There are many places in the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life where he tells his followers they must take up their cross. In our reading he said, "Whosoever does not take up his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of me." This is also quoted in Mark 8:31. Later in Matthew and in Luke he says to his disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me". Again in Luke he says, "Whosoever does not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple". In Mark he says to a rich man, "Come, follow me, take up the cross".
If we take these sayings seriously, they can be troubling or inspiring, depending on our real goal in life. Notice that the word "inspiring" implies the involvement of one's spirit. What does it mean to be inspired? What does it mean to "take up one's cross"?
There are some misconceptions in the Christian churches as to what the cross stands for. These misconceptions revolve around the idea that Jesus suffered on the cross to appease his father, who was angry with humanity. In doing this, it is believed by many, he took our sin upon himself and assuaged God's anger by suffering on the cross, thus letting us off the hook. This view, of course, contradicts the fact that God is not three persons, a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit. It also flies in the face of the fact that God is not an angry God. God is love itself and has no shred of anger in him. God can be aroused by zeal for our salvation, but he is never angered and never desires to punish us, only to save us from the punishment our evil behavior brings upon us.
When we think that Jesus is God manifest to us and therefore, if he were assuaging his father's anger would merely be changing his own attitude toward us, the whole idea seems a little ridiculous. Why would he have needed to go through the agonizing death on the cross just to change his own attitude? So what does taking up one's cross really mean?
Swedenborg tells us it has to do with temptation and regeneration. The cross represents temptation. Temptation itself is often misunderstood to mean being tempted to do something we know we shouldn't do, like eating too much dessert or lusting after someone's wife. I chose those two examples because one has lesser consequences and the other major consequences. But the fact is that, unless we are actually involved in regeneration, neither would have any effect on us spiritually.
The reason I say this is that this isn't the kind of temptation the Lord is talking about. Real temptation only occurs when we are actually trying to change our inner self, our spirit, and genuinely follow the Lord. Saying we're giving up sugar means nothing if it has no effect on the kind of person, and by this I mean the kind of spirit, we truly are becoming.
There are two directions in which we can change. We can change horizontally or vertically. Here's where the image of the cross comes in. It has a vertical post and a horizontal cross-beam. The horizontal cross-beam represents our characteristics in this world. What kind of person we are in earthly terms. One can be gentle, well-meaning, courteous, good-looking and attractive, polished, suave, subtle, or mean, demanding, ugly, conceited, you name it.
These are all characteristics we can have and be considered a human being. What we are or pretend to be in earthly terms can run the full gamut of human characteristics, but if we do not acknowledge God and seek to live accordingly in genuine love to God and our neighbor, all these character traits have nothing to do with our spiritual growth, and a great deal to do with our demise.
The temptations that do effect spiritual growth are represented by the cross's vertical post. We can move up or down in our spirit. When we acknowledge God, acknowledge that without the Lord we are really nothing and genuinely realize that we can only be significant in any positive way by allowing the Lord to flow through us and out into this world. Then, and only then, can we begin to grow spiritually. We can then be born again into spiritual life.
There is a big difference between loving the Lord and loving oneself. So great a difference that they are opposites. People who love the Lord can be tempted in a real way, a way that leads them to change fundamentally, in their real self, their soul.
This is not true of those who love themselves first. Putting oneself first is denying the Lord and devaluing everyone else. It is the opposite of Christian love for the neighbor.
So we must ask ourselves in the deep recesses of our minds and our hearts, “What do I truly love most?”
I know everyone sitting here this morning wants to do what is right. We want to be in genuine temptation, the kind that truly changes us and raises our spirit to a higher level of being. What's the point of coming here to this little church? It isn't going to do much to enhance our status in this world. Nor is it going to help us get rich.
The Lord told those around him that only by taking up our cross and following him can we be worthy of him. Taking up one's cross is humiliating. It is self-denial. We can choose to deny ourselves or we can choose to deny the Lord. Or we can do both. Negatives can be mixed. They just get more negative, more evil. But we cannot choose to love our self above all, and also choose to love the Lord. Evil and goodness cannot be mixed without making it all evil. We have to choose one or the other.
And the choice has to be sincere. In his novel, Compelling Evidence, Steve Martini wrote, "The trouble most people have with temptation is that they never really want to discourage it completely."
When we take up our cross to follow the Lord, we must realize where he was going when he took up his cross and dragged it to Calvary. When I worked as a teacher over here at the Bush Children's Center our Director used to say, "We have to leave our self at the door when we come to work with these children."
What he meant was that we couldn't let our personal concerns interfere with what we were doing with the children. The same is true in following the Lord. We can't let our personal desires control us. We have to try to do what is right in God's eyes, even when it means giving up something we'd rather do or have. Unless we develop a self-less attitude toward others we are not truly regenerating. In heaven the angels live for others, not for themselves. This is our goal.
This does not mean we shouldn't be discerning, because often letting someone else have their way is where evil lies. But we must evaluate those situations honestly with the idea of serving the Lord and our neighbor as our motivation, not serving ourselves.
This is a tall order, and we can see why Swedenborg wrote that not many people in his time were being regenerated. Perhaps more are nowadays, or maybe not. But our responsibility is to be one of those who are being regenerated. This should be our one true goal in life. To love the Lord and serve our neighbor.
Service to others with a glad heart requires that we take up our crosses as they present themselves and follow the Lord's example of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. The Lord promises greater treasures in heaven for those who follow him there than any we can obtain on this earth.
READINGS
Old Testament Reading: Daniel 4:23
And because the king saw a watcher, the holy one, coming down from heaven and saying, "Chop down the tree and destroy it, but leave the stump of its roots in the earth, bound with a band of iron and bronze, in the tender grass of the field, and let him be wet with the dew of heaven, and let his portion be with the beasts field, to seven periods of time pass over again.
New Testament Reading: Matthew 10:38-39
And whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Reading from Swedenborg: Apocalypse Explained 893:3
The cross means temptations, and to follow the Lord means to acknowledge His Divine and to do His commandments. The cross means temptations because the evils and the falsities therefrom that cling to us from birth infest and thus torment those who are natural when they are becoming spiritual. And as those evils and their falsities that infest and torment can be dispersed only by temptations, temptations are signified by the cross. Therefore the Lord says, that they must deny themselves and take up their cross, that is, that they must reject what is their own, their cross, meaning what is a person’s own, against which he or she must fight.