Each year at Stetson University’s Pastors’ School, our rather large group of Community Church ministers had a tradition of going to the movies one night. It was an opportunity for some of us to release all the pent up aggression that forms when you hang around churches a lot. So some of our number went to see “Black Hawk Down” – and there was plenty of aggression in that. Others of us needed to escape the reality of human difficulty and tragedy with which we work all year, and so another contingent of us went to see Disney’s “Snow Dogs” – a light comedy. And the rest of us, aware of the close relationship which exists between ministry and insanity, ventured off to see “A Beautiful Mind.”
And that, of course, was the group I was in.
If you’ve not seen the movie, you really ought to. It is the story of John Nash, the brilliant real-life Princeton mathematician who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics. But the defining challenge of Nash’s life was not his academic achievements, but rather the debilitating schizophrenia he battled along the way. Mind you, this is not a story about a man who is cured of his illness, but rather about a man who finds a way to live through his illness. And the key to John Nash’s ability to find some kind of wholeness in life is the constant, steadfast, heroic love of his wife, Alicia. You can well imagine how difficult it must be to love and believe in and hope for someone whose life becomes as unlovable, as pointless, and as hopeless as John Nash’s. How easy it would be to give up on such a person. But Alicia never did.
So there we were – the bunch of us Community Church ministers – sitting in a darkened theatre in Deland, Florida, streams of tears pouring from our eyes. It was just such a beautiful movie!
And as the credits began to roll, something struck me about what I had just seen.
It was…the cross!
I don’t know if this is your experience, but as I get older I find myself no longer content to think about my faith in mere theological terms. I mean, when you think about the meaning of the cross – especially in the context of Paul’s beautiful words in our text today about the cross being the power of God for those being saved – I find myself wondering what that actually looks like in real life. And that’s important because today’s sermon is called “The Joy of Bearing The Cross”. And it would be a terrible shame if we all went home today only with some abstract theological concept, and not the real-life experience to which the Bible invites us.
What does it look like to bear the cross? And why would it bring us joy to do so?
As I ask those questions, I find myself back there in Florida in that darkened movie theatre, bawling my eyes out at the beauty of it all. And I sense that the tears gushing from my eyes and pouring down my cheeks are coming from some powerful source of raw emotion deep down inside my soul that has been touched by the love I witnessed. And when I follow those tears back inside myself and trace them all the way back to where they begin, I realize that they flow from some wonderful inner spring of joy! They are truly tears of joy!
And this wonderful inner spring of joy in my life has been tapped and released by this powerful true story of one woman’s Christ-like love, and the difference it made in her husband’s life!
Do you want to see a real-life illustration of what it means to bear the cross? Go and see the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” Take a look at Alicia Nash. She’s what bearing the cross looks like!
Now we ought to do at least a little bit of theology here so that you’ll have a solid understanding of how this all fits into the gospel of Jesus. Did you know that most of us really don’t even have the foggiest clue as to what St. Paul meant when he talked about the cross, and bearing the cross, and preaching Christ crucified? Most people think of death when they think of the cross. The cross seems such a sad and terrible thing. The old hymn expresses well the foreboding feeling that comes to us when we look at the cross. It says, “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame…” For most of us, the cross represents sin and death and pain. The cross is often a place where we become ashamed of ourselves for all the things we are not, and for all the ways we cause Jesus to suffer. And with that understanding of the cross, most of us translate the invitation to bear the cross ourselves as a kind of call to just put up with and suffer through the tough things of life. You know how it goes:
“I’ve been married to this foolish man for thirty-five years – he’s the cross I have to bear!”
Sometimes, we become worn down by all the nasty, hurtful, demeaning things thrown at us by life or by other people and we say, “God never gives us more than we can bear.” That’s our idea of cross-bearing.
Now, I don’t want to discount any of this because Jesus did suffer and die on the cross, and you and I are called to suffer, if necessary, for the Kingdom of God. But for St. Paul, the idea of the cross was much larger than its suffering. In the cross, Paul teaches, God declares something wonderful! The cross tells us that God loves us as much as Alicia Nash loved her husband. The cross says that, once and for all, God has taken care of everything that could ever stand in the way of God’s loving us. Not a sin, not a failure, not a flaw, not a denial, not a betrayal, not a doubt, not a thought, not an action, not an illness, not a circumstance can ever persuade God to not love us or stand in the way of his commitment to us. That’s why we say that Jesus took humanity’s sin upon himself, and put it to death on the cross. The cross is the visible sign in history of God’s incredible commitment to love us as we are to love Him – with all the heart, mind, soul and strength!
For Paul, the cross is God’s Declaration of Love for humanity!
So what does it mean for YOU and ME to bear the cross?
Our Stephen Ministers know. They know that to bear the cross for their care receivers means to “be there for them” as they pass through challenging times of life. That’s what God does. They know that when they carefully listen to their care receivers, giving them the opportunity to express and reveal what’s inside them without pronouncing judgment or casting criticism or offering trite answers, they are bearing the cross. That’s what God does. They know that when they love their care receivers in such a way that, in the midst of all the shifting sands of life, care receivers can depend upon their Stephen Minister to support them, to pray for them, to help them become better enabled to take up the real-life issues they face, they are bearing the cross. After all, that’s what God does.
You see, whenever you take the extraordinary God-born love that the cross represents – the most amazing love the world has ever known – and carry it into the life of your wife, husband, child, parent, grandparent, friend, neighbor, co-worker, classmate, employee, employer, waitress, check out counter clerk, repairman, church member, choir member, fellow staff people – you are bearing the cross.
And Paul says this bearing of the cross has a kind of invisible power. This kind of love sets the stage for God’s healing and transforming power to touch peoples’ lives for saving – for “making whole” is the literal translation – it becomes the power of God to make whole those who are touched by the love of the cross.
Here are three simple ways you can begin bearing the cross today.
First of all, identify one person in your life who needs to be touched by the love of God as expressed on the cross. Don’t start with the world. Start with just one person. And God has probably already made you aware of who that person is in your life. Maybe he is a family member. Maybe she is a neighbor. Perhaps a grandchild. Or a co-worker. Or someone you go to school with.
Second, dedicate the relationship you have with that person to God. Roberta Bondi has a wonderful suggestion about how to begin a prayer life that will bring healing to your own wounds over time. She says to begin with just setting aside some time each day to be with God. It doesn’t matter how long. And it doesn’t even matter how you use that time – whether in actual prayer, or meditation, or reading a book, or mowing the lawn. What does matter is that you give that time to God – to speak to you, to lead you, to show you where you need to change, or how you need grow. And over time, Bondi says, you’ll discover that mental images, insights, ideas, feelings begin to come to you that offer guidance and direction.
Well, in the same way, dedicate to God this relationship you have with the person to whom you are called to bear the cross of God’s love. Give God permission to speak to your heart about it, to create the circumstances, and provide the opportunities, and shift the directions that will be needed for this person to become whole. In other words, consecrate your friendship with this person as a means by which God can touch their life through you.
Third, commit yourself to loving them forever. As I reflect upon my own life and feeble attempts to love others, it occurs to me that the greatest obstacle of all is my own impatience. I want people to change – NOW! I want people to be better – IMMEDIATELY! I want to succeed in this friendship NO LATER THAN TOMORROW.
But life’s not like that. Some of the wounds people experience have been inflicted over the course of a lifetime, and it may well take the rest of their lives and more to completely reverse their effects. Some of the dark valleys people find themselves in are of their own choosing, and it may take what seems like forever before they change their minds, and begin to move in a better direction. Human beings are extremely complex creatures. So God invites us to be in it for the long-term. Just like God is.
So identify one person to whom you will start bearing the love of the cross. Dedicate that relationship to God, and ask God to make himself known in it. And commit yourself to the friendship for the long haul.
And one more thing.
Download “A Beautiful Mind” on your Netflix. Or Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”. Or any other depiction of the transforming power of redemptive love.
Better yet, take up your Bible and read about Jesus.
He has much to teach us about the joy of bearing the cross!
🙂