In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I planned to speak to you this morning, beloved, not especially directly, I suppose, about the holy cross, but about resistance to the holy cross. You know, the cross is something we never stop carrying. It’s astounding how people believe it’s supposed to get easier. I don’t know why they got this idea that it’s supposed to get easier. We walk in the steps of Jesus, because the cross will come to us differently as we pass through various stages of our lives.

We learn the mystery of the cross already in childhood, but in a manner appropriate to children. But then we experience a different dimension of it in adolescence, and it costs us things in adolescence it did not cost us in childhood. And then again in adulthood, when we marry, start to grow a family, we find aspects of the cross in the marriage. I have no idea where anybody got the notion that marriage was supposed to be easy. When we do the marriage rite, we celebrate the martyrs. Please. That’s a dimension of marriage as martyrdom! I recall the marriage rite. Everybody remember the marriage rite? The dance of Isaiah and the praise of the martyrs—why do we have that? The appearance of the cross again in old age.

You see, the cross is the key to unlocking God’s will for us in every stage of our lives. But at every stage we may find ourselves resistant to the word of the cross, because it still is an instrument of torture and death. Just when we had imagined we had grasped what it means to be a Christian, we discover, perhaps with shock, that we’ve hardly begun. It is important to realize that the cross grows on you. It’s an English expression. I don’t think that makes the same thing in Polish. The cross grows on you.

Our understanding of the cross is not static. The cross is the key to the understanding of ourselves, but it unlocks aspects of our souls gradually, door by door. It is important to return to this theme repeatedly throughout our lives, and the Church does this seasonally, and today is one of the seasons of the holy cross. We don’t venerate the cross every Sunday the way we do this morning, for example.

Let’s talk about resistance to the cross. First, the spirit of the world. After the first half of the gospel of Mark climaxes with Simon Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, the dominating theme of the gospel’s second half, which we began this morning, the mystery of the cross, commences immediately with three prophesies of the Lord’s passion. Today’s message of the cross is the first prophesy of the passion. Each of our Lord’s three predictions of his passion is met by some completely inappropriate response on the part of his disciples. These responses are recorded in the sections of Mark chosen by the Church as the gospel readings for the next three Sundays.

Today’s reading follows immediately on the story of Simon Peter’s rejection of the cross. He answers the Lord by declaring that the whole idea of the cross is, as they say now but never said when I was a child, “unacceptable.” When I was a child, no one ever told me my behavior was unacceptable; they had much more robust ways of expressing the sentiment. When Jesus talks about the cross in this morning’s gospel, Simon Peter takes him aside and rebukes him.

I think Peter had a hearing problem. When Jesus declared that we are to be the salt of the earth, Peter thought he said sugar, and that’s what I mean by the spirit of the world. You see, sugar is pure acquiescence; salt bites back. Salt is a challenge. It’s not acquiescence; it’s a challenge. Oh, so often the Gospel becomes confused with what is known as the American Dream. This phenomenon is popularly known as prosperity theology. If there’s one thing we can for sure about American culture, it is overly sugared. Just the sheer statistics on the consumption of sugar—it’s just astounding. Two years ago, when I was finally diagnosed for some of the problems I was having, the doctor says, “You have too much sugar.”

But, see, it’s not just physical sugar. Prosperity theology views revelation as a contract between God and human beings with mutual duties, so that if we human beings keep the rules, God blesses us with the goodies. That’s just so, so common. If we have faith in God, according to this theory, God will provide security, prosperity, well-being. So the cross is a downer. I’m directly quoting Robert Schuller, by the way. “The cross is a downer.” You know, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral? “The cross is a downer.”

The year I started in high school, graduated eighth grade and started in high school—it’s so long ago I don’t even want to note the date for you; hardly any of you were born then—a book was published by a well-known Presbyterian pastor by the name of Norman Vincent Peale. The book was called The Power of Positive Thinking, one of the most important books in the history of modern American religion: The Power of Positive Thinking. Look at any mega-church in the United States. Any mega-church in the United States, the pastor has read that book, The Power of Positive Thinking. I hope this will not be understood as a political statement, but it’s not without interest that the president of the United States was raised in his parish. The power of positive thinking: it all has to do with an optimism about your faith—and what’s the place for the cross in that?

Another TV preacher of the time, Fulton J. Sheen, Bishop Sheen at the time, he once commented on Norman Vincent Peale. He said he finds Paul appealing and Peale appalling. [Laughter] See, there’s a danger of getting rid of the cross, a danger. It’s just amazing to me how Christians think. Imagine somehow or other it’s supposed to get easier instead of getting harder. It’s astounding.

Now, I know that you folks are not into that. I know that. I’m aware of that. I know that you’re not all… I’m not even going to ask for a show of hands for those who have followed the philosophy of Norman Vincent Peale. But blaming God when things don’t go well is just another form of that. It’s a very common failing among most Christians, in fact. The presumption that we’ve got certain rights and we’ve got certain expectations that, really, God must meet—where do we come up with that? You don’t find that anywhere in the Bible that justifies an expectation that God owes us certain things. He will give us all things, all things necessary, but he doesn’t owe us a thing.

Which brings us to the second resistance to the cross: self-pity. The example I want to take for this one is the character of Baruch in the Bible. Everybody remember who Baruch is? You’ll think about him on National Secretaries Day. [Laughter] Baruch’s name means “blessed.” His was a pretty rough life, because he served one of the most turbulent men in an extraordinarily turbulent period in Israel’s history. Baruch was the personal secretary for the Prophet Jeremiah. Most secretaries, they hear the boss say, “Take a letter”; Jeremiah told Baruch, “Ketuv nabuha; take a prophecy.” I made that up. [Laughter] The Bible doesn’t exactly say that, but it is good Hebrew.

Those were troubled times, and Baruch was placed right in the thick of it. Political disaster fell in the year 609, when King Josiah was killed at the Battle of Megiddo. Now, we’re all Bible-readers here, so I’m presuming everybody knows the story, but let’s recall it. The new king, Jehoahaz, reigned less than 100 days, and from that point on the kings in Jerusalem would reign only at the pleasure of either Egypt or Babylon. In 609 the nation’s religious and political life began rapidly to unravel, beginning with the destruction of Jerusalem in 587. The crisis inaugurated by the death of Josiah addressed with such pathos by the Prophet Habakkuk, served the purpose of bringing Jeremiah out of retirement. He had fallen silent 13 years earlier, in 622, but now at the divine command, Jeremiah went to the Temple to preach the sermon that began the second phase of his long prophetic ministry. I think I will speak about Jeremiah more at length before Lent is over.

When Jeremiah came out of retirement, he was much older and he needed a secretary, and he hired Baruch. What made Baruch’s task particularly difficult was that many people, in particular Judah’s kings, were not especially fond of what Jeremiah had to say. Jeremiah was most emphatically a prophet of the cross. People thought his tone a bit too stark and stern, in contrast to the gentler, more nuanced approach favored by themselves. He was definitely a salt of the earth man when people wanted sugar. So when Jeremiah delivered his oracles and Baruch dutifully wrote them down, there was usually not much applause. We find a typical reaction in Jeremiah 36, where one of those oracles conveyed some faint hint of divine displeasure, at least “great is the anger and the fury of the Lord pronouncing against his people” could be taken in that sense.

The king who preferred a broader, more liberal, more flexible view of things, took exception to the point. Although it was a fairly lengthy message which had cost poor Baruch hours of careful transcription, how did the king receive it? It’s all there in Jeremiah 36. As the scroll was read before the king, the Bible tells us, “he cut it with a scribe’s knife and cast it into the fire which was on the hearth until all the scroll was consumed by the fire that was on the hearth.”

Alas, prior to the reading of the king’s destruction of the text, Baruch had failed to do a back-up on the file. In fact, he had not even Xeroxed the hard copy. The whole episode was somewhat discouraging. I remember how discouraged I was maybe 15 years ago when my computer crashed. I didn’t know about backing up in those days. I lost something like five books as well as a translation of the psalms. They probably have not been published anyway, so I’m not going to worry about that. So Jeremiah responds by instructing Baruch to take a new scroll and write the whole thing down again. So the text we have in Jeremiah 36 is a rewrite!

In the year 605, four years after the death of Josiah, Jeremiah’s secretary took to feeling sorry for himself. We know this to be the case because the prophet devoted an entire chapter to this. It’s the shortest chapter in the book, chapter 45. I’m going to read you the entire chapter right now. It’s short enough to read in a sermon.

The word that Jeremiah the Prophet spoke to Baruch, the son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book from the mouth of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, saying: Thus says the Lord God of Israel to you, O Baruch. You said: Woe is me now! [Oy-na li! Oy-na li!] Woe now to me! For the Lord has added grief to my sorrow. I have fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest. Thus you shall say to him: Thus says the Lord.

You see, normally when someone is sorrowful, they’re overcome, your disposition is to pat them on the back, hug them, tell them it’s going to be okay. Not Baruch. Jeremiah would tell him, “Thus says the Lord.”

Behold, what I have built, I am about to destroy. What I have planted, I am about to pluck up—that is, the whole land. Do you seek great things for yourself?

Al-tebakke. Don’t go there. Close that door and lock it. Don’t go there.

For behold, I bring adversity on all flesh, kol-basar.

Everybody’s going to suffer!

But I will give you your life as a prize in all places where you go.

In other words, I’ll keep you alive when you go into exile; that’s all he promises.

See, Jeremiah reminds his secretary that he is not alone in his suffering. This is 605; by 587, the whole place would be destroyed. Who suffers the most from that? God. “What I planted, I am plucking up. What I built, I am tearing down.” Look at that cross up here. Look at your big icon of the cross. Who suffers most there? God! God sees his Son dying in agony. God sees this. Match your sorrow, match your misfortune to that of God, who sees his Son hanging on that cross. God is suffering more than anyone. God is tearing down what he built; God is plucking up what he planted. So who is Baruch to be complaining and to be feeling sorry for himself?

Now if God could say that to Baruch, six centuries before the birth of Christ, what might he say to us now, 20 centuries after the crucifixion of Christ? Beloved, let us cast a single glance at the icon of Jesus hanging on the cross and then inquire if we have the nerve to feel sorry for ourselves.

Point three, the expectation of success. I don’t mean worldly success; that was in point one. I have something else in mind. It is something different from prosperity theology; it’s another kind of success. I’m thinking, rather, of success in a religious sense, which I guess kind of most of us want. The disposition to regard spiritual growth as indicated by sentiments of spiritual accomplishment, as though growth in the life of Christ were measured by how we feel about ourselves, as though we have some sort of in-built barometer which tells us how close we are to God. That is a sheer delusion! The saints don’t say that. The saints give us no hope for that at all.

Simply to illustrate what I have in mind, I’m going to give you a quotation from a book I’m not sure I’ve ever quoted very much around here, from chapter seven of the Rule of St. Benedict, Benedict’s rules for monks. The Rule of St. Benedict is the second-most copied manuscript in history after the Bible. Thousands and thousands and thousands of manuscripts of the Rule of St. Benedict, because it was the monastic rule that governed Europe from Ireland all the way to the Adriatic Sea; in fact, there were Benedictine monasteries on Mt. Athos until 1054.

In this text I’m going to read you, Benedict is describing the monk who has climbed all twelve steps of humility. How long does it take to do that? I’m not sure. I think I have three toes on the first step—and I’m not sure about that; I might be patting myself on the back there. What does the saint look like? Here’s his description of the twelfth step of humility.

The twelfth step of humility is that a monk manifest humility in his bearing no less than in his heart, so that it is evident at the work of God in the oratory, in the monastery, in the garden, on a journey, or in the field, or anywhere else. Whether he sits or walks or stands, his head must be bowed and his eyes cast down, judging himself always guilty on account of his sins.

Now this is perfection. This is when you’ve gone all the way up. You think of yourself as a sinner.

...judging himself always guilty on account of his sins. He should consider that he is already at the fearful judgment.

This is the man who’s already gone all the way; he’s reached perfection. And what is he thinking about? Standing before the judgment seat of God.

He should constantly say in his heart with the publican in the Gospel, with downcast eyes, “Lord, I am a sinner, not worthy to look up into heaven.”

Now this is perfection, as the Church understands it:

“I am a sinner, not worthy to look up to heaven.” And with the Prophet, “I am bowed down and humbled in every way.”

And that’s the cross. That’s the cross. That’s salvation.

As we use the cross—we’re supposed to—as the key to the unlocking of our lives, it’s not going to get easier. In some ways it’s going to get much harder. Some of the most severe temptations in life most of us don’t even experience them because we’re not holy enough. But the cross is still the key. It’s important, beloved, that we do not resist it.