Gladly the Cross

        Today the Presbytery of Florida ordains Bryce Ronald Gilmer to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments. This is a happy day which has been a long time coming, and, left to our own devices, Ron and I might have chosen some other Gospel reading to grace the day. Mark, Chapter 8, is what scholars call the "watershed chapter" of Mark. It’s the tipping point in Mark’s narrative, the point where Jesus himself spills the beans about the nature of his ministry, and the disciples are told in no uncertain way what it will cost to follow him.

        Up to this point in Mark’s narrative, the disciples are depicted as duller than dishwater, with hardly a clue as to who Jesus is. He performs miracles. He casts out demons. He teaches with stunning originality and authority, but the disciples are so slow on the uptake, you have to wonder why Jesus called them in the first place. Did he just take the first people he came across, or did he go out of his way to recruit twelve forty-watt bulbs?

        This apostolic thick-headedness is, in part, a literary device. When the "messianic secret" is revealed, Mark wants to make sure that it will be dramatic and unmistakably linked to the cross. Thus, until we reach chapter 8, Jesus charges beneficiaries of his healing miracles and even the demons he casts out of folks to keep quiet about his being the Messiah.

        On the way to Caesarea Philippi, however, the cat is let out of the bag, and pretty much all hell breaks loose, as it will break loose again when Jesus arrives in Jerusalem.

        "Who do y’all say that I am," Jesus asks. Peter rightly answers for the group, "You are the Christ." Jesus then tells them to keep this under their hats, too, and proceeds to tell them that Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the chief priests and scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again.

        Peter tries to take Jesus aside and reason with him. Jesus will have none of it. "Get behind me, Satan," he says to this earnest if not brilliant man who loves him and does not want to see him hurt. "This is your agenda, not God’s."

        Then Jesus calls the crowds together and tells them, "If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will loose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of gospel, will save it."

        Even today, at a distance of more than 2,000 years, these words have power to strip away all our pretenses, all our excuses, and all our rationalizations. If we want to follow Jesus, we can’t hedge our bets. With him, it’s all or nothing. Either he’s the Messiah, cross and all, or he’s just another flimflam artist. The only sure thing you can know about following Jesus is that doing so will cost you your life. How it will cost your life – what form your cross might take – is not immediately discernable, but whatever form it takes, it will hurt.

        This cruciform gospel is a far cry from the prosperity gospel being hawked on the airwaves these days and proclaimed in at least some of the mega churches. You’re not likely to hear it from preachers who dress so carefully in golf shirts and kaki trousers to assure the public that nothing scary will happen to them if they come to church. Nor are you likely to hear it from preachers who are so fixated on shoring up the institution that they assiduously avoid mentioning the cost of discipleship.

        But you will hear this gospel from disciples, lay and clergy, who are willing to struggle with these words as they lay down their lives for Jesus and the kingdom he is ushering in. You will see it in the way they live their lives – in the way they invest their time, for instance, and their money. You will see it in the love they show for neighbors and in the way they refuse to compartmentalize their lives. You will see it in their unabashed allegiance to this Christ who takes them with him into hell, and back again.

        Ordination to the ministry of the Word and Sacraments doesn’t make a person holy. Baptism does that. What ordination does is to make a person visible. In the Reformed tradition, this visibility is supposed to apply equally to ministers (also called teaching elders) and to elders (also called ruling elders). In theory, we’re equal. In practice, it’s a good deal easier for ruling elders to step out of the spotlight, leaving teaching elders to stand naked as can be, before God and everybody else.

        The price of getting to stand in a pulpit like this and behind a table like that is public visibility. Ministers get to live out their lives in a fishbowl, and if a person is not willing to do that, he or she should seek an alternative from of Christian service. All Christians, by virtue of baptism, are called to bear their cross. Preachers get to bear theirs in plain sight.

        This does not always make for a pretty picture. Preachers, like everyone else, are sinners who fall short of the glory of God. Sometimes that falling comes in the form of a pratfall that does everyone good: the preacher forgets his sermon and has to send the Christian Educator out to find it. Or he leaves out the Lord’s Prayer and a voice from the balcony has to get the liturgy back on track.

        Sometimes that falling is a good deal more precipitous: the preacher’s marriage falls apart, or he loses his courage to speak the truth in love, or she mistakes institutional success for faithfulness to the gospel.

        More often than not, after falling down, the preacher picks himself up, the congregation dusts him off, and they go on together, having learned some important lessons about humility. In elder training, I tell those who have been elected to office that they can always look up the specifics in the Book of Order. What they have to know by heart, what they can’t forget no matter what – is this: Jesus Christ alone is head of the Church. Nobody else. Not the deacons. Not the session. Certainly not the pastor.

        An old term for a Minister of the Word and Sacraments in the Anglican and other Protestant traditions is "parson." It’s derived from the Latin "persona," which means "person." A parson is a kind of representative person – not necessarily better at this business of following Jesus, but called to follow in a role that is distinctive, visible, and, one hopes, helpful for those who are looking on.

        A few years ago, while serving as a mentor for new pastors, I listened to a young pastor pour out her hurts and frustrations. "I’m always in the spotlight," she complained. "Everybody in town, including the Methodists and the Baptists, knows all about my business."

        Her complaint reminded me of the first 24 hours Andra and I spent in the manse of our first parish. We arrived in Altavista, Virginia, without a bed. We had an old mattress we put on the floor, but we didn’t have a proper bed.

        After spending one night on that wreck of a mattress, we resolved to buy a bed on credit. We went to the only furniture store in town the next morning. We spent no more than 10 minutes in the store. We walked around the corner to the little arts and crafts shop on Main Street run by a member of the Episcopal Church, a lady we had never met. As we came through the door she said, "Well, Hello Rev. and Mrs. Copeland! Have you two bought a bed yet?"

        After commiserating with that young minister about her lack of privacy, I asked her if she had presided at a baptism in her new parish. Her eyes welled up with tears. "Yes . . . Yes, I have." We sat for a long time in silence. I didn’t say a word. "Yes," she said. "You make a good point."

        A parson might not get invited to the Smith family’s lavish dinners on Saturday night, but she will be the one who gets the phone call from the sheriff who says, "I’ve got bad news to bring to the Smith family, and I know they’ll want you to be there when I tell them."

        A parson might get called on every time to say grace at the Rotary Club meeting, but he gets to stand at the Table and say with uplifted arms, "The gifts of God for the people of God."

        A parson might not be the life of the party, but the parson is the one who gets to stand by the graveside and spit in Satan’s eye: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, were is thy sting?"

        Believe me, it’s worth it.

        I was shocked the first time I heard William Willimon, now a Bishop in the United Methodist Church, say that he had advised a college student not to enter the ministry. "Why do you want to enter the ministry?" he asked. "Because I want to help people" the student replied.

        "Then become a social worker or a teacher or a nurse," Will Willimon replied. "That’s not a good enough reason to become a Christian pastor."

        After 27 years of ordained ministry, I can testify that Will Willimon was right. The Ministry of the Word and Sacraments can be a splendid avenue for helping people, but it is first and foremost a way of bearing the cross. For those who are called and gifted for it, the ministry is a wondrous and grace-filled yoke to bear, but it is nonetheless a yoke. What makes it bearable is the fact that Christ himself bears it with us.

        I have a friend in this congregation, a pious but occasionally irreverent friend, who enjoys playing with the words of hymns. At least one hymn I cannot sing at all if I make the mistake of looking at this friend when I’m singing it. He probably knows the old joke about "Gladly, the cross-eyed bear." It’s one of the most famous miss-hearings of a hymn text. It calls to mind a cuddly stuffed animal who is a threat to no one.

        The joke comes from a line in a Fanny Crosby hymn entitled "Keep Thou My Way, O Lord." Fanny Crosby was born in 1820 and died in 1915. She was blinded by an incompetent physician when she was six weeks old, but grew up to become the most prolific and popular hymn writer of her generation. She wrote more than eight thousand hymns -- even more than Charles Wesley.

        It’s a shame, really, that this particular hymn should become a joke because it’s a very good hymn. It goes like this:

Keep Thou my way, O Lord, Be Thou ever nigh;
Strong is Thy mighty arm, Weak and frail am I;
Thou, my unchanging Friend, on Thee my hopes depend;
Till life's brief day shall end, Be Thou ever nigh.

Keep Thou my heart, O Lord, Ever close to Thee;
Safe in Thine arms of love, Shall my refuge be;
Then, o'er a tranquil tide, My bark shall safely glide;
I shall be satisfied, Ever close to Thee.

Keep Thou my all, O Lord, Hide my life in Thine;
O let Thy sacred light O'er my pathway shine;
Kept by Thy tender care, Gladly the cross I'll bear
Hear Thou and grant my pray'r, Hide my life in Thine.

        We’re all called to bear the cross. Some of us are called to bear it in particular ways. Whatever way you are called to bear your cross, may you bear it gladly, your life safely hidden in the Triune God.

        Gladly the cross I’ll bear . . . Hide my life in Thine.