“When he had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.’”
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever! Forgive me, the sinner. God forgives, and I forgive.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“What does it mean to take up your cross? It means the willing acceptance, at the hand of Providence, of every means of healing, bitter though it may be, that is offered. Do great catastrophes fall on you? Be obedient to God’s will, as Noah was. Is sacrifice demanded of you? Give yourself into God’s hands with the same faith as Abram had when he went to sacrifice his son. Is your property ruined? Do your children die suddenly? Suffer it all with patience, cleaving to God in your heart, as Job did. Do your friends forsake you, and you find yourself surrounded by enemies? Bear it all without grumbling, and with faith that God’s help is at hand, as the apostles did” (St. Nikolai Velimirovich, Homilies, vol. 1, “The Great Gast—Third Sunday: Of the Holy Cross”).
“What does it mean to take up your cross?” It is still relevant, brethren, what I said in my sermon last Memorial Saturday: “Our mortal lives are the Lent of our spiritual lives. Now we mourn, now we toil, now we exercise moderation and discretion and sobriety,” … and more than this: now we suffer; now we bear the crosses of our mortal afflictions—of pain, of mental anguish, of slander, hatred, disdain, injustice. Now we go to Golgotha to be crucified with our Lord.
But our momentary suffering is not in vain, as the Apostle says: “Now if we have died with Christ, so we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom 6:8). Everyone likes the second part of that verse: “… so we believe that we will also live with him.” But the life that St. Paul alludes to is the life of the resurrection; it is the new life afforded to the faithful in the Kingdom which is to come. How do we get to the Kingdom? By the grace of God, surely. But also: through the cross. The perfect and eternal Kingdom of God cannot be entered into unless we are willing to die for it. After all, this is the path of our Lord, who came into this world in extreme humility, was chastised, discouraged, hated, suffered, and died. Yes, our Lord was vindicated by virtue of his resurrection. We know well the Troparion of the Resurrection in the 7th Tone, “The dominion of death can no longer hold men captive, for Christ descended, shattering and destroying its powers.” Despite the cross, there is justification, vindication for men. But, but (please, really hear this): there is no circumventing of the cross; and there is no circumvention of death. Each of us does have a cross to bear. Each of us will die. We can either do so willingly, in the hope of the resurrection, aided by the example of our Savior, empowered and encouraged by the grace of the Holy Spirit of God, or we can live in enmity with God, spiteful of the crosses he has given to us. Said another way: our Savior’s victory over the cross and the grave does not eradicate our own crosses. The resurrection of Christ is a transformation of, not an evasion of, the cross.
When we avert our eyes from the image of our Lord—the crucified Lord, the suffering servant (cf. Isa 52:13-53:12)—brethren, [when we avert our eyes] we may be tempted to characterize our Christianity in terms of the idealism of a utopian political philosophy. “Where there is injustice, there must be justice! Where there is suffering, there must be compassion! All wrongs will be made right! All inequality will be made equal! All inequity will be made equitable!” These are wonderful ideals, brethren. These are wonderful aspirations. But they are deeply out of touch with the reality of the sinfulness of our world. We are reminded of this by the Theologian in his First Epistle:
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. … The world and its desires are perishing, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 Jn 2:15, 17).
“The world and its desires are perishing… .” Do not be deceived, brethren! The world that we see around us is dying! All that we see around us—death, hatred, suffering, wars, famines, pestilence—all these things are indicative of the Lenten season of the creation. We cannot fabricate peace! We cannot fabricate prosperity! We cannot fabricate equity! In all of our technological sophistication, all of our medical sophistication, all of our diplomacy, our foreign aid, our racial reconciliation; despite all of this, we continue to transgress as did our forefather and foremother in the garden. Over millennia, so little has changed. Man has been ejected from Eden, and in his spite and in his hubris, empire after empire, civilization after civilization, he has tried to recreate Paradise: a “world without crosses to bear.” But this is beyond our power. This is beyond man’s power.
There is only one path to Paradise. There is only one path to the Kingdom of God. It is not through intelligence. It is not through manmade systems of justice. Rather, Christ himself has told us and shown us the way:
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few may find it. … Whoever desires to come after me, left him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Matt 7:13-14; Mark 8:34-35).
“Take up [your] cross, and follow me.” This is not optional, brethren. We cannot avoid the cross! The only way to be resurrected is to die! In death, there is suffering. And our suffering—the collective suffering of all mankind—is epitomized in the cross. We must come to terms with the cross. We must see it for what it is: an instrument of death. There is nothing appealing about the cross. You cannot dress it up. You cannot make it anything other than what it is! For each of us, the cross will be something different. For so few of us will the cross be something so literal as three beams of wood. Our crosses may be physiological: cancer, chronic pain, chronic disease. Our crosses may be psychological: depression, anxiety, loneliness, fear. Our crosses may be relational: an embittered friendship, the death of a child. Our crosses may be spiritual: hatred, envy, lust. These crosses must always be carried, but never indulged. The cross is borne, but it is never glamorized. I have already said, “We must see it [the cross] for what it is: an instrument of death.” Bearing our crosses does not mean justifying our crosses. “I’ve always struggled with alcohol: it’s just my cross to bear. I’ve always struggled with pornography: it’s just my cross to bear.” Yes! And no! We must call our crosses “crosses.” But bearing them does not mean justifying them. Rather, in bearing them, we come to terms with the reality of our sin, our need for repentance, our need for forgiveness, our need for a Savior. We must feel the weight of our crosses, the heaviness of our sins. We must bear them. We do not merely sit and stare at them in disgust. To bear the cross—to pick it up, and put one foot in front of the other, and walk slowly towards the Kingdom—is to say, “I do have this problem, but I believe there is a solution. I believe there is a resolution, … somewhere further down the way.”
Christ took his cross to Golgotha. From Golgotha, he descended into hell. And from hell, he arose on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father. “Take up [your] cross, and follow me.” Do you understand, brethren? Our faith assumes a commitment to the cross—a coming to terms with the reality of suffering. But our faith also assumes a resurrection from the dead.
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God… . By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. … For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? … [Yes,] the one who endures unto the end, he shall be saved” (1 John 5:1-2, 4-5; Matt 24:13).
Through the prayers of our holy fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!