We are more than half way through our Lenten journey. For many of us the dust of the ash that marked our foreheads on Ash Wednesday seems like a distant memory. But we are beckoned to remember that ash through the entirety of the season of Lent - because we cannot truly choose to follow Jesus unless we remember those words “from dust you were created and to dust you will return.”
Each of our lives is short in the scheme of things. Fifty or seventy or a hundred years to live into who we were created to be by God and to play a part in the mission of Christ. For however many years we are on this earth, we need to make a decision - if we are going to pick up our cross and follow Christ or if we are going to live our own way.
Jesus has been telling his disciples for months now what is about to happen - that he is going to be arrested and killed for the sake of the world. To conquer evil. But they haven’t been listening. Or perhaps simply haven’t been believing. Today’s gospel lesson is found in Luke shortly after Jesus asks his followers who the crowds are saying that he is. He then takes it one step further and asks who they think he is, personally, to which Peter replied “the Christ.” The Messiah. The one who would redeem Israel. Jesus responded to Peter’s proclamation by once again telling his disciples what was going to happen to them and issuing them a challenge and a choice - will they pick up their own crosses and follow him daily.
Remember that crosses in the age of the disciples were a sign of punishment and suffering beyond compare. They were meant for people found guilty by Roman law - people who rebelled against the government. When Jesus is asking his disciples to take up their cross - he was asking them to shoulder the burden of punishment, to suffer, and to ultimately follow him above all else, not the law of the land. He is asking the disciples what their faith was worth to them and reminding them of the cost.
That same question echoes through our day and age today. Will you deny yourself? Will you put the mission of Christ first? Will you set aside your own comfort for the calling of Christ? Will you take up your cross? Will you willingly take on suffering and rejection? All to follow Jesus?
I read a story this week told by Mark Batterson, a pastor in Washington, DC. Mark primarily pastors young adults and he is constantly encourage them to listen to the call of God in their lives. One young woman took him very seriously, and found that God was calling her to go overseas to work as a missionary, working with young women and children being trafficked. She risked her life every day to free others from bondage. Along the way, her parents and friends begged her to come back home or to follow Jesus in a safer way. But she couldn’t. This was her calling. This was what it looked like for her to deny herself, pick up her cross, and follow Christ.
For each of us, that calling is going to look different, because God has created us for a unique purpose. I have friends who deny themselves by teaching special needs children in public schools. Others who are missionaries overseas. Still others that serve the local church as Sunday School teachers and youth group leaders. But each of us will have a call and will have a choice to make - will we deny ourselves and follow Christ.
And all of our calls will be costly - demanding our whole heart and life. The way of the cross is narrow and difficult. And if we answer the call of Christ by saying “yes” we will meet even more questions - Will you remain faithful to Jesus when it isn’t fun? Isn’t easy? When it costs you that which you consider most precious? Will you give Christ your all? Even when it involves rejection? Is time consuming? And inconvenient?
Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians that Christ is not asking us to do anything or go anywhere that he has not gone. If anyone has a claim to glory instead of suffering it would be Christ. Instead of thinking how we don’t deserve suffering or have earned a convenient faith and life, we are to have the same mindset, the same heartbeat as Christ Jesus, who humbled himself to the point of dying for us, for the world, so that people could come to know the love of God. He was God’s very son, yet he did not claim that as an out or to make his life easy. Instead, he set aside all of his glory to be a servant of God, who died a painful death, so the Kingdom of God may reign.
Life isn’t fair. Or easy. Or without suffering. And being a Christian doesn’t make life any easier. In fact, it may just be harder. Because we choose not to follow our own way and will amidst a thousand distractions in this world. We choose to live as Christ live in order to further the Kingdom of God. And that way of living life is hard. It is going to bring about thousands of tears cried for people in this community who don’t know Christ. It is going to mean pouring our resources not into what we want, but into what Christ wants. It is going to mean that our treasures are Christ’s. Our calendar is Christ’s. It is all about Christ’s will be done, not ours.
Those are nice, comforting words that we pray each Sunday “thy Kingdom come, thy will be done” until we sit down and consider the cost. The truth is that not everyone who says that they are a follower of Christ, actually is. Because being a follower requires sacrifice. And just saying that we follow Christ doesn’t make it a fact reflected by our lives.
Right now some students from our parish are part of confirmation. On day one I told them that at the end of our time together as this class they each have to make a decision - it will be their own decision, not their parents, or friends, or families, about whether they will join the church. Whether they want to give their lives to being a disciple. The same is true for each of us here today, we need to make a decision as well. One that no one else can make for us.
Lent seems like the perfect time to make that decision. Or to reflect on the decision we’ve made. Or re-dedicate our life to following Christ with all that we have and all that we are. Lent is known as a season of fasting - setting aside something that distracts us from God in order to be more fully present to the movement of the Spirit. Maybe some of you have given something up for Lent - social media, chocolate, or shopping for pleasure. Even if you have given something up, I want to invite all of us this coming week to give up one thing that distracts us from God, even for one day to be more fully present to God and reflect on whether we are following the way of the cross with all we have and all we are or if in the words of Pastor Mike Slaughter we are
“professing a cross without the cost”. Reflect on whether we are living like a people marked by the ashes that began Lent with the words “from dust you were created and to dust you will return.”
Be more fully present so you can choose if you want to follow the way of the Cross, knowing that it will cost more than you can ever imagine. Amen