Carrying a Cross

HOMILY, ST. PAUL’S, FOLEY – SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

 

TEXT:                        MARK 8:31-38

 

 

            When I was serving as a long-term supply priest at Holy Trinity Church in Pensacola, a parishioner gave me a copy of a very powerful book.  It speaks to the gospel lesson today.

 

            The name of the book is Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow.  It is a compilation of biographies, stories, and sermons from the dark days of the Third Reich. Its focus is on the lives – and in some cases, deaths – of those mostly-Lutheran pastors who comprised what was known as the Confessing Church during that 12-year period.

 

            Nazism, you see, had its own state-sanctioned theology.  There were acknowledged state churches, where no inconvenient facts or theologies would be preached.

 

            But some courageous pastors did.  Most of their names have disappeared from consciousness now.  But that doesn’t minimize their courage in the light of the oppression and risks they faced. One name continues to be revered: Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He was a Lutheran pastor to whom we owe a debt of gratitude for his seminal work, The Cost of Discipleship and the coining of the term cheap grace.  He was martyred by Hitler’s henchmen only days before Allied troops liberated his concentration camp at Flossenburg.  He was 39 years of age. 

 

            There are few examples of Jesus’ teaching from today’s gospel which are as clear as those days. “Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’”

 

            A friend recently made this observation: Can we now recognize Jesus as a teacher and not just a savior?  Indeed, Jesus is not only “the way, the truth, and the life,” he shows us “the way, the truth, and the life.” Central to that way of being like Jesus is the willingness to take up our crosses and follow him.

 

            Few of us, if any, will ever have the stark choices of the Lutheran pastors in 1930s and 1940s Germany.  Thank God.  But we are still called to take up our crosses – to bear witness, to take action, to point out the path to the way, and the truth, and the life.

 

            That means discerning and acting on the movements of justice, peace, and righteousness that brings all people under the umbrella of God’s realm of love and grace.