Bearing Our Cross - Rev. Gigi Miller
By: The Rev. Gigi Miller
A few years ago, my husband Rich and I decided it was time to remodel our kitchen and primary bathroom. The house was over 30 years old, and we noticed things were falling apart as we spent more time at home during Covid. Designers got involved, materials were ordered, and contractors began the demo work. We had a schedule, but delays ensued. No one counted on two different tile lots or wood rot in the bathroom. Our best laid plans meant six months of microwave dinners, and a price tag that was a little more than originally anticipated.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are getting closer to Jerusalem, where Jesus knows what’s in store for him. As they move through the towns and villages, folks start taking notice, and soon a large group gathers around Jesus and his friends. They like Jesus’ whole vibe, especially his message of love and radical welcome.
Jesus, in what at first seems like an ill-advised marketing strategy, tells them that walking his path comes with some serious baggage. A preacher once said that some scripture passages make you want to shout “Amen,” and others make you say “Ouch.” But this one makes me want to say “Yikes!”
Jesus offers the crowd an invitation wrapped in a warning. If they want to come with him, folks need to hate the people they hold most dear. Scholars tell us that, in Hebrew Scripture, “hate” and “love” were expressions of preference, rather than opposition as we interpret them. So “I love cows and hate roosters” may have meant more like “I like cows better than roosters.” But even if that’s true, Jesus’ exaggeration in this context is tough. You can almost hear the original disciples’ families asking “So, you like this Jesus guy more than us?” as the twelve went off to wander around Galilee with their rabbi.
Jesus, who taught us to love those who despise us, can’t be telling us to hate the people we love. Instead, he’s asking us to expand our notion of beloved to include everyone – the enemies, the neighbors, the strangers – along with those we already treasure.
But walking with Jesus means that family and friends might not understand; to them, it might feel like a rejection. My daughter got sober through twelve-step programs and a collection of people who shared her struggles. Even though I had nurtured her all her life, I couldn’t help her find sobriety; only folks who had experienced the same challenges could take the journey with her. I felt sidelined and left out of her life … until I realized that this community was helping her become the resilient, courageous person God intended. In the same way, Jesus wants us to widen our circle of loved ones and transform our definition of family.
This revolutionary idea of devotion doesn’t insulate Jesus’ disciples from the trials of earthly life. He knows they’ll have to bear a cross: one that looks different for everyone, and changes as they move through their lives. One loses a job. Another has a catastrophic injury. Still another takes care of a relative, while someone else grieves the death of a cherished pet. But through it all, God leads the way, for, as Psalm 139 says “You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways. You lay your hand upon me.”
A few of us are accompanying asylum seekers as they appear in immigration court. We pray for the respondents, as well as the lawyers, judges, translators, bailiffs and ICE and DHS agents involved in their cases. All are enduring a process designed for intimidation. We share the truth that God has not forgotten them. And God waits with us as we bear witness in a place of desolation. Jesus shows us that no matter the cross we carry, we are not alone; God is helping with the heavy lifting.
But to pick up our individual crosses, and perhaps, help others shoulder theirs, Jesus tells us that we must let go of our possessions. That may include our phones, cars, houses, shoes, if they shift our focus from God. But it’s not just what we own, it’s anything that wants to own us. In our modern American society, it may be the social media feeds that peddle distorted images of ourselves and others, leaders who endorse vengeance and retribution as civic ideals, or our own self-righteousness in the face of it all. Jesus wants us to discard everything that separates us from God and the true selves that, as the psalmist knows, God knit together when we were in our mothers’ wombs.
Jesus cares for those gathered in the large crowd so much that he wants to be perfectly clear with them and us about what it means be his disciple. Jesus doesn’t want us to be unprepared for what lies ahead, like me with my remodel or the tower builder and king in the parables Jesus shares. He’s not selling a feel-good, no-strings-attached comfortable Gospel that packs people in the pews. The price of this singular focus on God seems enormous, but the reward is immeasurable. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp for resisting Hitler’s regime, literally wrote the book The Cost of Discipleship and reminds us, “If we answer the call to discipleship, where will it lead us? What decisions and partings will it demand? Only Jesus Christ, who bids us follow him, knows the journey’s end. But we do know that it will be a road of boundless mercy. Discipleship means joy.”
Today, we mark the beginning of the Episcopal Church’s Season of Creation, and Jesus is offering us a place in God’s grand transformation project. He wants his disciples to leave behind everything precious, including our old lives, and join him in restoring God’s justice, retrieving the forgotten, and repairing earth’s brokenness. It’s a big ask, and most days if I’m honest, I’m “disciple adjacent.” The prophet Jeremiah envisions God as the Divine potter, eternally fashioning and refashioning this world into something closer to God’s imagination. Surely God is also molding us into the vessels of compassion the Spirit needs now to renew God’s dream of creation.
