What It Means to Take Up Our Cross

In the gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary today, Jesus tells us that if anyone seeks to follow him, they must take up their own cross and follow.

In the ancient and medieval church, this was taken literally.  What was considered an ideal Christian lifestyle was to become an ascetic and intentionally inflict torture and suffering upon oneself, intentionally mirroring the suffering that Christ endured.  The modern Church just ignores the text and pretends that it does not exist because it stands contrary to the prevailing understanding that God seeks to take us away from suffering and trials.

The ancient and medieval church got it wrong; Christ did not undergo suffering, torture, and death as an end in itself.  The modern church obviously gets it wrong by not engaging the text; whatever the text means, it means something.

The key to understanding the text lies in why Christ traveled to Jerusalem where he faced the cross, suffering and death; he did it to fulfill God's will of effecting the salvation and redemption of the world.  We are similarly called to follow God's call, wherever it leads.  Most of the time, it will lead us to places where we would choose not to go, requiring us to overcome our fear.  If we live under the Lordship of Christ, we will go where God commands us to go, even to Jerusalem, because there are tasks that God must fulfill in our time, so that God's vision might be realized and the Kingdom of God might be revealed on earth as it is in heaven.