WEBVTT 00:00.810 --> 00:05.354 Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord 00:05.402 --> 00:06.560 Jesus Christ. 00:07.170 --> 00:13.454 Jesus said if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and 00:13.492 --> 00:15.920 take up his cross and follow me. 00:18.450 --> 00:24.720 I emailed Dean Vieker the other day and asked, so how did this text 00:25.050 --> 00:27.720 get associated with Valentine's Day? 00:30.170 --> 00:35.554 And as it turns out, the commemoration days in the church calendar 00:35.602 --> 00:39.702 don't actually have specific text associated with them. 00:39.836 --> 00:41.190 And since St. 00:41.260 --> 00:45.494 Valentine was a third century Christian martyr, he picked a text that 00:45.532 --> 00:46.994 has to do with martyrdom. 00:47.122 --> 00:48.546 Pick up your cross. 00:48.738 --> 00:51.600 And so that's the text for today. 00:52.690 --> 00:55.982 So it's not like you're going to find a Hallmark card with a big heart 00:56.036 --> 00:59.900 on the front and you open it up and it says, pick up your 01:00.250 --> 01:07.920 Cross, although there might be some wisdom in a card like that. 01:09.650 --> 01:15.150 I should say, first of all, that I understand a cross here to be any 01:15.220 --> 01:18.880 sacrifice that you make in order to follow Christ. 01:20.690 --> 01:24.854 Now, certainly the sacrifices that we are called to make are not 01:25.012 --> 01:29.474 anything in comparison with those of the early Church who faced 01:29.521 --> 01:33.670 persecution and even death in some cases. 01:34.170 --> 01:40.214 But we do make sacrifices in order to follow Christ as part of our 01:40.252 --> 01:41.320 Christian life. 01:42.410 --> 01:47.366 So if you're single on Valentine's Day, for example, you may have to 01:47.388 --> 01:51.886 put up with loneliness and frustration knowing that you don't have the 01:51.908 --> 01:57.533 option of pursuing sexual relationship outside of marriage, even 01:57.572 --> 01:59.259 though the world tells you that you do. 02:01.450 --> 02:03.002 And so that's a sacrifice. 02:03.066 --> 02:07.280 It's a cross that you bear in order to follow Christ. 02:09.090 --> 02:14.174 Or if you're married on Valentine's Day, you have to put up with the 02:14.212 --> 02:21.562 person you married knowing that marriage is a divine institution. 02:21.626 --> 02:26.726 It's not a contractual arrangement that you can get out of at the 02:26.748 --> 02:31.240 first sign of trouble, even though the world tells you that it is. 02:32.890 --> 02:37.350 That's a cross that you bear as a Christian. 02:40.560 --> 02:41.516 Well, you know what 02:41.538 --> 02:44.524 your crosses are better than I do because you're carrying them. 02:44.562 --> 02:48.124 So I'm not going to talk about the nature of your crosses today. 02:48.162 --> 02:51.716 What I want to focus on, actually, is your attitude towards your 02:51.778 --> 02:56.880 crosses looking particularly at the wording of Jesus command. 02:57.040 --> 02:59.520 Pick up your cross. 03:01.850 --> 03:05.406 The imagery here is not that the cross is imposed upon you from on 03:05.428 --> 03:08.960 high, as you are the passive victim under the weight of it. 03:09.890 --> 03:14.478 The imagery is that the cross is lying on the ground and you're going 03:14.484 --> 03:15.600 to pick it up. 03:17.410 --> 03:21.326 Now, this runs contrary to certain versions of Christianity that you 03:21.348 --> 03:26.694 sometimes see, I think even in our own church body, that tend to 03:26.892 --> 03:33.634 portray Jesus primarily as gentle Jesus, and that the whole Christian 03:33.682 --> 03:38.470 life is about being meek and mild and gentle and unassuming. 03:38.810 --> 03:42.534 And you try to live a relatively sedentary life and just not do too 03:42.572 --> 03:42.966 much. 03:43.067 --> 03:47.030 And so bearing your cross looks a lot like being a doormat. 03:49.810 --> 03:51.760 That's not the imagery here. 03:53.170 --> 03:55.310 Pick up your cross. 03:56.210 --> 03:59.850 Bearing your cross is not something you do out of weakness or inertia. 04:01.370 --> 04:07.280 Or because you're too timid to do something else, you pick it up. 04:07.650 --> 04:09.710 It's an act of strength. 04:11.730 --> 04:13.120 Aggressive, even. 04:15.250 --> 04:18.302 Think of the way Jesus describes his own cross. In John, 04:18.356 --> 04:20.894 He says, no one takes my life from me. 04:20.932 --> 04:23.790 I lay it down of my own accord. 04:24.810 --> 04:30.774 Or in the Gospel of Luke, we read that Jesus set his face to go to 04:30.812 --> 04:31.810 Jerusalem. 04:31.970 --> 04:37.222 Jesus voluntarily accepted the humiliation and the suffering in 04:37.276 --> 04:40.710 pursuit of a higher purpose. 04:41.930 --> 04:46.840 And that purpose was to kill death itself. 04:48.650 --> 04:54.000 You can't get much more active and aggressive than that. 04:56.050 --> 04:59.850 And yet there's plenty of examples in the Bible of 05:00.000 --> 05:04.714 people who accept suffering, sort of, but they take a very passive 05:04.842 --> 05:06.286 attitude towards it. 05:06.388 --> 05:10.110 They obey God, but they do it grudgingly. 05:12.290 --> 05:14.640 These cases don't turn out very well. 05:15.970 --> 05:20.030 Let me just pick one example, and that is Jonah. 05:21.410 --> 05:26.946 God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach repentance, and Jonah 05:26.978 --> 05:29.906 didn't want to do it because he was kind of hoping God would destroy 05:29.938 --> 05:34.520 the place because Jonah was a city full of wicked and violent people. 05:35.930 --> 05:43.990 So God brought Jonah to Nineveh against his will, to put it mildly, 05:46.090 --> 05:47.800 and Jonah did it. 05:48.890 --> 05:53.200 Jonah preached repentance and it worked. 05:55.810 --> 05:59.850 The people of Nineveh repented and Jonah was furious. 06:01.850 --> 06:07.210 So God challenged Jonah, and he said, do you do well to be angry? 06:07.370 --> 06:11.614 And he showed Jonah his own hypocrisy because he gave him a plant that 06:11.652 --> 06:12.958 provided shade for him. 06:13.044 --> 06:16.942 And then he took the plant away to show Jonah that he cared more about 06:16.996 --> 06:22.240 that plant than he did about a city full of 120,000 people. 06:23.970 --> 06:27.270 Do you do well to be angry? 06:30.330 --> 06:36.070 And yet Jonah persisted, yes, I do well to be angry. 06:37.530 --> 06:39.750 Angry enough to die. 06:43.930 --> 06:44.294 Well 06:44.332 --> 06:48.866 now, how on earth did Jonah get angry enough to die? 06:49.058 --> 06:52.800 Outwardly, he he did exactly what God told him to do. 06:54.610 --> 06:58.090 But inwardly, there was a clash of wills. 06:58.170 --> 06:59.770 His will against God's will. 07:00.170 --> 07:04.894 That was so severe that in the end, Jonah thought that the only way 07:04.932 --> 07:10.670 that he could justify himself was to destroy himself. 07:13.890 --> 07:17.998 And that's how I think we have to think about Jonah's death wish here. 07:18.164 --> 07:23.422 It's a last ditch, desperate attempt to justify himself, to prove that 07:23.476 --> 07:24.318 he was right 07:24.404 --> 07:24.918 and God 07:24.964 --> 07:27.270 was wrong about Nineveh. 07:27.610 --> 07:31.320 And if he has to die to prove his point, then so be it. 07:34.880 --> 07:42.590 That's the risk of bearing a cross that you don't pick up. 07:44.159 --> 07:48.956 Jonah refused to pick up the suffering and the call that God had for 07:48.978 --> 07:53.632 him, and it led to bitterness and self justification. 07:53.776 --> 07:58.276 And self justification is an incredibly powerful human desire that 07:58.298 --> 07:59.920 leads to all kind of scary places. 08:02.090 --> 08:06.350 As Jonah's death wish illustrates very clearly. 08:07.810 --> 08:09.370 So don't be like Jonah. 08:09.450 --> 08:10.174 Be like St. 08:10.212 --> 08:10.554 Paul 08:10.602 --> 08:17.834 instead. Paul also had a cross imposed upon him, a messenger of Satan 08:17.882 --> 08:19.520 sent to harass him. 08:21.250 --> 08:24.880 And Paul didn't just endure it, he gloried in it. 08:25.530 --> 08:29.622 Here's what Paul says in In Second Corinthians I will boast all the more 08:29.676 --> 08:35.030 gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 08:35.179 --> 08:40.674 For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, 08:40.722 --> 08:43.265 hardships, persecutions and calamities. 08:43.378 --> 08:47.720 For when I am weak, then I am strong. 08:52.690 --> 08:55.146 In this respect, Paul is like Jesus. 08:55.258 --> 08:59.210 He accepts the hardship in pursuit of a higher purpose. 09:03.370 --> 09:10.126 So how do you get to have the mind of Paul instead of the mind of 09:10.148 --> 09:11.018 Jonah? 09:11.194 --> 09:12.720 How does that come about? 09:14.530 --> 09:16.142 Well, I think it's actually quite simple. 09:16.196 --> 09:17.760 It comes down to this. 09:18.690 --> 09:23.520 Do you believe that God's will is more important than your own? 09:24.810 --> 09:27.590 Or maybe more important is not the best way to say it. 09:27.660 --> 09:32.790 Do you believe that God's will is more engaging, more fulfilling, more 09:32.860 --> 09:37.480 meaningful than anything that you have planned for your own life? 09:39.930 --> 09:43.186 If you want to see a picture of it, this plays out with crystal 09:43.218 --> 09:48.870 clarity in the moment that Jesus actually does pick up his own cross. 09:50.130 --> 09:54.874 That moment occurs in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prays, 09:54.922 --> 09:58.240 abba, Father, all things are possible for you. 09:59.170 --> 09:59.610 Remove 10:00.090 --> 10:07.040 this cup from me, yet not what I will, but what you will. 10:10.050 --> 10:14.926 On one level, Jesus did not want to die, but at the same time, he knew 10:15.108 --> 10:17.870 that the Father's will is paramount. 10:18.450 --> 10:22.510 The Father's will is more important than his survival instinct. 10:23.650 --> 10:28.040 And the Father's will is what he really wanted. 10:28.730 --> 10:32.406 The early church fathers often portray this scene in Gethsemane as the 10:32.428 --> 10:36.278 moment in which the human will of Christ is brought into perfect 10:36.364 --> 10:38.674 alignment with the will of the Father. 10:38.802 --> 10:44.182 And since he's the second Adam, the human will of us is brought into 10:44.236 --> 10:46.840 alignment with the Father as well. 10:49.290 --> 10:54.590 And this is the same Jesus who stands here today, risen from the dead 10:55.250 --> 10:59.660 on the other side of the suffering and the cross, who says. 11:00.330 --> 11:02.160 I promise you it's worth it. 11:03.570 --> 11:08.542 I promise you that God's will is more engaging, more fulfilling, more 11:08.596 --> 11:12.014 meaningful than anything that you think you have planned for your own 11:12.052 --> 11:12.640 life. 11:15.330 --> 11:17.978 Because think of what that will entails. 11:18.154 --> 11:23.694 God's will is that his Son defeated death on the cross and gave you an 11:23.732 --> 11:24.998 indestructible life. 11:25.044 --> 11:30.310 So that whatever sacrifices you're called to make to follow 11:30.380 --> 11:34.680 Christ, those crosses can't hurt you. 11:37.210 --> 11:42.886 They merely become the occasion for you to display the strength of the 11:42.908 --> 11:45.350 life that you have received. 11:46.410 --> 11:48.002 So pray with Jesus. 11:48.066 --> 11:51.870 Not my will, but yours, to be done, because that's what you really 11:51.940 --> 11:52.606 want. 11:52.788 --> 11:57.470 You really want your will to be aligned with the will of God. 11:57.620 --> 11:59.900 Because then you can 12:00.170 --> 12:04.080 not only bear your cross, you can pick it up. 12:04.850 --> 12:05.290 Amen.