Crossroads

This week we heard that to come after Jesus, we must take up our cross and follow him, and that by losing our life for Jesus, we save it.  What does it mean to take up our cross and then to be saved?
 
When someone tells me, “That’s the cross you must bear,” I think of sacrifice.   By taking up my own cross, I carry the cross on which I will “hang” to experience pain and suffering of some sort, be it mental or physical, for the benefit of another.  It’s a sacrificial cross.  

For all of us that sacrifice could be caring for a parent or a spouse with Alzheimer’s disease or some other crippling affliction.   In doing so, in a real sense, we lose our life through self-denial and putting someone else’s needs first.  Self interest no longer outweighs virtue associated with compassion, for example.

Because we set our interests aside in favor of the other, we do what God intended: for us to show love and care for our “neighbor” whether immediate family or a stranger.   It’s the way we show love for God and save ourselves. 

Throughout our lives we have many opportunities for salvation by finding and then picking up our crosses instead of stepping over them.   Our times to choose occur at our many crossroads when we decide which road to take. 

Lent provides an important crossroad.  It’s the time when we remind ourselves that salvation is not just about going to heaven.  Salvation is about deciding not to be blind, but to see [someone in pain who needs help]; deciding not to be dead, but to live [a life filled with joy and love]; deciding not to be sick but to be well [by forgiving and letting go of hurt and heart-ache]; and deciding not to fear, but to trust [as Jesus did in his Father while on the cross].  

All these Lenten-saving decisions pertain to following Jesus down the road he picked.  It’s not a yellow-bricked road leading to Oz and the Wizard.   It’s a difficult road lined with many sacrificial crosses on which we may find ourselves hanging out of love for others, as did Jesus.

Deacon David Pierce