ON BEING A CROSS BEARER
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
June 28, 2020
During “normal” times when our community gathers for worship
here inside our Sanctuary, we have a whole team of liturgical ministers to help
us pray well: lectors, greeters, acolytes, ministers of the body and blood of
Christ, musicians, coordinators, technicians, sacristans… it takes a lot of
work and good and generous spirit. And one of those ministers we designate as
that of “cross bearer,” which at first glance doesn’t seem so difficult – though
it is surely an honor.
When we use that term, “cross bearer,” we generally mean a
person who carries a large piece of wood from the back of the church to the
front at the beginning of Mass, and then does the reverse when the liturgy
ends. I say it doesn’t seem hard because it involves a total of about 3-minutes
time for a willing person, and not too much stress or bother. And if on a rare
occasion the cross bearer fails to appear for duty we can almost always tap a
volunteer at the last minute who will say, “Sure, I’ll do it.”
While that’s a great blessing for us as a community, it does
come with the risk of hollowing out the true weight of what it means to speak
of “cross bearing.” And that is at the heart of Jesus’s teaching to his
disciples in today’s Gospel of Matthew.
For Jesus, to bear the cross was not a 3-minute task or even
a part-time assignment. And it was not easy, nor was it a temporary role for a
last-minute volunteer. In fact, it was about as near to the opposite of that as
we could imagine – and it always has been and it still is.
At every liturgy for which we gather here (at least in
normal times) that big cross stands at the center of our worship, literally,
physically. It is not a decoration, even though it is beautiful. It is at the
very head of all of our ritual processions because the cross is that thing that
we pledge to follow all our lives. It’s at the center of what it means to be
faithful to God, as Jesus himself was.
And as he instructed his would-be followers in the Gospel
here, Jesus may have been a little suspicious as to whether they really fully
understood what they were about to step into, and what would be the ultimate
demands of being a cross-bearer. This is the same challenge for us still – to remember
again what our professed allegiance to Jesus Christ may require of us, and to
be prepared to do it. It is not without its rewards here and now, and it
promises eternal rewards later. But this is not a mission to be embraced and carried
by the half-hearted, or at our own convenience when it is easy.
Which is why Jesus doesn’t mince words today. He speaks in
ways that still have the ability to trouble us deeply today, and they would
have done that doubly so in his day.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me, or son or
daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.”
Is he serious? He certainly is. That’s not easy to hear.
Fortunately for most of us most of the time, to love Jesus
is to love the family and friends closest to us. It’s not often an “either-or”
proposition, but it’s pretty clear that if it should ever come to that, true cross
bearers had better know on which side of that “either-or” they stand, and they’d
better decide it right up front.
Truly to follow the cross is not a short walk up the center
aisle at church; it is a demand upon our lives and our priorities that is
absolute, and not always pleasant.
“In order to find your life,” he says, “you will have to
lose it; and to lose it is the door to finding it.”
For most of us that doesn’t mean our physical death, as it
did for him – though for some it does, and some it may. It means living each
day for the sake of the Gospel rather than for ourselves or for something or
somebody else. Living for Christ – for God’s reign.
And here Jesus has particular praise for the prophets – both
those whom he knew and those who are among us still. Those who are prophets
will receive the reward that is owed to prophets, he says. But anyone who has
ever opened a bible would know that that is not a consoling promise, at least
not on this side of heaven. You won’t find the biblical prophet who lived a
care-free life. Because they were cross bearers. That’s still true.
To make this all a bit more concrete, and perhaps
uncomfortable, we can ask what being a cross bearer, a prophet, requires of us
when things like George Floyd, racism, immigration policy, abortion, income
disparity, climate change, nationalism, LGBTQ+, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia
are thrown into our laps. To be a cross bearer does not mean picking fights,
but it does mean standing for something by the way we live and speech each day.
It’s a duty.
As Jesus attempts to push his disciples in the Gospel today
by asking in effect, “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Are you really sure? Can
you be a cross bearer rather than a spectator or a commentator? If so, come
along… but know what you are signing up for.”
We gather here for Eucharist each week to remember again
exactly that, and to rededicate ourselves to the mission of following that
cross.
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