Second Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Take Up Your Cross

 The Lenten journey is a six-week discipline of intentional, focused discipleship. For those who choose to practice the discipline of Lent, it is a time of consciously focusing upon God and their relationship with God. Interestingly, few people – in my experience - speak of the journey in terms of discipleship.

The Lenten journey is patterned after the final six weeks of Jesus’s life when he journeyed from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. According to the synoptic gospels, the awareness of what he would experience in Jerusalem dominated his thinking during this timeframe. He repeatedly attempted to prepare his disciples for what he knew was coming, but they could not hear or accept what he said. In addition, he repeatedly taught them about discipleship – what it meant to be his follower. As with his teaching about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the disciples were unable to grasp what he taught about discipleship. (The gospel of Mark gives us three examples of how Jesus’s teaching about what he faced in Jerusalem was paired with his teaching about being his disciple. The gospel indicates these three pairings were examples of a recurring theme in his teaching.)

Like the disciples, many today who identify themselves as a Christen do not have a clear understanding of discipleship – what it means to be a follower of Jesus. They speak of being a Christian, not a disciple. For them, being a Christian means believing certain things about Jesus (proper belief), living a certain way (proper behavior), and church involvement (proper worship).

Jesus clearly stated what is involved in being his disciple. Yet we, like his first disciples, struggle to grasp what he said. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” Mark 8:34. In this teaching, Jesus used three phrases to describe what is involved in being his follower: deny self, take up your cross, follow me. These three phrases express the essence of discipleship.

I often hear people speaking of their “cross” as in “it’s my cross to bear.” On the surface, the term “my cross” seems to echo Jesus’s teaching about discipleship. However, the meaning of the term “cross” as used in this common phrase and what Jesus meant by it are radically different. In the statement “it’s my cross to bear,” the word “cross” refers to some kind of painful challenge we are facing, such as a chronic illness or the challenges of grief after the death of a spouse or child. These normal, difficult life experiences are not what Jesus meant by the word “cross.” It is not how the disciples would have understood the term.

In Jesus’s day, the cross was a means of execution the Roman government used to punish and make an example of those who dared to defy their power and authority. Crucifixion – death by the cross - was a torturous, painful death done in the public forum. (Jesus’s crucifixion was by one of the city gates so that all who came and went would see it.) It was Rome’s way of saying, “This is what happens to anyone who dares to defy us.” The cross was for insurrectionists.

When Jesus said discipleship involved taking up the cross, he was talking about a way of life. He meant living as an insurrectionist. To be his follower was to reject the ways of the world. It was to walk out of step with the thinking of the world and the ways of the world which Rome embodied.

Jesus paired “take up your cross” with the phrase “follow me.” This phrase was a technical term in Jesus’s day, used by rabbis to invite specific individuals to be one of their disciples, i.e., learn from them. To be a follower of Jesus – a disciple – was to learn from him a way of thinking and living that was different from the world’s way of thinking and living. It was to learn and live the ways of God that Jesus taught, i.e., the ways of the kingdom.

The heart of discipleship is walking in relationship with Jesus, learning from him a different way of thinking and living. It involves moving beyond the way the world trained us to think and live. To be a disciple is to use power, in all its forms, the way Jesus used power - to serve others. It is to view and value, accept and embrace every person as a beloved child of God - just as Jesus did. To be a disciple of Jesus is to reject the merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking of the world, choosing instead to relate out of grace and forgiveness – just as Jesus did. It is to value people more than material things – just as Jesus did. It is to trust the extravagant generosity of God, giving generously and freely of what God has given – just as Jesus did.

When the Lenten journey is about discipleship, we intentionally reflect on how we are living as a follower of Jesus. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize the teachings of Jesus that we resist. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize where we do not live the ways Jesus taught. We allow the Spirit to help us examine what is in our hearts. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize how our thinking and living mirrors the ways of the world rather than the ways of God. We allow the Spirit to show us the next step of our discipleship journey.

In other words, giving up something for Lent - chocolate or alcohol or sugar - may or may not have anything to do with being a follower of Jesus. More about that in my next post – Deny Yourself.