ST. PAUL'S LETTER TO THE HEBREWS 4:14-16; 5:1-6
BRETHREN, since we have a high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin. He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. Because of this he is bound to offer sacrifice for his own sins as well as for those of the people. And one does not take the honor upon himself, but he is called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, "Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee"; as he says also in another place, "Thou art a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek."

MARK 8:34-38; 9:1
The Lord said: "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? For what can a man give in return for his life? For whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." And he said to them, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power.”

Today is a remarkably appropriate time to be asked to say something about the cross. Right now, in the middle of this COVID-19 crisis we have all been enduring a very difficult few weeks with many more likely to come. Any time you venture from your home, things just feel off. Businesses are shut down; the road traffic and foot traffic are sparse; events are cancelled; grocery store shelves are empty. And heaven forbid that you or someone in your family is sick, with COVID-19 or with anything else. The medical system is under great duress at this time. These are all very real crosses. And so it is pertinent that right here, in the middle of this COVID-19 crisis, the Church presents with this, the Sunday of the Holy Cross.

Today we hear Christ say to the multitudes, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” If you want to call yourself a Christian, these are Jesus’ instructions – deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Him. These are very difficult instructions. Jesus is not telling you to wear your cross necklace. He is saying that to follow him will mean to bear some very real crosses. I would like to talk right now about what this might mean for us today. I will start by offering a little context for these instructions from the Gospel of St. Mark.

These instructions are set in the Gospel of Mark immediately following two of Peter’s most famous interactions with Jesus. The first is likely remembered as St. Peter’s proudest moment. Jesus asks his disciples who people are saying that he is, and they answer that people seem to think he is the second coming of John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the great prophets of old. He then asks his disciples who they say that he is and Peter blurts out, “You are the Christ!” Peter says here what all the disciples are thinking, or at least what they were likely hoping: “You are the long promised Messiah, the Christ, the Annointed One of God, sent to save Israel from her oppressors!” Jesus tells his disciples that they should keep this information to themselves, but at this time begins to explain to them what being the messiah is really all about. Mark says that Jesus explains that the Messiah, “must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

This teaching, of course, leads to one of Peter’s lowest moments. Not his very lowest, but close. This messiah Jesus is talking about is not the messiah Peter had been hoping for. Suffering? Rejection? Death? These were the things the messiah was supposed to end, not endure! And so Peter pulls Jesus aside to tell him just this. We are told he rebukes Jesus. Imagine the disciple so bold as to rebuke his master. And Jesus reacts to this quite strongly, saying, “Get behind me, Satan.” He adds that Peter is not setting his mind “on the things of God, but on the things of humanity!”

We are told that Jesus then goes further, not just rebuking Peter, but gathering a crowd and telling them, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.” This great teaching he offers to the masses, because Peter is clearly not ready to accept it.

None of the disciples understood that the way of the Christ would be the way of the cross, at least not yet. It would much later before they began to fully understand this mystery. In the Revelation of St. John, Christ is envisioned as “the lamb slain before time.” Take a moment to consider this image. Christ is not the lamb slain in the year 33. He is the lamb slain before time. For the Church, the crucifixion is not simply an event that happened to the Son of God on a day 2000 years ago, it is the final and full revelation of who the Son of God was, is, and always will be.

St. Peter was not ready to let Jesus take up his cross, and he was certainly not ready to take up his own alongside him. And none of us should stand in judgement. How many of us would be ready to take on such a challenge? Right now so many in our country are so very afraid. What we face today is a very real cross, both the virus itself and the many hardships coming in its wake. So what does this notion of denying ourselves look like for us today? What does it mean for our interactions with our neighbors? With our co-workers? With complete strangers in the grocery stores?

It would be pretty normal at this point, especially since the Sunday of the Holy Cross always falls right here in the middle of Lent, for me to discuss some of those crosses we voluntarily take upon ourselves during this season. By this I refer to the ascetic endeavors prescribed by the Church for our benefit – prayer, fasting, alms giving. The founders of our faith often refer to these in association with the notion of voluntarily picking up our crosses. In each of these acts we intentionally turn our backs to the things of this world and take the extra time, energy, and resources to strive for the world to come.

But, of course, we know all too well right now that not all crosses are chosen. In fact, the founders of our faith suggest that it is the unbidden crosses that can be even more beneficial to us. I would like to talk a little bit today about what they mean.

There is a quote from St. Mark the Ascetic that has always meant a lot to me: “Distress reminds the wise of God, but crushes those who forget Him. Let all involuntary suffering teach you to remember God, and you will not lack occasion for repentance.” I find this true in myself. It often takes distress for me to remember God. It is easy for me to forget God when life is good. So what will we do in the face of this crisis? Will we let this involuntary suffering help us to remember God? Will we transform this COVID-19 crisis into an occasion for repentance?

St. Mark wrote in another place: “The mercy of God is hidden in sufferings that are not of our choice, and if we accept such sufferings patiently, they bring us to repentance.” Again we hear sufferings are a call to repentance, this time with an emphasis on the virtue of patience in the face of trial. St. Isaac the Syrian also wrote of the importance of virtue in the face of trial: “In proportion to your humility you are given patience in your woes; and in proportion to your patience the burden of your afflictions is made lighter and you will find consolation; in proportion to your consolation, your love of God increases; and in proportion to your love, your joy in the Holy Spirit is magnified.” I can’t help but think of Yoda in the Phantom Menace when I read this passage, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” St. Isaac is here offering up the opposite path: Humility leads to patience, patience leads to love, love leads to joy. This path to “joy in the Holy Spirit” begins with humility.

In Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, the assigned epistle reading for today, Paul talks about Jesus’ humility. He suggests that Jesus, the son of God, is particularly qualified to act as priest on our behalf, not because he is God, but specifically because he became human. He explains that when priests are chosen it is their weaknesses that allow them to function properly. He wrote, “Every high priest who is chosen from among the people…can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward, since they themselves are beset with weakness. Because of this they are bound to offer sacrifice for their own sins as well as for those of the people.” Priests function properly, in Paul’s estimation, not because they are better than other people, but because they share the same weaknesses of those they represent. Thus, Paul says, in Christ “we have a high priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Christ is showing us the way of the cross, the way that begins in humility.

Jesus was born in humble circumstances and died in the most despicable of ways. He lived his life without a place to lay his head, taking nothing, giving everything. This is the humble messiah that Peter, when he was yet the disciple, when he was yet learning, was not ready to accept. What transformed Peter the unready disciple into St. Peter the Apostle who ultimately embraced his own very real cross?

We discussed Jesus’ rebuke of Peter and you might think that such a stern rebuke from your Master, from that man you thought was the messiah, would be enough, but it was not. In just a few weeks we will hear of Peter at the last supper proclaiming, “Even if I should die with you, I will not deny you.” There is Peter the disciple, still so proud. And then, in spite of his boasting, we will learn that he denies Jesus three times. Peter is humiliated by this. We are told that he weeps when he realized what he has done.

And it is after this ultimate humiliation, in the last chapter of the last Gospel, the Gospel of St. John, we are given a beautiful scene of Peter, the failed disciple, coming face to face with his master. Peter has returned to fishing. He is right back where we first met him at the beginning of the Gospels, but he is not unchanged. Jesus calls to the disciples from the shore. Peter doesn’t even recognize him. He needs to be told by another disciple who it is. But the moment he is told, he leaps into the sea and wades to shore.

There Jesus asks Peter to profess his love. Peter does so, and Jesus asks him to do it again. He does, and then Jesus asks him to do it a third time. We are told that on the third questioning Peter’s heart was grieved. He was embarrassed. But in this moment St. Peter the Apostle is revealed. This St.Peter is not too proud to learn his lesson. He professes his love a third time. Jesus blesses this humble response with a prophesy: “Truly, truly I say unto you, when you were young, thou dressed yourself, and walked wherever you wanted: but when you are old, you will stretch forth your hands, and another shall dress you, and carry you where you won’t want to go.” Jesus is prophesying how Peter will ultimately die in the same way as his master. In his humility, Peter has shown that he is finally ready to walk the way of the cross. And what prepared him for this? Failure. Grief. Suffering. It is these difficult experiences that gave Peter his broken and contrite heart, a heart prepared for the Holy Spirit to enter on Pentecost.

So our country, at this moment, is facing a cross. For some of us, tragically, this will indeed mean sickness and death. Let us pray that through our vigilance this number remains small. For the rest of us this will hours of worry, fear, isolation, financial hardship, anxiety, loneliness. So many crosses needing to be borne. What we do with them is our choice. We can meet these crosses with pride, thinking we know more than the authorities and the specialists; we can meet these crosses with selfishness and impatience, thinking our wants and needs are more important than those of our neighbors; we can meet them with callousness, thinking that the inconveniences of the many outweigh the sickness and death of the few. Or, we can pick up those crosses. We can make these extra hours in isolation a time for prayer and meditation. We can fast by hoarding less for ourselves and leaving a little more food on the grocery store shelves for those who come after. We can see the suffering and needs of our neighbors and take up those opportunities to give of ourselves and to show love. Isaiah tells us that this is always the fast that is pleasing to God – to feed the hungry, to shelter the poor, to clothe the naked – and this Lenten season is no different.

2020 can be remembered as the year that COVID-19 ruined Lent. Or, with effort, this can become the Lent that transformed our lives, our communities, and perhaps even our nation. The choice is set before us. The same choice that was set before those men and women so many years ago: the choice to deny ourselves, to take up our crosses, and to follow our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to who be all glory, honor, and worship forever. Amen.