A Rock or a Stumbling Block

                The trip from Saxton, PA to Myrtle Beach, SC, takes an average of 10 hours and, based upon my preferred route is close to 580 miles.  Along that route, dozens of roadside memorials mark the spot where someone lost their life in an auto accident.  The sites are often comprised of personal belongings of the deceased. If the tragedy was recent enough, fresh-cut flowers might be there.  For not-so-recent events, there are typically fake flowers.  Among the memorial’s artifacts, there’s always a cross.

We all know the hymn, “In the Cross of Christ, I glory.” In addition to the title, the first line contains the words “tow’ring o’er the wrecks of time.” The crosses along the highways represent literal wrecks of time.  And one can be sure over the years there have been many other crosses long since removed.

I’m also reminded of the cross that stood above the World Trade Center’s rubble on September 11, 2001. The cross remains a marker of that dreadful day.  To this day, it stands in the 9/11 museum.

Scott Hoezee, whose commentary on lectionary readings often inspires themes of my messages to this congregation, wrote this about the cross at the twin towers’ site: “Even in Lower Manhattan prior to September 11, 2001, no one would have thought to place a cross anywhere in the plaza of the World Trade Center. Not only would such a religious symbol have been shunned as a violation of church and state, seeing the symbol of the cross smack in the midst of this country’s greatest symbol of economic power would have made no sense to most people. What would a cross have had to do with all that bond trading and all the other high-octane business that people once conducted in the Twin Towers? Indeed, the editor of Time magazine—in the special edition of the magazine that came out after the terrorist attacks destroyed the World Trade Center—wrote, “If you want to humble a nation, you attack its cathedrals.” The Twin Towers were cathedrals of commerce. But they needed no cross when they were standing upright. The Twin Towers were about power, about wealth, about life!”

“If you want to humble a nation, tear down its cathedrals.”  I find that quote to be extremely thought-provoking. It seems to me that what is true of nations is also true of individuals.   Let’s look at the example of Peter.  He had just earned Jesus’ praise for confessing Christ as the Son of the living God.  Jesus instructed his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.  Why would he do that?  Wasn’t that his very purpose for coming to this planet.  Matthew gives us the answer in what he reports next.

Notice what happens after Jesus’ instruction to keep his identity hidden.  In the very next verse, we’re told, “from that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things…and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”

Before the disciples can share the identity of Jesus, they need to fully understand that identity’s significance.  Saviors save.  The people of Israel had been waiting for a deliverer for centuries. If Jesus was the Son of the living God, indeed life was looking up for Israel.  After his confession, Peter must have felt the excitement for a coming reality that would turn the world upside down.

But then Jesus started talking nonsense about suffering and death.  He spoke of crosses, not just his own.  He said anyone who wanted to follow him would have to carry their own cross.

But Peter knew better.  “These things will never happen to you, Lord,” he said.  How shocked the disciple must have been at Jesus’ response. How humbled he must have been when Jesus crushed the cathedral of his own making.

“Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Two things are noteworthy here.  First, the man that Jesus had just proclaimed a rock because of his confession of faith was quickly identified as a stumbling block to Christ.  Our relationship with Christ is filled with tension between faith and doubt. Consequently, we waver between being a rock on which his church can grow and thrive, and a stumbling block to his will and cause in this world.

Second, Jesus did not say, “Get behind me Peter.”  He said, “get behind me Satan!”  There’s nothing in the text to indicate any type of demonic activity.  We don’t need Satan’s influence to do his bidding.  Our own actions and desires can do it for him.  Anytime we are outside of God’s will, we are compliant with Satan’s will.

This brings us to the eternity-shaping question; How do we view the cross today.  We live in an age when Christians can get fired up about taking down crosses in the public arena.  The removal of Christian symbols tends to enrage us.

But how do we feel about our personal crosses?  The ones Jesus told us we were to take up if we were to follow him.  We can’t be followers of Jesus by merely saying I’ll take all the freebies, but I will pass on anything that has a price. Jesus said, “if anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross and follow me.”

There will be things this life has to offer that we may have to decline because they are in direct conflict to Jesus’ view of the world.  Self-denial is difficult but necessary.  But here’s the good news.  At the beginning of this message, the crosses we spoke of stood among reminders; all roads in this life lead to death.   But Bowring’s hymn reminds us the cross towers over the wrecks of time.  The first verse’s final words are; “all the light of sacred story, gather round its head sublime. “

The cross rises above the despair of lives lost in tragic accidents.  It rises out of the ashes of terrorism and hatred.  And it gives hope and promise for a world that will no longer contain tragedy, terror, and hate.  It enables us to live through pandemics and political discord which threaten to wreck a nation.  But Jesus makes it clear our own crosses are integral parts of fulfilling that hope.

Like it or not, consciously or unconsciously, the crosses you and I either pick up or decline reveal our faith’s depth and whether our lives are rocks displaying a foundation of faith or stumbling blocks to the message and mission of Christ.