Elevation of the Cross 2024

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Oops!

I wonder: Do we have the guts to be Christians? I don’t mean show up on Sunday and wear cross-shaped jewelry sort of Christian. I mean real Christians, like the apostles or the martyrs.

What got me to wondering was a podcast. Like many Americans, l’ve gotten into podcasts and vlogs. One that I’ve found particularly interesting is The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. 

It’s an interview style podcast where Steven interviews all sorts of people who are changing the world. Now, don’t let the title throw you. He doesn’t just interview CEOs. He interviews professors, authors, entrepreneurs, scientists, doctors … anyone who has big ideas that are changing the world.

At the end of the interview, he has a tradition. He asks his current guest a question that was left for them by the previous guest. Because the pervious person doesn’t know who’s coming next, they tend to be big-thought types of questions. Sort of like a deep ice-breaker.

In an episode I watched just this week (watch here), the question was: “For what would you be willing to die today?”

The guest, Daniel Lieberman, who is chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, answered the question this way:

“That’s a very hard one … I think we all think about that occasionally … if it need be, I think for the people I love and care about, right? My daughter, my wife … and I think I would certainly be willing to risk dying for, if it had an enormous benefit, for humankind. It would not be an easy decision to make. … I think you wouldn’t know the answer until you had to make that decision in the moment.”

At this point, the host, Steven, asks an interesting followup question, “Would you die for an idea?” After playing with that thought-experience, he then pondered whether he would die for his country. 

“For whom are you willing to die?” may sound theoretical, but this is a question people all throughout history have had to ask themselves, including the saints who gave their lives for our faith. It’s question that people around the world today have to ask themselves as they defend their culture, their religion, their freedom. It’s question those who are thinking about joining the military have to ask themselves.

For us today, it’s something we have to wrestle with because, in today’s Gospel, Christ said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Ugh!

We hear these words quite a bit. This passage isn’t new to us, so it’s easy not to get phased by it. We brush it off saying, “Oh, there goes Jesus again. Talking about the cross. Paul and Jesus, they seem to have this cross fixation.”

But, think about what Jesus is saying. If you pick up your cross, that means you’re on your way to your own execution. After all, the cross is an instrument of death. It’s how the Romans kept people under their control. It’s much easier to persuade people when you’re wielding the sword of death than it is to try and convince them through peaceful means. 

Perhaps another way to think about it, is to think about it in terms of our children. In A Journey to Fullness Fr. Barnabas Powell asks us what our goal is when we raise our children. Are we trying to raise doctors or lawyers? Are we trying to raise good American citizens? Are we trying to raise good church-goers—kids who will go to church on Sundays and give for stewardship? What’s our goal? What are we aiming for? What do we hope for our children’s futures?

Fr. Barnabas says if we’re giving these sorts of answers, then we’ve missed the point of Christianity. What we’re supposed to be doing is raising saints. We’re supposed to be raising children who are willing to pick up their crosses to follow Christ. We’re supposed to be raising kids who would die for Christ.

But, this scares us. We’re protective of our own lives, and, perhaps, even more so of our children’s lives. How can we even think of raising our loved ones in such a way that they’d be willing to die for Christ?

Aha!

I think the answer to that question depends on our worldview. If we’ve limited in our thinking to only thinking of this world, then our worldview is too small. That’s because we can’t see past this life. We can’t see past this generation and this environment in which we live.

But, the truth is that our lives, in the here and now, are but a very small bit of what reality encompasses. There’s history before us, and there’ll be history after us. But, not only that, this seen world isn’t all there is. There’s also an unseen world. The world of God, angels, demons, and spirits. We can’t see them, but they’re there.

You see, a full picture of reality also has to include the Kingdom of God. And when you consider this Kingdom—what it is, what it stands for, and who’s in charge—it’s easier to thinking of dying, because dying doesn’t mean the end. In fact, our willingness to die for this Kingdom is actually a gain. It’s something we don’t want to miss out on.

In fact, Jesus, just today, told us,

“… whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. … Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”

Dying for the Kingdom of God means that we’ll be resurrected and inherit this Kingdom. It’s a beginning, not an end.

Whee!

In short, what I’m taking about is a change in our worldviews, a change in our perspectives. It’s a new mindset that frees us to live in a new sort of way. To live more courageously, unstuck by the limitations of this world, and our current situations.

But, what exactly does this new worldview look like? How does it play out?

I think, perhaps, the best example is that of St. Ignatius, who was a disciple of St. John the Theologian and bishop of Antioch in the early 2nd-century.

There is a tradition that Ignatius was one of the children that Jesus blessed, but that’s not what made him famous. At some point, after becoming bishop, the Romans condemned him to death for his faith. But, instead of killing him Syria, where he lived, they decided to transport him to Rome, where St. John Chrysostom says he died in the colosseum.

But, on his way to Rome, there seems to have been a series of letters exchanged between St. Ignatius and the Roman Christians. The letters from Rome haven’t been preserved, but we do have the letters that Ignatius sent to the Romans. 

From them, we learn that the Christians in Rome seem to have plotted a plan to save Ignatius, that is, they were plotting a jailbreak so that Ignatius wouldn’t face death in the arena. But, because Ignatius had a Christian mindset—he’s spiritual eyes were set on the Kingdom of God, not the things of this world—he was horrified by their plans. So, he wrote back to them. This is what he said,

“I write to all the Churches, and declare to all men, that I willingly die for the sake of God, if so be that ye hinder me not. I entreat of you not to be [affected] towards me with a love which is unseasonable. Leave me to become [the prey of] the beasts, that by their means I may be accounted worthy of God. I am the wheat of God, and by the teeth of the beasts I shall be ground, that I may be found the pure bread of God. Provoke ye greatly the wild beasts, that they may be for me a grave, and may leave nothing of my body, in order that, when I have fallen asleep, I may not be a burden upon any one. Then shall I be in truth a disciple of Jesus Christ, when the world seeth not even my body. Entreat of our Lord in my behalf, that through these instruments I may be found a sacrifice to God. … But if I suffer, I shall be the freed-man of Jesus Christ, and I shall rise in Him from the dead, free. And now being in bonds, I learn to desire nothing.” (Letter to the Romans, Chapter IV)

He imagines himself as a prosphoro, the bread we offer to God every Sunday. Only, instead of bread, St. Ignatius is the offering. He gave himself for his faith, for Jesus Christ. He knew that through his martyrdom he would find true life. He would be reborn into the Kingdom. 

Yeah!

St. Ignatius’s martyrdom, his witness, is but only one example. Our Church is filled with examples of saints who picked up their crosses to follow Christ. They knew it would be dangerous. They knew it might cost them their lives, but they had a mindset that told them that the Kingdom of God is better, nay, more real than this world and its problems.

These saints are the heroes of our faith. They are the ones who show us what to aim for, how to live, how to orient our lives towards Christ. 

For the saints, there was no confusion over the question, “What is the purpose of life?” The answer was clear. It’s the words of Christ which say, “Pick up your cross and follow me.” To follow Christ and become like him is the purpose of life. To be a Christian is what gives us meaning and cause for waking up.

I guess the question now is: Are we brave enough to heed Christ’s words? Will we answer the call to pick up our crosses and follow Christ. Do we have the guts to live a life that is gung ho for the Kingdom of God?

The world will know by what we do next.

Amen.