If you were looking through the Scriptures to find a couple of passages that make Christianity sound like a dangerous business, you
couldn’t do much better than to settle on the readings this weekend. The first reading is from the personal writings of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. With a voice as cutting as any in scripture he calls the people to stop hiding from the reality of their comfortable lives, face up to their failings, their sin, and do something about it, become again the people of God.

And for that Jeremiah was an outcast. He was ridiculed, even persecuted, by those whom he confronted with the truth. And the Gospel, too, has much of that same demanding quality to it. Here Christ begins to introduce to his apostles the idea of his death. But Peter objected. It was not going to be that way. Christ reacts very sharply to Peter. But it was necessary. Peter,
perhaps more than any of the others, had to understand what was happening, had to see the point of it, the value.

And then Christ explains his response, but in a puzzling, enigmatic sort of way, almost with a kind of riddle. Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, whoever loses his life for me will save it. If anyone wants to follow me, he can do so only by carrying the cross I carry. So again, there seems to be almost that sense of a harshness to the practice of God’s values. That sense that Christianity, if you do it right, has to hurt.

Nothing could be further from the truth. God calls us not to suffering and pain but to happiness, a joy, a feeling of rightness to our lives. And it is an absolute promise, there is no “maybe” attached to it. It is a sure and certain thing. But if the promise is absolute, it is by no means unconditional. Nowhere does God promise us, “You will be happy and satisfied, no matter what you do, no matter how you live.” The promise is given to those who accept no standard other than Christ’s, who do not compromise with the truth, even if that means a cross of one kind or another.

And that is the point. Purposefulness. The fact is that a very great deal of the burdens that mark our lives have nothing at all to do with
the Cross. They are of human origin. We make them ourselves, by centring our lives on something less than the truth, something less
than real value. A burden, a hardship in our lives is a cross, if it has a purpose, if it leads somewhere, if it leads to a resurrection. That after all is what most clearly marks the cross of Christ.