“TAKE UP YOUR CROSS”

This sermon was preached at the Mint Methodist Church, Exeter, by the Minister, Rev Andrew Sails at 10.30 a.m. on 12^thMarch 2006, the second Sunday in Lent – a service including the commissioning of Rev Hwang Gwang Myung as Korean pastor at the Mint Readings: 1 Corinthians (고린도전서) 12:4-13 Mark (마가복음) 8:31-35 Back to Sermon Index

“If anyone would follow me, 
he must deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk 8:34)
 
Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that we are called 
to follow Christ’s example of sacrificial self giving 
 
“Now that I your Lord and teacher have washed your feet,
you also should wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:14)
The placing of the Cup and towel beneath the Lenten Cross 
reminds us that following Christ also means 
following his example of humble service:
 
Two powerful passages for a day on which we welcome Hwang and his family 
and commission him for God’s work in this place.
Appropriate for Hwang, but also for each of us. 
We believe that God calls everyone to follow Christ’s example,
to take up a bowl, a towel and a cross.
 
John Profumo died this week. 
He was of course a Government Minister 
condemned to be remembered for a sex scandal in the 1960s. 
But sadly he may be little remembered for the 40 years which followed. 
“Within days of his forced resignation from the Cabinet in 1963, 
Mr Profumo had walked into Toynbee Hall, 
an east London charity, and asked to help with the washing up.”
How the mighty are fallen.
Or maybe not.
Rather how someone who had fallen found redemption 
and new life in quite literally taking up the washing bowl and the tea towel.
 
“Now that I your Lord and teacher have washed your feet,
 you also should wash one another’s feet” (Jn 13:14)
 
We’ve also heard the news this week of the death 
in very different circumstances of the Iraqi hostage Tom Fox – 
and our prayers continue for Norman Kember 
and his fellow peace workers who remain hostages in Iraq.
 
Following Christ’s path of service involves taking up a cross.
For some that will mean literally dying, losing your life.
For those who do that we give special thanks before God
For others, bearing the cross may not involve 
literally being put to death – but it will (or certainly should)
mean renouncing and sacrificing parts of my life, 
bearing the burdens of others, 
walking Christ’s sacrificial path with him.
There are many ways to give your life – 
and we are all called to give our life either is service or in martyrdom.
 
You remember the old picture of the ox - 
with a plough on one side and an altar on the other.
Underneath the slogan reads “Ready for Either” 
God calls us to make sacrifices – 
but for some it is the great sacrifice of the altar – 
literally giving our life blood for others. 
But for others God calls us to give our life for others in service
Either way the call is to lose our life to gain it.
 
But who are we to do such things?
Sometimes the task just seems too much
 
There has been quite a row this week over a new 
statue of Winston Churchill. He is depicted in a straitjacket. 
The statue was commissioned by a mental health charity in Norfolk. 
The message is that Churchill suffered from depressive illness, 
but still achieved greatness in spite of the pressures he was under.
 
Well I don’t want to get into a debate about how great Churchill was, 
not about the level of his depression.
But clearly we all have our constraints – 
mental, physical, or psychological – 
We all sometimes feel like we are wearing a straitjacket. 
And that we are being called to do things that are beyond us.
 
We might stop to reflect on what threatens to 
trap, limit, inhibit our life of love, witness and service.
 
This week Rev Julie Nicholson has resigned from the priesthood.
She lost a daughter in the terrorist bombing last year 
and she cannot forgive the perpetrators.
So with great honesty, integrity and sorrow she has ceased to be a priest.
 
It is a sad story – 
Far be it from those of us who have never suffered violent bereavement
to stand in judgement over someone struggling in such a way.
What we can do is to pray for God to work 
a miracle of grace in her life so that she can again fulfil her calling.
 
But – and here is the twist in the tale – 
if we ask God to liberate and empower others to serve him better, 
and to do in the future what now seems quite impossible, 
we need to pray the same prayer for ourselves.
And who knows what we might do - if we would but 
let God inspire and guide and liberate us???
 
When you get to heaven, maybe you would like to
Ask Moses what he thought when God told him to go see Pharaoh
Ask Amos what he thought when God told him to go prophesy
Ask Simon of Cyrene what he thought when told him to carry a cross
And maybe they will chuckle and smile as they recall their horror – 




 
 
 
 
 
 
and then tell you how in the power of the Spirit they did it.
 
Today we commission Hwang to serve God in this place.
Hwang, in your commissioning we call on God’s help
We pray that here in this place, in the power of the Spirit, 




 
 
 
 
 
 
you may know the same God 
giving you impossible things to do, 
and then enabling you to do them.
 
And the things God does not give you to, 
we pray he will give to the rest of us - 
and if they are also impossible, 
then we will ask for some miracles on our own part too.
Because Jesus asks us all to do nothing less than follow him – 
 
And as Tom Wright remarks, when he asks us to follow,
“Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike,
 but on a walk into danger and risk.
Or did we suppose that the Kingdom of God 
would just mean a few adjustments to our ordinary lives?”
(Tom Wright, Mark for Everyone” SPCK 2001 p.112)
 

At the end of the day God asks all of us the impossible –

To dream the impossible dream

To fight the unbeatable foe

To bear with unbearable sorrow

To run where the brave dare not go

(Man of La Mancha 1972)

and you can only do the impossible in God’s power. 
 
Here is a cross and beneath it we will place a towel and a bowl
the tools of Christ’s work. 
 
St Teresa of Avila tells us how the work is to be done – 
Lord Christ, You have no body on earth but ours,
No hands but ours,
No feet but ours.
Ours are the eyes through which your compassion
Must look out on the world.
Ours are the feet by which you may still
Go about doing good.
Ours are the hands with which You bless people now.
Bless our minds and bodies,
That we may be a blessing to others.
 
So for you Hwang we ask God’s blessing this day, 
that your hands and feet and eyes and mind and heart 
may all be blessed by God 
that here in this place Christ’s work may be done through you.
 
And what we ask for you we dare ask also for ourselves,
that together we may be the Body of Christ,
and that through us his will may be done.

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