everyday collision of theology and life.  That is my calling as far as I can hear it.