Take Up Your Cross and Follow – Sermon 1 March, 2015

Take Up Your Cross and Follow
Mark 8:31:38

You have heard this passage of Scripture before, where He talks about us denying ourselves and taking up a cross and following Him.
And yet we should ask the question: “What does that mean?”
Before we go any further we should consider two things:
First, that Jesus is honest and lets us know that the life He offers to us is promised to be full of blessings and His presence, but at the same time it is not an easy life.
Many missionaries have come to understand what Jesus meant when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”, it’s not an easy road! It is a road full of challenges and difficult paths. We know and learn this from our own experience.
Secondly, Jesus never calls upon us to do anything that He was not prepared to do Himself. What He asks us to face, He has already faced. And when He calls upon us to take up a cross, He, Himself, has already carried one for us.
This perspective seems to go against what the world teaches us. The world teaches us that anything that bothers us or becomes difficult, we should avoid. Sadly, some churches seem to have adopted that attitude, too.
And yet, the words of Jesus are still there, “If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
So once again I ask: “What did He mean? What does it mean to “take up” or “bear a cross”? What does the Bible teach about “cross bearing?”
1. The Bible teaches us that bearing our cross is voluntary; it is not something we are forced to do. It is not like having to accept a fact about our situation or things that happen in our lives, being it an illness, tragedy or a disaster. These things do not happen by our choice. But following Jesus and serving Him is something we choose and commit ourselves to do that for His glory.
So in this lent Season let us remind ourselves that we are invited to follow Jesus and walk on a similar road that he took totally by our own decision and choice.
2. The Bible teaches us that bearing our cross is an act of love; it is not something accidental, unintended or unavoidable that we must face. It is an act of love that we choose to do as He did for when He went to the cross for our sins. Cross bearing is a task that we undertake and a price that we pay following His example. Christ demonstrated this in His action of unconditional love. He demonstrated it by going to the cross for our sake.
1 Cor. 13 we sometimes change the word ‘love’ with ‘I’, today I want to do that by the changing to ‘cross bearer”, which will demonstrate what I am trying to say about the bearing cross to be an action of love. That is what “cross bearing” means. It means taking the love of God to the very ends of the world. To touch the lives of people who are unlovable. It means denying and sacrificing. It means paying the price.
So in this lent Season let us remind ourselves that we are invited to reach out to people who are unlovable and unlovely and who may never return the love. Yet we are to keep on loving because that’s what He did.
3. The Bible teaches us that bearing our cross is hard; it is hard to accept such an idea. See what the disciples did when Jesus talked about His death, Mark says that Peter rebuked Him and objected to the idea. It seems that he was happy being with Jesus and never wanted for Him to leave them. That’s why they even tried to keep Him from going to Jerusalem. They said, “We don’t want you to die.” When He did die on the cross they hid behind locked doors, fearful of what might happen next.
Paul wrote about the cross in 1 Corinthians 1:22-24, “Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
That hasn’t changed much. We can understand the Jews stumbling over the idea of their Messiah hanging on a cross. They were an oppressed people. They had been oppressed by Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks and now by the Romans. But the thing that kept them going was the promise of the Messiah, who would come one day and deliver them.
The Messiah was there, but not as they had expected. He came as a carpenter, a preacher from Nazareth. Some called Him a madman. His army was made up of twelve men. And instead of great military victories, there was a crucifixion.
So the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews. It wasn’t what they expected. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Bearing the cross and dying is something hard to accept. But it is something that has been talked and preached about for so many years.
So in this lent Season let us remind ourselves that we are invited to bear our cross even though it is a hard thing to do; it is not an easy task and even something expected.
This morning the offer we receive is a cross. Not an easy and relaxing life or a church that is perfect with all the solutions to our problems. We face many challenges as individuals, families, community and as a church. We struggle and try to find solutions for our problems. We can’t guarantee to have positive results and everything we try and plan will work.
All we can offer is Jesus Christ, His love and His cross as a perfect example for us, His followers.
Let us remember that the Lent Season is a time to repent but also a time to bear our cross as our Lord Himself did for our sake. Amen.

Krikor Youmshajekian