Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched our your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name. Amen.

Some of you remember the last time that I preached in late January. The Gospel reading on that morning was Jesus calling the first of the disciples: Simon, Andrew, James, and John. That sermon dealt mostly with the fact that we each have a call from Jesus that we each need to answer. Fortunately for me, I get to preach again today, where the Gospel reading also deals with the call to discipleship. Last time, we learned that we are called to discipleship and a little bit about what that call entails. This time, Jesus lets us know how far we must follow him if we want to be his disciples.

At the beginning of our reading, Jesus is with the twelve disciples and for the first time, he tells them that it is necessary that he suffer and die. Upon hearing it, Peter complained about this decidedly negative fortune telling. And then, Jesus turned to face his disciples and corrected Peter for his complaint. And, immediately, Jesus turns away from his disciples and “he called to the crowd” and offered them the invitation to discipleship. He said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” All of a sudden, it seems that the Twelve just don’t cut it anymore, and Jesus turns, and calls the whole crowd—everyone—to enter into that same relationship.

But this time, there is a new addition to the call. The last time I preached, all there Jesus said was “Follow me.” This time, it is “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” Take up your cross. It is hard to know what Jesus really meant by this, because few people have written about what the cross was really like. Most authors who lived in Biblical times kept a distance from writing about the horror and shame that was the cross. To these writers, the “terrible cross” is “unspeakably cruel” and “the most extreme suffering.” Some left an account of what the practice of crucifixion was like, but few would dwell on the topic. The Roman author Cicero wrote this:

Even the mere word “cross” should be far removed not only from the person of a citizen, but also from his eyes and his ears. For it is not only the actual occurrence of these things, but the even the mere mention of them, that is unworthy of a citizen and a free person.

One of the first drawings of the cross in artwork that we find is a piece of ancient graffiti in Rome. Some Roman vandal chiseled a man kneeling before a cross. On that cross hangs a man, with the head of a donkey. The caption reads: “The Christian worships his God.”

To the crowd that was there with Jesus when he called to them, the cross was a symbol of death and terror. Imagining a crucified Messiah or an executed God was an absolutely absurd idea to those living in the New Testament world. You would be considered at best foolish for following this man, let alone revering him as a mighty Savior—that’s what that Roman vandal was trying to tell us.

This view of the cross is very strange to us today. We do very little to “remove” the cross from “our eyes and our ears,” as Cicero asked us. We do the exact opposite. We put the cross in stained glass. We coat it in gold and carry it in processions and carry it around on our necks. We sing hymns like In the cross of Christ I glory. We even toss around the phrase “oh, that’s the cross I bear” as though putting up with a child’s temper tantrum or tolerating an annoying customer is more or less the same as the “great suffering” that Jesus said he must undergo. Today, even, we regard having a cross to bear as a good thing. In 1995, singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette sang these words:

It’s not fair / to deny me / of the cross I bear / that you gave to me.

You you you oughta know.

Where the ancient world looked at the cross and saw threat, the modern world looks at the cross and sees comfort in the form of jewelry and pop music.

So where do we fit in? What are we, as people called to discipleship, to do with these two very different interpretations of the cross? The cross is still a sign of death, no matter how much gold we cover it with in order to hide this. I don’t want to go too far out on a limb, but I’d say that taking up the cross means exactly the same thing to us what it meant to those people standing in the crowd around Jesus and his disciples. If we are to take up the cross, we take up a symbol of death. We are saying that we intend to follow Jesus and die with him. Being his disciple means nothing less than pledging to follow him (and re-pledging when we fall away) until we die. In only this way, if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, let us each take up our cross today. Let us take up the hard, splintery, and bloody cross in order that we might not only live in Christ now, and not only die in Christ in the future, but also live in Christ again in heaven.

But, ultimately, it is not possible for us to take up the cross ourselves and to carry it until we die. Each one of us is given the cross when we are baptized—we don’t take it up ourselves. In the Methodist church that I grew up in, after every baptism we would sing:

Baptized with water and the Word, you are a child of the Lord!

Signed with a cross for this new start, Christ’s spirit dwells within your heart.

The cross was handed to me—just as it was to everyone who has been baptized—and we all have become disciples of Christ. But, I’ll tell you that there have been several times in my own life that I have set down the cross. In the past, I have walked away from Christ. I continue to have my questions and doubts and I continue to sin time and time again. I am sure that some of you out there have been there too. But, because of baptism, I know that we all are justified—put in a right relationship with God—and reconciled to God, in spite of all of these things. Being a disciple and taking up the cross means claiming reconciliation with God as our own. The blood of Christ shed on that cross unites us to Jesus by his love. As a result, everything that we do as his disciples is a consequence of being reconciled to God. Just as God decided to reconcile the world through the cross in spite of the sins we have committed, we also should be reconciled with one another—restored to right relationships with each other—in spite of the sins committed against us.

The other day I was reading the news on the Internet (it’s hard to get a newspaper delivered to my dorm room), and I read about the upcoming summit in the Azores Islands. Have you heard about this yet? President Bush, Tony Blair from Britain, and Jose Maria Aznar from Spain are all meeting there as three pro-war nations to discuss the possibility of invading Iraq. In the news report, Mr. Aznar was quoted as saying that disarming Iraq at any cost, including war, is “neither politically nor morally acceptable.” Whatever your political views on the war are, war cannot be termed “morally acceptable.” This is precisely because we have been baptized and, as a result, have been reconciled to God by the cross. We have taken up the cross and have pledged ourselves to following Jesus to that hill outside Jerusalem where he died. Being reconciled to God means that we ought also be reconciled with each other—especially our enemies. If any action that we, as Christians, do is to be deemed “moral” it must be understood in this light. If and only if an action reconciles us with our enemies, our friends, and God, then that action can be called “moral.” When we let our selves and our nation go to war, we do not reconcile—rather, we tear apart—and we do an immoral thing.

I am not sure what cross it is that the three men of war at the Azores summit want us to take up, but it does not look like the cross of Christ. Whatever cross it is, it does not know about reconciliation and making peace in this world because God first made peace with us. It seems that these three men have laid aside the cross and taken up a sword. In preparation for the war they seem bent on fighting, the sword has been taken up. A sword covered in blood, just like the cross, but it is the blood that sets one against another rather than uniting them in the love of Christ. As Christians, we must take up the cross and not take up the sword.

But, the cross is difficult, if not impossible for us to take up. We certainly will let it go for one reason or another, or we may do our best to avoid taking it up altogether.

But that’s OK. Because the cross has already been taken up for us. The cross was taken up for us in Jerusalem so that Jesus might die and so that his blood might reconcile us to God the Father. Because the cross has been borne perfectly for us, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, no matter how often we set aside our own cross.

In the Methodist church, their Book of Worship allows them to use today’s reading from Romans 8 in the place where we normally recite the Nicene Creed. It was split into two parts, one for the minister and one for the congregation. The minister, dressed in a sober black robe, would walk out into the center of the church and read the first part: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” And the congregation would respond with the second half: “No! In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Cross of Christ inseparably unites us with the love of God in Christ Jesus. God reached out first and made peace with each one of us by the perfect offering and death of Christ on the cross. In thanksgiving for what has been done for us, let us each go out from here today and do whatever we can to make our peace with God and to make our peace with the world.