Taking up your cross and others’

A long time ago, I woke to the cool desert air in Morocco before the sun fully rose.

I was part of a group touring Marrakesh and its surrounding areas, a group of which my grandmother was a part too.

I suppose I might speak someday of the holiness of that trip, the tour of a mosque, the trips through the rocky flat lands leading up to the High Atlas Mountains.

Sometimes life is changed within the confines of a ten-day journey at the age of 21.

Today though, I’m just going to touch on that morning and the afternoon when we stopped at a crossroads.

It was an early morning, we woke bleary eyed in our hotel room, got showered and dressed, then headed down to the room where we met with all the tour goers and gathered to share a meal of fruit, cheese, bread, and coffee, a true continental breakfast.

The coffee was strong and French and delicious.

The bread was soft baguettes and warm.

Following breakfast we collected our things and headed into the still dark morning.

The air was chilly and the bus that was to take us into the mountains was warming up, the smell of diesel fuel exhaust in chilly weather still brings me back to that morning in Marrakesh thirty years ago.

We boarded the bus and headed toward the mountains.

There is something about traveling to the mountains.

You drive and drive and drive and they always seem to be far away until suddenly, you are in the mountains.

I don’t know if you’ve ever driven through the Rockies or somewhere similar, but that has been my experience.

Flat lands until they are not.

Before we reached our destination of the provincial capital of Ouarzazate, a city high in the mountains with beautiful architecture, we stopped on the side of the road to visit a farmer where he showed us his home.

That farmer had two daughters.

You can see them now in the picture before you.

You see the girl in the middle there, staring at me?

No, do you see the girl in the middle, glaring at me?

I have no idea what I did to her!

And I wonder, did she have a cross to bear?

Was she burdened with something or another?

Did she have a cross to bear.

Simon left his house in Cyrene in Libya one day, one morning perhaps, and headed for Jerusalem.

It is not known why he left to travel but he did.

Hey may have walked the 850 miles from Cyrene to Israel.

If he did, he would have had to cross the northern Sahara but most likely would have followed the Mediterranean coast where there was more of a population; land populated by sailors and traders who would sail up and down the coast selling their wares, populated by the families of those sailors and traders, populated by all those other folks who build communities around commerce.

He would have traveled from Libya into Egypt and might have stopped in Alexandria, a city burning with knowledge just a few years before it’s library would burn with fire.

From Alexandria to Suez where the Israelites wandered for forty years, finally approaching Jerusalem.

He first viewed Jerusalem from afar where he saw the temple on its mount, a temple built as a gift to God just a few years before its walls would come tumbling down.

Simon drew closer to the city where he encountered a parade of sorts, a parade led by soldiers leading a man in clothes as tattered as his body, a crown of thorns laid on his head drawing blood from his brow.

Simon drew closer to this desperate man; the man seemed far away to Simon until he wasn’t.

A soldier called out to Simon.

Help this man, he said.

He struggles too much and the day will soon be hot.

Simon met Jesus in the cool desert air.

Simon lifted the cross Jesus had to bear.

Simon struggled with the weight of the cross, his back bent and his shoulders hurt as he shifted the cross from left to right.

Jesus walked before Simon, in front of him as if he was leading him to calvary.

Simon, father of Alexander and Rufus, then delivered the cross to where it would stand and from where Jesus would be hung and went on his way.

This was a story about Simon of Cyrene.

He bore our Messiah’s cross.

“He 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.”

Let them deny themselves and take up their cross.

The cross which was know throughout the entire Roman world as a tortuous device that led to a painful death.

And Jesus tells us to take up our cross so that we might follow him.

He continues, “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. “

Now there is a bit of distinction here, he is not just being cute with words as I am sometimes wont to do, I admit it.

Think of it this way: Those who want to save physical comforts, maintain the status quo while others suffer will lose that life of few wants and many comforts.

And those who take up the gospel, those who pursue eternal life through faith in the gospel must give up their physical life.

One life is physical and temporary, and another is spiritual and undying.

Yet we must take up our cross to reach it; as we take up the gospel we must take up the cross.

Now, many might read this as suffering, physical and existential suffering, is necessary if we are to follow Christ.

Some would turn to hairshirts and self-flagellation to experience such suffering, but I would argue that no such suffering is necessary because God and Jesus do not want us to experience such pain.

But there, I think, a call for us to deny ourselves of certain things, certain comforts if we are to take up the cross and act as Christians should.

And that denial comes in the form of denying our very human desire to follow our ego.

We are called to be in community.

As Christians we worship in community.

We share of our wealth to support this church, we share of our time to keep it standing, we share of our very selves when others need support.

Though there might be better things to do, we attend vestry meetings, we write and deliver sermons, we prep for Morning Prayer, we mow lawns, clear out the Memorial Garden, spend Saturdays clothing those needing clothes, feeding those needing feeding.

We do this at the expense of our selves, our egos regress into a community dedicated to God and Christ’s word.

We give up our lives so that we might live our lives through the lens of the gospel.

We take up the cross, the burden of community so that we might live.

And, ultimately, we take up each other’s cross.

Life is not always easy and quite often, it is hard.

So many of us have experienced great losses over the years be it in our professional or personal lives.

I need not list those losses for example’s sake, but I think we know what some of them might be.

And we know because we are a part of a community and when one of us suffers, we respond.

We respond with long conversations at the back of the church, lunches held so that we might check in on each other, a knock on the door so that we might visit and maybe drop off a casserole or even share in the Eucharist together.

We give of ourselves to each other so that we might live our lives through lens of the gospel.

There are times when a little girl might glare at us and we might not know what we did wrong and still we love.

Still, we support.

Still, we give of ourselves.

Simon of Cyrene once traveled to Jerusalem by land or by sea and when he was just outside the walls of that city, he was ordered to take up the cross of the one who was suffering.

Simon of Cyrene eased the suffering of that man, our Christ, if for only a little while, but you never know who you will meet on the road from here to there and everywhere.

That is our call.

To give of ourselves yes; to deny ourselves, yes; to take up the cross, yes.

And along with that, to ease the burdens of those who suffer; to take up the crosses of those in pain.

Deny ourselves so that others might heal.

Give of ourselves so that others might prosper.

Take up the cross, so that others might live.

Simon traveled miles to do just that, in the most literal sense, Simon of Cyrene took up the cross of Christ so that we all might live.

To where will you travel?

And whose cross will you carry?

Amen.