"Come, Sweet Cross"

 

Jesu Juva

St. Mark 8:27-38                                                             

February 28, 2021

Lent 2B                                              

 Dear saints of our Savior~

          [Jesus] called the crowd . . . with His disciples and said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. . . .”

          We are right at the fifty-yard line in the Gospel according to Saint Mark.  Eight chapters are behind us and eight chapters remain ahead of us.  And it’s just here at the halfway point that Jesus drops a bombshell:  He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.  It turns out that, what from the fifty yard-line looked like a goalpost looming above the end zone, was not a goalpost at all—but a cross.

          You and I take the cross for granted.  It’s the most famous symbol of the Christian faith.  The enemies of Christianity hate and despise the cross.  You are right to be suspicious of any so-called church or chapel that claims to be Christian, but refuses to display a single cross.  The cross is ubiquitous—it’s everywhere,

especially in spaces like this one.  Sometime when you’ve got the time, just try to count up all the crosses you can find within this sacred space.  (However, don’t do it now.)  You will find dozens and dozens of crosses once you start counting.  Oh, and don’t forget that the original footprint of this church building, erected in 1948, is basically, more or less, cruciform, or cross-shaped.  This is not surprising.  It’s what you’d expect.

          But what was totally unexpected, unanticipated, and unprecedented was to hear Jesus speaking about a “cross.”  For the Twelve, it was a total shock and surprise.  It happens for the very first time in today’s holy gospel.  Jesus uses the word “cross” for the very first time in Mark’s gospel.  At that time and place in history the cross was not ubiquitous.  It was not commonplace, plastered on signs and steeples everywhere.  The cross was a Roman tool of torture—a grim and gruesome device designed to drag out death and to maximize suffering.  It was known only as a most cruel and unusual method of execution.  You just didn’t talk about the cross, or dare mention it in polite society.  But there goes Jesus—naming the thing that must not be named—letting loose about the cross—and doing it right at the fifty-yard line, in the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

          But if you are paying very close attention to the Savior’s words, then perhaps you noticed something even more troubling.  Yes, Jesus predicts His passion.  Yes, Jesus tells the disciples that He must suffer, be rejected, be killed, and rise again.  But in that significant sentence in which the word “cross” passes through the Savior’s lips for the very first time—He’s not talking about His cross.  He’s talking about your cross:  If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

          Now, we can ponder the cross of Jesus, and do it with a certain degree of detachment and comfort.  There’s a lot of good news attached to the cross of Christ.  There He suffered and died in your place.  There He carried your sins.  There He made atonement and earned your salvation.  There, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Amen.  But it’s suddenly a lot less comforting when Jesus makes it clear that everybody gets a cross.  Everybody who follows the Christ gets a cross.  There are plenty to go around.  There’s one for you, and for every follower of Jesus.

          Now, of course Jesus doesn’t mean that all of us will get crucified like He did.  But it does mean that those who follow Jesus will suffer.  Expect it.  Count on it.  We shouldn’t be surprised by suffering.  The question is:  exactly which of our sufferings qualifies as a cross?  Good question.  I had a root canal back in January that went badly.  For that matter, I had COVID in January.  That’s got to count for something!  But, no, neither of those qualifies as crosses. 

          For the record, the crosses we bear are the sufferings endure for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of His gospel.  Crosses come our way whenever we hold onto Jesus and keep His Word.  The cross comes when we honor marriage, and work at marriage, and lead a sexually pure and decent life despite a thousand temptations.  The cross comes when you forgive that one who has cheated you (or cheated on you) for what feels like the seventy-seventh time.  The cross comes when you love that person who is unlovable—when you serve that one who is mean and ungrateful.  The cross comes when you are all alone because you refuse to go along with the crowd on that broad and easy road that leads to destruction.  The cross comes when your weakness and your mortality are made manifest—and it becomes apparent that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.  The cross comes.

          On Good Friday, 1729, at the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, Germany, Kantor Johann Sebastian Bach directed the premier of his St. Matthew Passion.  This amazing work sets the entire Passion account of our Lord’s death to music.  It contains the very words of Matthew’s gospel, interspersed with arias and choruses and well-known hymn stanzas.  (Do yourself a favor, find an English translation online, and watch the St. Matthew Passion on YouTube during Lent.)

          Buried deep in the second half of the St. Matthew Passion is an aria for a solo bass.  It’s a mournful, yet joyful, sounding piece.  Right before the aria, the Evangelist has just sung about when Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry Jesus’ cross for Him.  For the aria that follows, Bach’s librettist, the poet who wrote and organized all of the texts which Bach set to music, he did something amazing.  For this aria, he strung together three words which have no earthly business hanging out in the same sentence:  Komm, süsses Kreuz.  Or, auf Englisch:  “Come, sweet cross.”

          Come, sweet cross?!  Who in their right mind would ever say that or pray that?  Who wants a cross to come?  Who welcomes a cross—and welcomes it as something sweet?  Bitter, painful, and difficult, yes; but sweet?  What was Bach thinking to incorporate such a strange combination of words in the Good Friday liturgy?  Come, sweet cross.

          Bach knew that your crosses and the cross of Jesus are different, yet also similar.  The cross of Jesus with its real wood and real nails and real blood as payment for our real sins—that was the unique, once-for-all sacrifice by which God reconciled the whole world to Himself.  God worked good from that cross.  From that cross, God’s mysterious love was poured out for the world.  It is finished. 

          But God also continues to work good from your crosses.  He redeems the suffering you endure in Jesus’ name.  Your crosses—as painful as they may be—are marks of God’s mysterious love.  Your crosses mark you as one redeemed by Christ the crucified.  In your crosses God purifies your faith—refines it to be purer than the purest gold.  And in those crosses He readies you for what comes next—for what inevitably comes after the cross:  the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.  And so, we spend our days on earth learning to pray, Come, sweet cross.

          It takes faith to say that and pray that and believe that—that our sufferings and our misery could actually be so very valuable to God and to His design for your life as a disciple of Jesus.  Saint Paul knew this and believed it.  It’s why he could write those outrageous words we heard in today’s epistle:  We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  To put it more concisely, “Come, sweet cross.”

          The fruit of our Lord’s cross does, indeed, come to us this morning in the Holy Supper of our Lord’s body and blood.  This meal is exactly what we need on this Second Sunday in Lent.  For the one who dares to deny himself, and bear his cross, and follow Jesus—the pathway of discipleship runs right to the altar, where the bread that is His body and the wine that is His blood brings you forgiveness of sins—strengthens you and preserves you to life everlasting.

          Jesus told His disciples that He must suffer, be crucified, and rise again.  It had to be this way.  It was necessary, for the love of God would have it no other way.  Everything Jesus suffered on His cross, He suffered for you.  So bring on the sweat and blood, the vinegar and the gall.  Bring on the nails and spear.  Bring on the lying, the mocking, the spitting, and the stony silence of heaven.  For the joy that was set before Him, Jesus endured it all for you.  May your crosses always remind you of His cross.  And by the grace of God, may we all learn to pray, “Come, sweet cross.”

           In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.