Text: Mark 8:31-38
When I was growing up on our family farm, I was very fascinated with ants. Ants, of course, are those tiny creatures who make little dirt hills and carry things from above ground to below ground. They would move in a row, each ant carrying something back to their underground home which was much larger than they were. I later learned in school that an ant can carry up to 50 times, and some ants up to 100 times their body weight. For a tiny creature that weighs about as much as a grain of rice, it can carry a paper clip. Now, that might not seem like much, but it would be the same as a human being carrying an elephant. So, ants can bear quite a burden!
“If anyone wants to become my followers, let them deny themselves, pick up their cross, and follow me.” Jesus’ words are very clear this morning. They are a call to discipleship, a call to follow Jesus. We are to bear our own crosses – our burdens, our sufferings, our guilt, our sins – and if we can do that well, we are considered good disciples. However, I wonder if we should not take Jesus’ words here so literally. Perhaps he is not asking us to bear our crosses, but rather Jesus is telling us that such a standard is impossible for us as human beings. Jesus is telling us it is impossible to fully deny ourselves, bear our crosses, and follow him. Jesus knows that only one person can bear the weight of such burdens, and that is Jesus himself.
Yet, I think many of us do not fully believe this. We are like Peter at the beginning of the story who rebukes Jesus for such a notion that he must bear our crosses. Instead, we try to be like ants. We’re not trying to carry actual elephants, but we certainly try to bear things beyond our physical, emotional, and spiritual abilities. We see this in our society today across the world – physical exhaustion, mental distress and illness, and unseen wounds to our conscience from cruelty and injustice. Yet these things will always exist – crosses will always exist for people to carry. So perhaps the real problem is not the existence of these things. The problem is our belief that we must bear such things in isolation, alone. In fact, in the United States, the Surgeon General, the head of the health ministry, has presented research and declared loneliness as an epidemic in the country. And God, since the beginning of time, has known that loneliness is not a good thing. “Then God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone.” Just as God gave Adam a helper in Eve, God gives us the gift of Jesus Christ as the one who can bear all suffering, all crosses, and all sin and death. We do not have to bear our crosses on our own, and we do not have to suffer and even lose our lives needlessly in isolation and loneliness. Faith is knowing that it is impossible to bear our burdens alone. Faith is knowing Jesus comes alongside us to not only bear our burdens for us, but to also bear them with us. We are never alone.
Yet, even that good news can be hard for us to believe, and it can be hard to have faith when we don’t always see Jesus among us. This is why Jesus gives us gifts, visible signs that he is with us. One of those gifts is the sacrament of baptism. Another is the sacrament of Holy Communion, which we will celebrate together this morning. Jesus also gives us another gift, the gift of Christian community – the church. The church is the community of people from all walks of life who bear one another’s burdens with each other, loving and supporting each other, for no other reason than Jesus Christ connects us. Today we get to experience this gift in a special way – our sisters and brothers from the Velky Kostol have shared their gifts with us and are worshipping alongside us. Together, we are a powerful sign of what God can do. It is a powerful sign that we are never alone and that in faith, we do not have to live this life bearing our suffering and burdens alone.
For these gifts, and for the gift of the One who bears our burdens and is worthy of our faith, Jesus Christ, we can say thanks be to God. Amen.