Now, I know growing up near the buckle of the Bible Belt, I know my experience of churchy stuff is a little different. That’s the part of the world where, when you meet someone new, they ask you three questions: “what’s your name? who are your people? and what church do you go to?”
And it’s the part of the world where, when you get in a car accident or your husband skips town or the bank comes knocking, well-meaning ladies with big hair and gloves’ll tell you this new predicament is just your cross to bear.
We've all heard this. I know I was told I had a lot of crosses to bear as a kid. Divorced parents? Mowing the lawn in 110 degrees? That one substitute teacher that was certain I was goofing off when I asked questions in class? All of ‘em crosses to bear.
I learned pretty quickly that my supposed crosses to bear were all those not-so-great things that were unfair or beyond my control. It was never just bad luck or chaos or even justifiable consequences.
Nope. Crosses to bear. But that was ok.
See, if I wanted to be a good Christian, I needed to do what Jesus said and bear my cross. Given all the crosses I bore over time, I must’ve been a really good Christian.
But today's reading? Y'all, today's reading isn't saying that. It's just not. When Jesus tells the Disciples to take up their cross, there’s some more important going on. First, it’s their choice. Take up your cross and follow me, or don’t. It’s your call. But if you do choose to follow me, there’s gonna be consequences.
We don’t choose to follow Jesus lightly. The cross Jesus tells the Disciples to pick up isn't a bad grade in history class or that crazy relative you have to care for. I think Jesus is saying that if the disciples choose this life, they are also choosing their deaths.
And while Jesus and the Apostles chose that life, it was their oppressors that chose the means of execution. The deaths assigned were typically reserved for traitors and violent criminals, especially those crucified by the Romans.
But sometimes, it seems there’s a tendency among people, even Christians (maybe especially Christians), to assign crosses for other people to bear rather than pick up their own. And that says more about the person assigning the cross than it does the other person hanging on it. And lately...man.
In Oklahoma – you may have heard of this – In Oklahoma a young non-binary teen was brutally beaten in a high school bathroom and died the next day. Nobody in the school, neither student or adult, did anything to stop it, or report it to the police or call for medical treatment.
The kid was different and deserved it.
Folks, that child didn't fashion the wood for that cross. The state of Oklahoma did.
At around this same time, a preacher in East Tennessee was caught on tape saying that if he were on a jury of a man accused of sexual assault, he'd vote to acquit because he's a man's man and women today wear skimpy shorts and bring it on themselves.
Y'all, over 500,000 women per year are victims of assault in this country. They don't bring the hammers and nails to pound themselves into half a million crosses. Clergy like this man's man, all across America, do that.
Closer to home, and I'm not proud that it was me, a woman popped into the office during food pantry hours as I was trying to leave for a meeting. She said she homeless and haunted. She was very mentally ill, and I was in a hurry. I listened for a few minutes, then led her back out to the parish hall.
I might not have hung her on her cross...but I certainly didn't do a thing to help her off of it.
You know, for as long as I've been alive, I've heard people complain that all our manufacturing is moving overseas. Well, lately it seems to me that we have one booming business in this country, and that's cross-making. Enough for every migrant, minority, homeless person, or anyone that's different, anyone we don't like.
And y'all, we do a lot of damage with the crosses we assign. See, if I get to decide what each persons’ cross is, I’ve got a lot of power. I get to look at all the things that I don’t like and name them as crosses, that is, punishments.
Got a cross to bear? Must be your own fault, and now you have to hang on it and deal with the consequences. And because it’s your fault, those consequences are justified.
But that's not right, and we know it's not.
There were kids watching that beating in that high school, and there were kids in that congregation when that preacher preached. We are creating generation after generation of people who will go to work at that cross factory, making more and more of them unless we step into the breach.
Please, please, please, please, please, please be careful with what you say and what you do. What you say has consequences. What you do has consequences. Who you blame when tragedy strikes has consequences. This poison in our national discourse lately has consequences. Your children, your grandchildren, they’re listening. And kids will do what they think the adults in their lives want, or at least what we’ll allow.
What Jesus is saying today is the harsh recognition of what following him means. It's a recognition that loving God and loving our neighbor is threatening to those powers of our world, and if we do it right, there are hard places we’ll have to go to.
And maybe the hardest place is between the overwhelming power of destruction and its victims. We literally could be killed there.
Our history is full of martyrs who stood in that place where allies act as shields. And to say everyday misfortune -- or even just difference between people -- is a cross to bear diminishes our call and diminishes the suffering of the innocent.
And it diminishes that one saving cross. When we burn them in yards, when we twist them into swastikas, when we dip them in fake gold paint and treat them as graven images, we diminish Jesus' saving cross. And that's the only cross that matters. Those others never will.
Our job today when we leave here is to recognize that our faith could very well lead us to those hard places and to take up the cross of life and death anyway. Our job is not to manufacture crosses for others. It’s cutting them down.
The world doesn’t need more innocent martyrs. But it needs more people standing in the breach between oppressed and oppressor. Loving God and loving our neighbor.
That’s the reality of our cross to bear.