Watch the sermon recording here.
Scripture readings here.
Today’s readings from Matthew and Romans feel like they are meant to go together. Both provide actionable guidelines for living as a Christian. In other words, they teach us about “Christian discipleship”: how to be, act, and move through the world in a way that emulates the self-sacrificial and transforming love of Jesus.
In Matthew, Jesus boils down Christian discipleship into one difficult teaching: “Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
That command – to “take up their cross” – is not a throwaway line on the way to some other point, but central to Christian identity. The image it evokes – of total self-sacrifice – is what differentiated the first Christians from the self-preservation and bravado of the surrounding culture. And it is what inspired the first Christian martyrs to endure persecution, knowing that what looked like death to outsiders was the way to everlasting life.
But death is not the only meaning of the cross. In fact, scholar Andrew McGowan says that Jesus’ call to “take up the cross” is not primarily about the death that comes at the journey’s end, but about the path leading up to it.
Crucifixion on a cross was reserved for those deemed least significant in Roman society: enslaved people, criminals, and traitors. Carrying your cross through the streets, moving slowly through the jeering crowds, was to be put to shame. It was to be told by everyone who mattered that you didn’t matter. McGowan says “the image of “taking up the cross” refers to that journey of shame.”
For those first disciples and for us, “taking up the cross” is not about death, but about life: both the life we dare to lead when we risk shame and misunderstanding to follow Jesus and the life that awaits us on the other side of death, in eternity with him.
Taking up the cross also invites us to enter the full story of Jesus, just as he entered ours in the incarnation. We are being invited to take a walk in Jesus’ shoes. To participate in his life, not just observe it with detached sympathy. And against common sense, to find that placing ourselves in circumstances of shame and suffering brings us closer to the beating heart of God.
And this is where Romans comes in. As you’ll recall from Rev. Mike’s sermon last week, Paul has just completed his rigorous theology of salvation that validates the equal claim of all people to the eternal promises of God. Paul will spend the final chapters of his letter sharing practical advice on Christian discipleship. In other words, he will connect the dots between what we believe and how that belief is lived.
The portion we read today works as a direct response to the question we might have after Jesus’ teaching in Matthew: What does it mean to take up our cross and follow Jesus? Put another way, what does it mean to practice Christian discipleship?
Paul boils it down to one, deceptively simple teaching: “Let love be genuine.” Everything that follows in this chapter describes the impact of genuine love.
Scholar Brendan Byrne says that, up until this point in Romans, when Paul mentions love, he is referring to God’s love (Romans, Sacra Pagina). But now, Paul says, “the ball is in your court.” God’s love and mercy have been poured out on us through the saving grace of Jesus Christ and we are empowered to share it.
This is what salvation means and does. It makes us, not just recipients of divine love, but participants in it. Genuine love compels us to respond to one another’s joys and sorrows as if they were our own. And when we turn toward others in this way, we are drawn closer to the beating heart of Jesus.
This is what it means to “take up our cross”: to love so well that, when people look at us, they see Jesus.
Who reveals Jesus to you? What can you learn from them?
Like many of you, I spent much of last week mourning the death of a modern-day saint, Dolly Parton. While I didn’t follow her career closely, I was always delighted to see clips of her interviews and guest appearances. As a singer myself, I have always admired her soprano voice that was both soaring and sweet, and the way she wore her heart on her sleeve, in her art and in her life.
This week, a group of us got to talking about what made her so universally beloved. Online eulogies crossed political, cultural, and generational lines. Even those who didn’t share her beliefs proclaimed their love for her. One atheist online commented that they were willing to believe in Heaven since that was the only place suitable for Dolly Parton.
Undoubtedly, Dolly Parton was human. As a public figure, there is much we will never know about her private life, but we can assume she had hard days just like the rest of us.
But, I think Parton had such an impact on people because the central ethic of her life was “genuine love.” She loved migrant workers and gay people and Republicans and Democrats. She loved poor Appalachians and rich, coastal elites, and everyone up, down, and in between.
When people got mad at her, she never retaliated. She simply apologized. And she didn’t entertain manufactured conflict. She was steady in her beliefs and her behavior. She lived her values. She carried her cross.
Which is to say, Dolly Parton loved so well that, when people looked at her, they seemed to see Jesus. They were able to love themselves and, in turn, love others, because she radiated so much resurrection light.
When we talk about Christian discipleship, it is easy for us to boil it down to a list of behaviors. Metrics by which we measure our progress in some kind of punishing Christian fitness program.
But Paul’s words are not a checklist. And carrying our cross is not about proving to anyone that we are worthy of salvation. Carrying our cross is an invitation to participate fully in the life of Jesus. To live and love as God intended, wearing our hearts on our sleeve.
Because it is here that we find abundant life: in laughter and weeping, in humility and vulnerability, in forgiving, in letting go. In admitting our faults so that we can love faulty people. In choosing each other when the world would try to make us enemies.
Living in love is risky. People will take advantage of us. People won’t understand. We might lose respect, or security, or friends. There will be times that we don’t want to keep trying. Where our patience wears thin and self-preservation wins over our good intentions.
There will be times that we resist it, because it feels like one more act of self-denial will make us lose ourselves. But, if Dolly Parton taught us anything, it’s that living in “genuine love” is not a process of disappearing for the sake of others, but of becoming more yourself. As Rev. Mike put it last week: “become what you already are.” Because, when we stop trying to fit in with everyone else and start trying to be like Jesus, we find that we are finally free. We have been loved into who we were meant to be.
Our cross is a weighty one. But, when we dare to take it up, we will find that it is not a burden, but more like a weighted blanket. Our cross is a holy paradox: signaling death and yet revealing resurrection.
The jeering crowds around us will tell us we’re walking toward our own grave. But we know better. We walk in love, and we’re more alive than we’ve ever been. Amen.
Leah Wise 