Cross-shaped living

The fourth and last of my Lenten addresses . . .

“Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine must renounce self; day after day he must take up his cross, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

For me, Holy Week is about coming right up against the tragedy of the cross, really doing our best to feel it like those first disciples did, as everything gone wrong, as God’s plans subverted, as a good man, the best man, dying because we let it happen, we ran away, we maybe even helped hammer in the nails. Jesus had done his best to prepare his friends, but they will still have been horrified, terrified, crushed.  I want to feel some of that this week.

For the first Christians the cross was at best a secret sign. It was an implement of death, a place of failure and rejection, and it seemed wrong to honour such a thing in any way. Now the cross has pride of place in many a church, and so it should, for it is in fact both the means of our salvation and the place at which we are convicted of sin, and we need to take both these things to heart if we are to embark on what we might call cross-shaped living.

On that first Good Friday, the disciples in their fear must have been saying something like, “It wasn’t supposed to end like this!” They didn’t know it then, but they were wrong on both counts: it was supposed to be like that, and it was not the end. Our sins crucified Jesus, but not because of his weakness and inability to prevent it, not through the subversion of his plans. Our sins crucified Jesus because he allowed it to happen. And in this event we stand convicted of our sin, but as we so stand, God in Jesus removes sin’s power to hold us and enslave us.

From this spring two things, the first of which is the transfer of slavery.  Slavery was commonplace in those days; while today we find it offensive and find it hard to draw analogies from slavery, at that time it would be have been well understood and not questioned. It was simply a fact of life. And any slave bought out of his slavery would now belong to his new master. So, having been bought by the cross out of our slavery to sin and death, we now belong to the cross, and to the one who, hanging there, paid that price. And that, of course, is why the cross is marked on each of us when we are baptized, when we are brought into the Church. You can’t see it, it isn’t drawn on us in indelible ink. It’s visible only if we make it visible. But it’s there, there as the sign of who we now belong to.

The second thing is this - that we also belong to one another. There are no limits to what Jesus did on that cross; he even pleaded for those who nailed him there.  At Calvary Jesus took upon himself not just the sins of his immediate disciples, not just the sins of a few favoured people, but the sin of the world.  “When I am raised up,” he says, “I shall draw the whole world to myself.” Raised up on the cross, and lifted there to die; but also raised to new life on the first Easter morning. And because he lives, we too will live, and that is a promise that is open to all. Is it attained by all, received by all, understood by all? It’s not for me to second-guess the judgement that only God can make, but it is clear that I share a duty and commitment to get that good news out to whoever I can, and wherever I can, and in whatever way I can. In what looks like tragedy and failure, a victory is won, a throne is raised, and it’s for everyone to share: the triumph of love. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said, we know that light is stronger than darkness, love is stronger than hate, life is stronger than death.

So, through Christ we belong to God, and in Christ we belong to one another. And I love the way the cross itself as a sign can be used to express this. The upright, connecting me and God, you and God, every person who sees it and understands and God. And the crosspiece like arms outstretched, connecting me with you, you with me, nation with nation, tribe with tribe, with no limits, with everyone welcome, everyone offered a place. Take up your cross and follow me, says Jesus. And in cross-shaped living we are called to share with the world our new and restored connection with God, and our essential connection one with another.