Take Up Your Cross and Follow After Me
Accordingly, taskmasters were set over the children of Israel to
oppress them with forced labor. Thus, they had to build for Pharaoh the supply
cities of Pithom and Raamses. Yet the more they were oppressed, the more they
multiplied and spread. The Egyptians, then, dreaded the children of Israel and
reduced them to cruel slavery, making life bitter for them with hard work in
mortar and brick and all kinds of field work—the whole cruel fate of slaves.
Exodus 1:11-14
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever
does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever
finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find
it. Matthew 10:37-39
Piety
“[I]n spite of the profound readjustments that are being made in our
phenomenal vision of the world, the Cross still stands; it rears itself
up ever more erect at the common meeting place of all values and all problems,
deep in the heart of mankind. It marks and must continue more than ever to mark
the division between what rises and what falls back. But this is on one
condition, and one only: that it expand itself to the dimensions of [today],
and cease to present itself to us as primarily (or even exclusively) the sign
of a victory over sin—and so finally attain its fullness, which is to become
the dynamic and complete symbol of a universe in a state of personalizing
evolution.”[i]
Study
Pharaoh repudiates the special relationship that existed between Joseph
and his predecessor. His executive order
(for hard labor) is in direct opposition to God’s will. Recall that the Lord proclaimed that the
Hebrews would multiple and prosper until they were as numerous as the stars in
the heavens. Not if this Pharoah has anything to say about it!
Such a legacy of the children of God in opposition to the temporal
ruler continued in Jesus’s day. Jesus,
in his first-ever reference to the cross, invokes a dreaded symbol of Roman-imposed
torture and death. This “cross” is not a little bejeweled silver or gold
ornament worn around your neck. This cross
is the unjust instrument of capital punishment used by the Roman to inflict
fear and obedience on the Jews.
If Pharaoh sent out the Jews to build brick structures in the hot
desert sun, Caesar went even further to oppress them. To demand obedience, the
threat of death hung in the air.
Action
Are you ready for the actual “The Conditions of Discipleship?” Jesus,
too, demands obedience at the foot of the cross.
Just like in last week’s Genesis passages, as the first reading turns
to Exodus, the theme of exile and separation continue to resonate. Take up your electric chair. Take up your firing squad. Take up your gas chamber. Take up your lethal injection. Take up your deportation and imprisonment.
Jesus does not call us to be obedient to the rules of Pharaoh or Caesar
or even the Constitution. Jesus calls
out anyone who puts anyone or anything ahead of the love of God.
In view of the
present confusion, it should be made plain that ‘to bear the weight of a world
in evolution’ does not minimize the role of sacrifice, but adds to the pain
of expiation, the more constant and demanding pain of sharing, with full
consciousness of man’s destiny, in the universal labor which is
indispensable to its accomplishment. Seen in this light, there is an even
greater force in Christ’s summons: ‘If any man would come after me, let him
deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ (Luke 9:23).”[ii]
If we find our lives in riches and power, we will lose riches and
power. If we lose our lives in God, we will find it.
“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides,
and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that
day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered
fire.” (“The Evolution of Chastity,” in Toward the Future, 1936, XI, 86-87)
[ii]
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2002-11-18). Christianity and Evolution (Harvest
Book, Hb 276) (Kindle Locations 2914-2919, 2622-2625). Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
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