I would like to talk about the gift of trust in God which involves denying ourselves, taking up our crosses and following each day. This suggests a whole-hearted faith, a radical letting go and letting God which is an affront to the spirit of the times. To illustrate what this means and the context in which we hear it, I will tell a story about a person who went into the wilderness late in life to discover if there really is, anyone up there?
For six days he fasted, meditated and asked the question, “Is anyone up there?” He received no answer. Finally on the seventh day he decided to climb a mountain in the wilderness and ask the question from the top.
So, he climbed up and up—but right before he got to the top he slipped, and fell, and slid down, down to the edge of the abyss.
He grabbed hold of a shrub, and with his body dangling over the edge he decided, well, this is a good time to ask the question.
“Is anyone up there?”
“Yes,” was the answer.
That’s a good start, he thought to himself.
“What must I do to be helped?”
“Let go. Let go,” was the reply.
Well, he looked down, and could not see bottom.
He looked up again.
“Is anyone else up there?”
In many respects this is our context as a society and as individuals. Like it or not, we are shaped by our environment and interaction with others. We and those around us want another way, any other way, than trusting finally in God, in God’s mercy. For we are afraid of losing control, of losing our lives. So we hold on, clutching our shrubs with all our might. And we become crippled by fear, defensiveness, dread.
Of course, we have good reasons to hold on, particularly as people of the twenty-first century, a time of great change. For underlying the age is a tremendous fear of emptiness, a fear that no one will catch us as we fall.
This comes out in our literature. Recently, I reread two books in particular which are representative of our age.
One was All Quiet on the Western Front, about WWI and the suffering and tragedy and devastation of a whole generation of young people. In the book, the narrator is a cynical but honest voice with whom we grow familiar and even friendly, as he tells us of the insanity, violence, and death happening around him.
At the end of the book, it says simply: “He fell (he fell) in October 1918 on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the Army report confined itself to the single sentence: all quiet on the western front.”
What happens in that quiet, that silence? We are left with a question.
The other book was Night by Elie Wiesel. It is an autobiographical story of the Holocaust, which increasingly I see cannot be explained or analyzed away but which must be simply faced. There is an overpowering image in the middle of the book. Wiesel and the other inmates have been hardened by what is happening around them and by the frequent executions of prisoners who are caught trying to escape. On this particular day, a boy, around twelve years old, has been caught apparently organizing an escape. The prisoners are ordered to the main yard to watch his hanging. Yet unlike the others who curse defiantly at the Fascists, this young man is absolutely silent as he goes to his death. And in silence he is hanged. The hardened prisoners begin to break down and weep. In the midst of this, Wiesel hears someone ask, “And where is God now?” We are left with a question.
The situation of the early twenty-first century is one of a question, of an underlying fear of emptiness, of the abyss below and beyond the suffering. It is the very hour in which the crucified yet risen Christ speaks to us today.
“If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34-35)
These words point to the real meaning of trusting the void beyond the void, of letting go and letting God.
First, deny yourself.
This suggests a turning away from the self and the attachments of the self. Freud uses the term fixation to describe the way human beings become attached to objects of the world. As the baby becomes attached to its mother’s breast as the source of security, so adults can become fixated on money, power, self glory, and other finite securities. Jung speaks of addiction (the scourge of our day) as simply a low-level longing for God which has gone awry.
Jesus is saying, give up your fixations of self and fix your gaze on God. That’s the beginning of trust. Give up those things which get in the way, and look God-ward.
Second, take up your cross. This can be misinterpreted and have different nuances.
I would interpret it to mean, as you trust and love you will encounter pain, adversity, even threats of destruction but don’t stop trusting, don’t stop loving, keep going. For God’s ways are not our ways. God is doing things in God’s time and God’s way. We are not promised success, but something much, much more.
Jesus asks each of us to take up our cross, to turn towards it and not away. Can you sense where the cross is in your life, in the life of this community? This is the very place where we are being asked to turn and trust God.
There are personal crosses to bear, such as truth and reconciliation with our friends and family. This is not an easy or quick cross. It may involve facing deep-seated anger and mourning. It may involve learning to forgive someone whom we can’t even begin to think about forgiving right now (including ourselves). It may involve walking through the valley of deep darkness to a whole new place. The journey is not without laughter, not without pain—it involves trusting someone.
The mystery of the cross is this: if we die with Christ, we shall also live with Christ.
And there are larger collective crosses of justice to bear here and now in this nation. There are powers that would have us believe that the whole earth is not meant to be a place of openness and equality of rights and capacities for all God’s people. There are principalities that tell us the means of life—safe, affordable housing, food, health care, jobs with living wages, quality education—are not meant to be distributed fairly to all God’s children. Be not deceived, there are those who profit from racism, economic inequity, environmental degradation, gender violence, homelessness, militarism.
We live in a time of great change—the old is passing, the new has not fully come. The change is bringing old wounds to the light. It is forcing people to decide on whom they can rely for security and hope. The question is: will we break into despair— or into God’s new life? Will the wound be the vehicle by which the old voices of authoritarian idolatry and false security are heard or will it be the agent of the good news that our sins are forgiven, and that death, the last enemy, is defeated, swallowed up in victory, for all people… Black, latino, asian, white… seeking, believing, doubting…
The challenge of the hour is to be patient and persevere through a period when the new possibilities are not always in sight, to sow seeds of hope where there is despair, faith where there is doubt; to take up our crosses daily (it really is a daily thing) which go against the grain of the world—challenging the rules of Egypt (literally in Hebrew, mitzrayim, “the tight, confining place”) in order to obey the voice of God.
For we do not belong to mitzrayim, we belong to God.
If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross—and follow me. The last two words are decisive.
Follow connotes dynamic, living, in movement, being part of a movement in history that we are not in control of.
Follow “me.” Who is asking us to give up our fixations, to follow in spite of all?
The One who calls us by name, and watches our back.
The One who gives hope against hope.
The One who died on another mountain—called Golgotha—for us all.
And leads us to new life.
Jesu, God with us.
Thank you!