BY MICHAEL NEU
St. John’s Lutheran Church
We must share Christ’s Passion if we are to be true followers of Jesus Christ. His death is our death. His Passion is our passion. His suffering is our suffering. If we truly say we are disciples of Christ.
The Gospel may be the Good News, but it doesn’t come easily, and it doesn’t come without cost. Paul tells us in our reading today from his letter in the Philippians, “And being in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death upon a cross.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his work “The Cost of Discipleship,” tells us how Christ’s Passion was a Passion without honor. He suffered and was rejected by men, including his disciples. Peter denied him three times, even after confessing Jesus was the Messiah. They would flee to the Upper Room, away from the accusing eyes of the crowd.
Peter’s denials show the unwillingness to share the suffering, rejection and crucifixion of his Lord. We often share that unwillingness.
We don’t want to bear the burden of the cross. We want the reward without the suffering. We want to be showered with blessings because we prefer signs of wealth, money and power over foregoing all that and doing God’s will. We will not be the obedient servant.
Instead, we are the young man who, when told that was the price to pay, giving up all his wealth, ran away from Jesus.
Bonhoeffer wrote, “If Christianity has ceased to be serious about discipleship, if we have watered down the Gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an everyday calamity, as one of the trials and tribulations of life. We have forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.”
We don’t need to seek a cross. Christ has his waiting right there. We need only accept the burden laid on every Christian. We each are given our share. The first suffering each must carry is the call to abandon our attachments to this world.
We are called to accept our death in this world and be reborn in the newness of life under Christ. It is not a terrible ending to an otherwise happy life, Bonhoeffer tells us, but a beginning of our communion with Christ.
There is another suffering we are called to endure, that of forgiveness. As Paul told the Galatians, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” The only way to bear our brother’s sin is by forgiving that sin.”
Forgiveness is not easy. Christ hung on a cross for our forgiveness, so how great is your pain and suffering to also forgive? That is what we are called to do as our duty. Do we not pray, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us?” To follow Christ always means to forgive others of their sins.
Martin Luther believed suffering was a mark of a true Church. In the Augsburg Confession, a church is defined as those “who are persecuted and martyred for the gospel’s sake.” If we pass up the opportunity to take up the cross, submit ourselves to rejection and suffering caused by our following Christ’s will, we forfeit our fellowship with Christ.
We, of course, have free will to choose not to share in Christ’s Passion. We can choose to accept the ways of the world, giving in to the temptations Satan presents us. You can, but you may soon find that Satan’s weight is far greater than the weight of the cross.
You must decide each day. Which do you wish for, to share in the Passion of Christ and take up a share in his cross, or bear the greater weight of life without Christ?
