Cross-Bearing Without Compulsion: Discipleship as a Means to God's End

The Lutheran World Federation is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran tradition. It was founded in 1847 in Lund, Sweden. It has 140 member churches in 78 countries all over the world representing 66.2 million Christians. The presiding Bishop of the ELCA, Mark Hanson, is also the president of the Lutheran World Federation. Last fall Bishop Hanson addressed the Lutheran World Federation Council meeting in Bethlehem. One of the things he mentioned in his address was the challenge he encounters during his travels as LWF president. He spoke of hearing about the frustration and conflict created when evangelists preach a prosperity gospel "that promises financial gain and success to those who follow these leaders." In the United States, he said, a consumer-driven culture values a privatized spirituality and demands a "feel good" religion. So there is great pressure on pastors and congregations to get their "market share" of members by "offering some gospel other than the radical good news of God's reconciliation and forgiveness by God's grace through faith for Jesus' sake," Hanson said. Jesus and who He is doesn't seem to matter all that much in what some preachers teach. "If you're always thinking positive, happy, joyful thoughts, you're going to be a positive, happy, joyful person, and will attract other happy, upbeat, positive people." This message sells, and packs the people in.

Today's Gospel, then, presents a challenge. How are we to be faithful -- those of us who follow the lectionary and have assigned texts each Sunday? Should we change the story and candy-coat it to pack the people in? That seems to be what Peter tries to do today. Peter reprimands Jesus for talking about suffering, rejection, murder, and resurrection. It's not that Peter or these popular preachers aren't sincere. Peter was the one who loved Jesus too much to hear that he must suffer and die. But according to Jesus, Peter might as well be the devil himself. Jesus gets so frustrated with Peter he explodes with the worst possible condemnation: "Satan!"

What had Peter done? Peter's image of Jesus may very well have been tied up with an image of success. He refuses to believe that God has the gift of suffering to give, as well as the gift of success. When Christianity sells, sometimes what sells is not necessarily Christianity but the idea that God has only blessings in store for us. That God is simply a means to an end. God becomes a means to my end of self-actualization, or self-fulfillment, or prosperity. But according to Mark today, Jesus has one word for preachers of such a Gospel -- and that word is "Satan!" "Get out of my way! Satan, get lost! You have no idea how God works!...don't run from suffering -- embrace it!" One pastor who reflected on the more popular approach wonders with his tongue in his cheek, "If only Jesus could have heard that message -- things might have turned out much better. His preaching could have brightened up considerably. And his friends wouldn't have been the sorry bunch of losers he consistently attracted."

So, what ARE we to do? The opposite extreme, which has been just as destructive in the history of Christianity, is to glorify suffering, to suffer for suffering's sake alone. What does it mean to "carry the cross?" A writer who has had a big impact on my life is a pastor named Flora Slosson Wuellner. "The cross that we are summoned to carry," she says, "is God's invitation to us to enter, share, and lift the burden of suffering for others. It is not the same as illness or disasters that come upon us against our will. We are always given the freedom to accept or reject a cross. If we accept, we enter in the pain of another person or a community with loving, redemptive power as a member of Christ's crucified and risen body.

When it comes to accepting and carrying our cross, we need to remember two main things: First, we prayerfully discern if it is really our cross. If it is truly the commitment to which God invites us, there will be joy along with the pain. We will feel the renewal of our strength and energy. We will feel an increasing sense of authenticity. But if we feel decreasing joy, strength, energy, meaningfulness, and authenticity over a significant period of time, or if we have accepted the task under compulsion, it may mean that we have picked up a cross intended for someone else. Or, it may mean that God may be calling us out of that commitment.

Second, she says, as we carry our cross of loving commitment, it's essential to know that the crucified, risen, and living Christ is carrying the ultimate weight and pain. If we try to carry it alone, drawing only on our willpower, our unaided strength, our lonely love, we become quickly vulnerable to exhaustion and burnout. Then what happens is our original love becomes angry manipulation of others! This is not what Jesus meant when he talked about bearing your cross! Jesus explains himself: "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." (Mark 8:35)

I thought about this when I came across a story by the management expert Casey Hawley. She was on a business flight out of Orlando. Soon after takeoff, the plane appeared doomed to crash. Hawley looked at the faces of fellow business travelers. She was stunned. Many looked visibly frightened. Even the most stoic looked grim and ashen. There were no exceptions. No one faces death without fear, she thought. Everyone lost composure in one way or another.

She began to search the crowd for one person who felt the peace and calm that great faith gives people in these circumstances. She saw no one. Then a couple of rows to her left, she heard a still, calm voice, a woman's voice, speaking in an absolutely normal conversational tone. There was no tremor or tension. It was a lovely, even tone. She had to find the source of this voice.

All around, people cried. Many wailed and screamed. A few of the men held onto their composure by gripping armrests and clenching teeth. Finally, she spotted her. In the midst of all the chaos, a mother was talking, just talking, to her child. The mother was staring full into the face of her daughter, who looked to be four years old. The child listened closely, sensing the importance of her mother's words. The mother's gaze held the child so fixed and intent that she seemed untouched by the sounds of grief and fear around her.

Hawley tells how a picture flashed into her mind of another little girl who had recently survived a terrible plane crash. Speculation had it that she had lived because her mother had strapped her own body over the little girl's in order to protect her. The mother did not survive. The newspapers had been tracking how the little girl had been treated by psychologists for weeks afterward to ward off feelings of guilt and unworthiness that often haunt survivors. The child was told over and over again that it wasn't her fault that her mommy had gone away. Hawley was hoping this situation would not end the same way.

Hawley strained to hear what this mother was saying to her child. Over and over, in soft reassuring tones, the mother said, "I love you so much. Do you know for sure that I love you more than anything?" "Yes mommy, "the little girl said. "And remember, no matter what happens, that I love you always. And that you are a good girl. Sometimes things happen that are not your fault. You are still a good girl and my love will always be with you." Then the mother put her body over her daughter's, strapped the seat belt over both of them and prepared to crash. Then for no earthly reason, Hawley says, the doomed plane landed safely. It was over in seconds.

The cross we are summoned to carry is God's invitation to us to enter, share, and lift the burden of suffering for others. Like that mother did for her daughter on that plane. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

When we bear our cross, the cross we are called to bear, we don't bear it alone. Surrounding us are the arms of a God who loves us like that mother loved her child. A God who says to us, no matter what happens, my love will always be with you. A God who, through Jesus and his cross, puts his body over ours, and straps the seatbelt.

Because of this kind of love, we are free to bear our cross without compulsion: to seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. Because of this kind of love God is not the means to our end. We become the means to God's end. And in that, we find our lives, we find fulfillment. So in giving we receive, in pardoning we are pardoned, and in dying we are born to eternal life. This is the journey of Lent which we walk, not as individuals out for happiness and fulfillment, but as brothers and sisters in the crucified and risen body of Jesus. AMEN

Pastor Dana Runestad
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Livonia, Michigan

Second Sunday in Lent (Year B)
March 12, 2006
Mark 8:31-38

Sources:
Alex Arnold, "Osteentatious," February 7, 2005, http://dulciusexasperis.com/2005/02/07/

Jason Byassee, "The Health and Wealth Gospel," http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3219

Canfield, Jack and Mark Hansen, A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul: 101 More Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit, (Deerfield Beach: Health Communications, 1996), pp. 323-325.

ELCA News Service, "ELCA Presiding Bishop and LWF President Addresses LWF Council," September 1, 2005, http://www.elca.org/ScriptLib/CO/ELCA_News/encArticleList.asp?article=3198

Flora Slosson Wuellner, "When Prayer Encounters Pain," The Weavings Reader: Living With God in the World, John S. Mogabgab, Editor, Nashville: Upper Room Books, p. 84ff.

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