Outrageous

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Church Episcopal
February 28, 2021

2 Lent B 

          One of my favorite worship services is our Ash Wednesday service for the families with young children.  We set up a table to use as an altar and gather chairs around so the children can be up close and see.  On the table, there are candles, water, rocks, and various other items to help the children connect with Ash Wednesday.  I often start by asking the children who takes a packed lunch to school and who buys their lunch….the last time we had this service all the children were in school for lunch every day.  I ask those who pack how they can tell their lunches apart.  Surely there are duplicate lunch boxes or lunch sacks that look alike.  How do they know which one is theirs?  Some of the children will look at me as if they are wondering how someone who does not know the answer to this question could possibly have credentials as a grown up.  But eventually one or more of the children will patiently respond that they have their name on their lunch and that is how they know which lunch is theirs.

          Having established that fact, we move on to baptism.  Who remembers their baptism?  Typically none of the children remember, but they might remember a sibling’s baptism or one that they have seen.  So I ask “what happens after I pour the water over the baby’s head?”  One of the children will remember that I used oil and made a cross on the baby’s forehead.  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  That cross, I tell the children, is like having Jesus’ name written on us to show us how, as Christians, we belong to God.

          On Ash Wednesday, then, we again have a cross marked on our foreheads, this time with ashes, to remind us every year that we are made in the image of God and sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.  For Christians, the cross is the symbol of the death and resurrection of Jesus, through which we are made God’s own in the waters of baptism.

          This morning, we hear Jesus say “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  We can easily think that Jesus is calling us to hoist all of our burdens onto our shoulders and trudge off underneath their weight, trying to keep up with Jesus.  But I do not believe that is what Jesus is asking of us.  In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says “‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  Jesus spends his ministry healing and feeding people, liberating people from all kinds of bondage and heavy burdens.  So what else might Jesus mean when he calls people to pick up their cross and follow him?

Jesus has just begun to teach his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”  Peter takes great offense against this teaching because Peter only hears the part he understands, which is the part about suffering, rejection, and death.  He does not hear the part about “and after three days rise again” because he has no way of knowing what that means.  Once the disciples follow Jesus to the cross on Good Friday and experience the empty tomb on Easter morning, then they will understand the fullness of Jesus’ words this morning.

          To pick up the cross of Christ is to hear not only of the suffering, rejection, and death, of Jesus but also to hear and believe God’s outrageous promise that suffering, rejection and death will not have the last word.  The last word is that after three days, Jesus will rise again.  We hear of another outrageous promise in the reading from Genesis this morning when God promises Abram that, even though he is advanced years and has no children, he will be the ancestor of a multitude of nations.  God will give Abraham a son with his wife Sarah and through that son, Abraham will come to have descendants that number the stars in the sky.  Abraham was 99 years old.  Sarah was 90.  God’s promise is not only outrageous.  That promise was also ridiculous.  Isaac is the child of God’s outrageous promise to Abraham and Sarah.

          To believe in the outrageous promise of God that suffering and death do not have the final word does not diminish the weight of whatever burdens we have to carry, whether individually or collectively.  Sickness and grief, broken relationships, economic challenges, fear of the unknown, and life in the midst of a pandemic are all heavy burdens.  But to follow Jesus does not mean having to pick up all that weighs us down and try to walk.  To pick up the cross and follow Jesus is to believe the outrageous promise that, despite all appearances, our burdens do not have the final word.  To pick up the cross and follow Jesus is to hear the whole story from the cross to the grave to the empty tomb and live as people who believe that the final word, even for the heaviest of burdens, belongs to love and life. 

                                                                             Amen.