Last Sunday afternoon, I attended the funeral of a church mother from the last congregation where I served as intentional interim pastor. My entry as that congregation's first female pastor was smoothed considerably by Ruby. Ruby was the EF Hutton of the congregation. When she talked not only would people listen, they did whatever she asked them to do! So loved and respected was Ruby that you better have a darn good reason for telling her no. The last several years of her life, Ruby undertook an incredible ministry of intercessory prayer and telephone calls of encouragement living out St. Paul 's exhortion for us to “build up” the body of Christ. Ruby became increasingly home bound because of unrelenting pain from osteo arthritis. You could name a pain medication or a doctor in town and Ruby had either tried them, or would. But nothing, nothing relieved her chronic pain, except one thing. Her knowing that no matter what she suffered, Jesus had suffered more for her. In her pain, she grew even closer to her Savior, whom she called “my sweet Jesus.” “He can slay me,” Ruby would say smiling, “but I love him still.” Her chronic pain, some would say, is the cross that Ruby took up in following her Lord.

As Christians who know what happened on Good Friday, it's easy for us to associate Jesus' Command in this morning's gospel to take up our cross and following him, as bearing whatever suffering comes our way as Jesus bore his suffering. This identification with the horrific suffering of God on the cross can be powerful when we are hurting. When there is no end to our pain in sight.

Taking up our crosses and following Jesus can also help us bear the suffering that often comes when we follow Jesus' ways of peace and justice making, in caring for God's creation and in advocating for the poor and the powerless, rather than following what the world we live in values—wealth, status, security, freedom to do as we please, going all out to win even at the expense of our neighbors. When we lose our life centered in what the powers of this world value, and instead center our lives on what Jesus values, Loving God, and our neighbor as our self, we will be looked at as crazy, naïve or stupid. Our scripture response hymn speaks to the suffering we will endure as we take up our crosses to follow Jesus.

But is suffering the kind of cross Jesus means in this passage? If Jesus died once and for all for our sins, then why do we have to pick up a cross too? Why do we have to suffer our crosses if Jesus paid the price for us?

When Jesus spoke the words, “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take of their cross and follow me,” his hearers may have imagined a different kind of cross than we 21 st century Christians do. After all, they were first century Jews living in Roman occupied Palestine . Jewish law stipulated the corpse of an executed criminal be hung on a tree as a sign of God's ultimate curse on that person. Romans routinely tortured and executed defeated enemies, rebels and the lowest of common criminals on crosses made from trees. According to Cicero , a Roman statesman and writer, death on a cross was considered too demeaning and horrific for Roman citizens and other free men.

So, if the kind of cross we think about was understood by Jesus' hearers only in terms of an instrument of punishment to the lowest of the low, the worst of the worst, then how could Jesus' first disciples make sense of the command, to “take up their cross and follow him?”

Biblical scholars remind us that Jesus' hears were familiar with the Hebrew letter shaped like a cross, the tav, a letter similar to our English lower case T. The tav is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet and represents the fulfillment of the entire revealed Word of God. The prophet Ezekiel exhorts the chosen people to remain faithful to God by being “sealed” with the mark of the tav on their foreheads until the end of their lives. The book of Revelation refers several times to this protective mark. Tradition tells us the Hebrew slaves in Egypt marked their doors with the tav in lamb's blood so the angel of death passed over them, and t he tav was the mark God put on Cain to keep him alive.

Thus this kind cross, the mark of the tav, is a sign of God saving people from death now and at the end of time. This kind of cross is a sign of life, marking the faithful who have been strengthen by God's grace to persevere through the difficulties to the end of time. This taking up the mark of the tav cross on their foreheads is perhaps what Jesus' hearers understood.

The sign of the cross traced on our heads at baptism and when we receive ashes on Ash Wednesday, is our mark of the cross that we belong to God. Like our Jewish ancestors in the faith, the cross we carrying from our baptism is a sign of strength on our forehead—not the burden Jesus carried up the hill to Calvary .

So perhaps, at least sometimes, we should imagine taking up our cross not as a burden across our backs, but rather the mark of life on our forehead. A sign of what Paul tells us this morning in the Romans passage—of God giving life to the dead. A cross on our foreheads reminding us to be faithful, … remembering who we are and to whom we belong, and then to follow our Savior because Jesus will never lead us astray, but take us into deep faithfulness in ways we could never dream.

A faithfulness that gives space to the surprising power of God, refusing to settle for what is possible or reasonable. A faithfulness that gives us the courage to let go of our old lives and the understanding of what we thought possible, to make room for God's surprising love and faithfulness.

Followers like Abraham and Sarah are in the worlds' eyes unrealistic and even a bit crazy because they believe in a God who continues to bring into existence things that do not exist. Descendants too numerous to count and while being older than anyone sitting in this congregation? It is not Abraham and Sarah's faith that works miracles, but the God in whom they trust who works miracles incomprehensible to us only in hindsight, as we look back over both history and our own lives. Sarah and Abraham's faith in God's promise meant living between an impossible promise—that they would parent an entire nation??? And the ultimate realization of that promise.

Their faith was a trust in God to honor God's commitments, and that same trust is what is needed now as we follow Jesus Christ as Our Chief Elder, in discerning his will and purpose for this community of faith called First Moravian Church .

The cross for each of us to take up in this wilderness time between called pastors, is the cross made on our forehead at our baptism, showing us to whom we belong, Jesus Christ. The mark of the tav that keeps our focus on being United in Christ, reaching out in love to one another and our neighbors, and in doing so, in doing so, we transform our lives and the lives of those we come in contact with.

Yet each of us are also like Peter. The rock on who Jesus builds his church and who declares “You are the Messiah” and the skeptical scared fisherman who says to Jesus: “Don't let happen what you say will happen, because if you do, then I might have to leave the safety of what I control…to leave the familiar…and strike out on a journey, the destination of which I do not know the ending.” Which of Peter's voices will you let control you in this wilderness time?

As we journey together in this time, let us remember this prayer of Thomas Merton, and let it become our prayer as we seek to discern God's Holy will for this community of faith:

Let us pray:“Most Holy God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do, this will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Amen.

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