Take Up Your Cross

Mark 8:31-38

Lent 2

February 28, 2021



There was a woman who decided that a goal in life

was to complete a foot race.

So she prepared, she lifted weights,

she pushed herself further and further.

Finally, she thought she was ready and so she

signed up to run a short race to begin with, a half marathon,

13 miles, a race that she felt she could complete.



So she got to the race and she lined up and they shoot of the starter pistol

and she’s running and running one hour

and she’s doing pretty well

and she’s running then two hours

and she feels like she should be coming close to the end, but it doesn’t end,

and it doesn’t seem like anyone else is thinking about finishing soon.



So she asks one of the other runners

and she finds out that she is not in a half marathon

she is running a full marathon which is 26 miles.

She keeps running,

she didn’t just want to stop and admit defeat,

but the whole time she is saying to herself and to anyone else:

“This was not the race I signed up for.”

“This is not the race I signed up for.”



She finished the race in the end.

But this was not the race she signed up for.



That is kind of what Peter is saying to Jesus.

Jesus just tells them that he’s going to undergo great suffering

be rejected by the elders, and be killed.

Oh yeah and rise again, but I don’t think that’s

what sticks in Peter’s mind when he takes him aside

and tells Jesus that he’s crazy.

Peter is now getting a fuller picture about what Jesus ministry will be like.



Peter, I’m sure, was not expecting this

when he put down his net and followed.

Rejected and killed by those in power?

“This is not the race I signed up for.” says Peter

This is not the race I signed up for.


And people who have been hanging

around Jesus and the church for a while,

know what Peter is going through.

We can commiserate with poor Peter.

Usually, we didn’t sign up for this race.



At my old congregation, there was a very smart person

who was council president during a really tough

and conflicted time in the congregation.

He was caught right in the middle of it.

He was a family court judge so he wasn’t adverse to

conflict, but something about

conflict at church bugged him.



He was in my office talking about stuff and he said,

“Pastor June, I just want to stop all this stuff

and get back to what church is about.

Praying and meditating on God and Jesus and listening to good music.


In other words, Pr. June, this is not the race I signed up for.



In another church I was part of there was this guy

who had a tough street life then was very involved in the church.

Some guys around his apartment were

bugging him, stealing from his neighbors

painting graffiti on the garages around his house.

He came in on day to church annoyed,

not at the guys, but at the Jesus and the church.

he said, “Before I would have just cracked these guys over

the head and taught them a lesson.

Now I gotta think about what Jesus would do.  Stupid Church.”



This is not the race I signed up for.



When I was 27 I moved to New York City to write.

I was a writer, I was ready to embark on my artsy life

of writing plays and hanging around other artsy people.

Maybe I would even start wearing a beret.

Then I started to go to church, a Lutheran church for

no good discernible reason but because it was close to my house. 

Jesus Carrying the Cross
Olga Bakhtina

And then the whole trajectory of my life changed. 

I started working with poor and homeless people.

I started to hear the call to become a pastor.

Now I visit the sick and preach and go to hospitals.

This is not the race I signed up for.



And about a year ago, when the pandemic

began to spread, and

we all decided at once not to meet in person, 

I fought it hard at the beginning.

I was not made for video worship.

I do not want to learn about all this technology.

I can’t do church from afar.

This is not how I want to do my job.


I know I’m not alone in this.


This is not the race I signed up for.



When Jesus called Peter

Peter maybe thought he was signed up for

some fame, some security, some adventure.

Maybe he thought Jesus and the disciples would get the

Roman Empire out of their business,

or maybe they would just reform the

synagogue and change how some things were done.

We don’t know exactly what Peter thought he signed up for.

But it sure wasn’t this race,

not the rejected by the authorities,

suffer and be killed race.

Not that race.


So when Jesus says that he is going to suffer and be killed,

Peter says, no, this can’t be. You can’t do this.



But Jesus tells Peter, and Jesus tells us:

You don’t run this show.

“You get behind me.”

And this is a reminder for us too.

We follow Jesus.

We don’t decide the way it’s supposed to be.

We follow Jesus way.

And this is not always easy stuff.



“If any want to be my followers

let them deny themselves and take up their cross.”



The cross that Jesus talks about is not

how some people refer to normal hardships and pain

my hip hurts, oh that’s my cross to bear.

I got a traffic ticket. That’s my cross to bear.



The cross that Jesus talks about is this cross

that we bear when we sacrifice ourselves and

our own direction and follow Christ’s direction.

When our own wants take a back seat and

our compassion for others takes a priority.

When we see the face of Jesus in the strangers

and the difficult people in our lives.

When we think of the needs of the world over our own.



When we follow Jesus we deny ourselves deny our plans

and follow Jesus’s plans.

When we’re moved to do things that aren’t

in our best interest, that don’t profit us.

We find ourselves in situations that we wouldn’t find

ourselves in a million years.

That is the cross that Jesus wants us to take up.

That is the race that Jesus wants us to sign up 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.”



So is that the end of Jesus story?

Life is hard and then you die?

That is where Jesus leaves us?



Of course not, because we know what happens after the cross.

On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead.



And the same for us.

God doesn’t just leave us down in the mess.

God picks us up from there and restores us to new life.

Each time we experience these little deaths,

Those wilderness places of our lives,

God brings us to a new and transformed life.

A life that is changed,

a little better than the old one we left.

One that is authentic and real.

One that is closer to God and God’s compassion.

Not the same as before, but changed.



Maybe this is not the race that we signed up for,

But this is the life that God has in store for us.

This is the race that we are running.

And this is the promise of God.



We lose our life, but God promises to find it again.