Quinquagesima Sunday, 2010

Text: St. Luke 18:31-43

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“The Way of the Cross”

Each Sunday we begin our service here at St. Stephen’s with a procession: the acolytes and clergy following the processional cross into the chancel as we sing the processional hymn. And maybe this has become such a familiar part of the furniture, so to speak, that we forget what an important symbol this is. It’s not just a fancy episcopal way of getting people from one place to another. It is, in fact, a metaphor for our life-our “walk”- with Christ.

The procession begins at the back of the church near the baptismal font, where our life in Christ began. And then the procession proceeds up the aisle following the high uplifted cross as a reminder that all of our life in Christ is under the cross—under the covering of His atoning work at Calvary.

And in the procession there is a definite order of who goes first and who comes last. Maybe only a year after I was ordained a deacon, I had the privilege of being part of an incredible procession at Bishop George Fincke’s consecration to the episcopate. There must have been something like twenty-five people all told. But it began with the acolytes, the crucifier and the Gospel bearer. And if there had been any readers or a choir, they would have been next. But as a the lowly deacon, I came next. And I can remember how low on the totem pole I felt being the guy immediately following the acolytes-the kids-with the huge chain of clergy trailing behind me. They all came in order according to their office and ordination date. So there was another more tenured deacon after me, then came the priests-the vicars and rectors of the various parishes of the diocese. Then came the Canon, then the Dean, then the Bishop-elect, then the four or five other bishops in rank according to their consecration dates. And finally, bringing up the rear, was the presiding bishop of our church, Bishop Riches. It was quite the spectacle! But all this ranking and ordering within the procession is symbolic of that great gospel truth that in Christ’s kingdom “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

Finally, the crucifer leads the procession into the chancel, and each person gives his reverence to the cross-before stepping up the place that represents the courts of heaven-as an acknowledgment that no one enters into the kingdom of heaven but by way of the cross of Christ-but by way of His sacrifice and His heavenly priesthood. This is what the processional means. It’s a picture of our life in Christ from start to finish. It is the way of the cross—life in and under and through the cross of Jesus Christ.

Jesus was leading a procession of sorts up to the holy city of Jerusalem. In Luke chapter 9 we read, “Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” And the disciples had no doubts that the reason he was going up the ancient capital was to be enthroned as the Messiah, and to inaugurate His kingdom. And so the procession takes on the character of a royal procession-the procession of a king going up to inherit his kingdom.

Along the way Jesus teaches what life in the kingdom would be like. He blesses the little children, and He says that they embody the humility and the simply faith a person must have if he is truly to “receive the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:17). On the other hand, a man pre-occupied with his possessions will find it “hard to enter the kingdom,” He says (Luke 18:24). The blind man at Jericho, as he hears the procession passing by, cries out to the “Son of David”-king David’s royal descendant who would establish an everlasting kingdom. A few miles further on the procession swells with new numbers and new enthusiasm as it approaches the gates of the great city, and it becomes even more explicitly a royal procession. “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” the people shout.

So Jesus’ march towards Jerusalem gathers a growing crowd of people who are intoxicated with the prospect of the coming of the kingdom. As they’re swept into the procession they’re swept up into attitude of euphoric anticipation. As one commentator puts it, “They see [the coming of the kingdom] as a unremitting success story, with no hint of suffering along the way.”

Then into that strange mix of faith and enthusiasm and miscomprehension Jesus drops a bomb. You can imagine Him bring the procession to a sudden stop, and then, taking his disciples aside privately, saying to them, “Listen to me. We’re going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written in the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished.” “Great! That sounds wonderful, Jesus. Praise the Lord! We’ve being waiting for this for so long. Finally, we’re going get things moving!” This must have been thinking when Jesus spoke those words. And I’m sure passages like that famous Messianic passage from the Book of Daniel must have been echoing in the minds:

“I was watching in the night visions, and behold, One like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought Him near before Him. Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed” (Dan. 7:13-14).

That’s pretty clear isn’t it? The Messiah will reign!

Maybe other passages were flashing through their minds, like the one in the prophet Micah:

“And you, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion. To you shall it come, even the former dominion shall come, the kingdom of the daughter of Jerusalem” (Mic. 4:8). “Wow! We’re going up to Jerusalem. It’s going to be accomplished!”

Perhaps they could even anticipate what would happen as they approached the city, for that well-known passage in Zechariah would have been ringing in their ears:

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey…He shall speak peace to the nations; His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Zech. 9:9-10).

All this must have been going through their minds when Jesus said that they were going up to Jerusalem, and all things that were written in the prophets about the Son of Man would be accomplished.

But then you can imagine Jesus sayings, “Wait! All things written concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.”

There it was. Jesus told them straight out that the way the ancient prophesies would be fulfilled, the way He would come into His kingdom and assume His throne would be the way of rejection and suffering and death-the way of the cross. But even though He had been explicitly clear-brutally clear-the disciples’ false expectations about how the kingdom would come made them unable to grasp the significance of Jesus’ words. They just didn’t fit into the matrix of the disciples’ conception and expectation of the kingdom.

It’s sort of like the other night. I was watching the documentary on the Discovery Channel about the “Miracle on the Hudson”-that amazing story of how Captain “Sully” Sullenberger was able to do the impossible-to safely “land” a modern jetliner on water with no loss of life. It’s never been done before. But it was fascinating to listen to the conversation between the captain and the flight controller as the emergency progressed and they started running out of options. And one point the flight director asks the captain if he wants to land on runway 4 at Teterboro Airport. And the captain answers back, “We can’t do it. We’re going to be in the Hudson.” And then there’s a long pause. Finally the flight controller comes back on the radio and says, “I’m sorry, say again.” This flight controller later recalled that at that moment his mind just would let him comprehend what Sully had said. His mind was too geared on envisioning a safe landing on one of the runways for him to be able even to understand the words he was hearing over the radio.

Well, that’s exactly the way it was for the disciples. Luke emphases just how uncomprehending they were of Jesus’ statement by repeating three times that they did not understand: “They understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.” What are you trying to say, Luke? They didn’t get it.

But we do get it. We do understand the significance of Jesus’ words. We do understand that Jesus must have gained His kingdom by going the way of the Cross, because the Kingdom of God is not ultimately a place or a physical realm, but a people redeemed to God from the bondage of sin and death. We understand, as the disciples would later, that the Cross was absolutely necessary if ever we sinners were to become members of the Kingdom of God.

But do we understand that to be followers of Jesus, to join in His procession, implies that we too must walk the way of the cross? Jesus no less explicitly told His disciples on that march to Jerusalem, “He who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me” (Mt. 10:38).

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus prediction of His passion and death is closely connected with this call to take up our own crosses and follow Him. “He began to teach them that the son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again…. [And] 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. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and for the gospel’s will save it.”

Do we understand these words? Or perhaps because we have false expectations about what life in Christ means-perhaps because we look at the Cross of Christ as removing all cost from discipleship, rather than laying upon us a greater cost—do we understand none of these things; is this saying hidden fro us; do we not know the things which were spoken?

Jesus said that to be followers of Him means each of us has our own processional cross to bear—that our way into the Kingdom in no less the way of the cross that it was for Him. It means, first, that we must humble ourselves to be buried with Christ into death through baptism. And this, especially for those who are baptized as adults, involves the crucifixion of our pride, because it means we have to receive the kingdom just like a little child, that is, by no work of our own. I’m constantly amazed when I speak with people who don’t believe in infant baptism, that what they really can’t accept is that baptism is God’s work. Because, if it’s God’s work, then it’s almost as if we give God too much power in determining how we become Christians. “What do you mean God doesn’t save me based on my own personal decision! What do you mean He makes a decision for me in baptism, and then only later I make a decision for Him!” You see, pride must be crucified—our pride that makes us think that we’re the one that get ourselves saved, we’re the ones that get ourselves to believe, and God only sort of reacts to that—that has to die. That has to go to the cross, and it goes to the in baptism.

But Baptism is just the starting place of the life of discipleship—the life of bearing our own crosses beneath the cross of Jesus. It’s where the procession begins. But we are also called daily to lift up our crosses and follow Him. The great Nineteenth Century Anglican bishop, J.C. Ryle, explains this by first emphasizing that bearing our own crosses is fundamentally different that Christ’s bearing of His crosses, because we do not thereby earn our entrance into the Kingdom. He affirms the central tenet of our faith: that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. “But,” he says, “all who accept this great salvation must prove the reality of their faith by carrying the cross after Christ. They must not think to enter heaven without trouble, pain, suffering, and conflict on earth. They must be content to take up the cross of doctrine, and the cross of living a life which the world ridicule as too strict and righteous. They must be willing to crucify the flesh, to mortify the deeds of the body, to fight daily with the devil, to come out from the world, and to lose their lives if need be for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s. These are hard sayings, but they cannot be evaded. The words of our Lord are plain and unmistakable. If we will not carry the cross, we shall never wear the crown.”

The cross was unintelligible to the band of disciples who saw the way into the kingdom as nothing but a primrose path. In the same way, Dietrich Bonhoeffer says in his famous book, The Cost of Discipleship, that “If our Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between ordinary human life and a life committed to Christ” then the call to take upon our own crosses and to follow Him will also cease to be intelligible.

So I want to challenge you today. Actually I’d like to issue an official pastoral exhortation. And that is, that as we enter into the season of Lent this week, that you would make it a part of your Lenten discipline to meditate upon and to learn what Jesus’ call to take up your cross and follow Him means to you in your particular situation. Reading through Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleshiip is a great place to start.

In this procession called Life in Christ, we’re called to lift high the Cross, to march manfully behind His banner, and under His cross to bear our own crosses. For this is what it means to be His disciple. +