Years ago, in an earlier life, I would take youth groups up into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on trips. Now, for the uninitiated, the Boundary Waters is a truly wilderness experience. As a group, every day we’d move from place to place. We’d travel from point A to point B, paddling our canoes filled with Duluth packs across lakes…and then carrying it all across portages; these narrow trails, which are sometimes hilly…or rocky…or slippery…or muddy.
These portages can vary… they can be anywhere from 15 feet to a couple of miles… or more.
Duluth packs are these round backpacks designed to lay nicely in the bottom of the canoes. Each pack can carry 2 or even 3 people’s stuff in them. They are big, and heavy, and awkward.
The night before we’d begin paddling, I’d have everyone pack their Duluth packs…get them all ready to go. Then, early in the morning of our departure, I would tell the whole group…everyone…” ok…dump your packs out on the floor. Every item.” What? Why? “Because we’re going to go through them together.” And we’d sort through their stuff.
“You don’t need this. You don’t need two of these. You definitely don’t need this. Nope, you don’t need a phone charger.”
Sometimes our high schoolers would push back. They really thought they needed that extra fleece…or that third pair of shoes. Or they really thought that extra hardcover book was a good idea. But then I’d remind them of the rule: if you can’t carry it on a portage, it doesn’t go in the pack. Because up here, everything gets carried on your shoulders or your back. And the lighter you travel, the farther you can actually go, and the more you actually get to enjoy the trip instead of just surviving it.
They grumbled the whole time they were re-packing. But then about three or four days into the trip, on our fifth portage of the morning, soaked in sweat, they would find themselves grateful that they weren’t carrying that extra hardcover book.
I tell you that story because I think it says something true about our gospel reading today.
Last week, if you were here, you heard the disciple Peter get it right. Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter, in a moment of pure clarity, said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
It’s the high point of Peter’s story. Jesus says, “Blessed are you, Peter…” and then goes on to say, “…to you I will give the keys to the Kingdom of heaven…”
This week? Not so much. Jesus starts telling the disciples plainly what being the Messiah is actually going to cost him. He’s going to return to Jerusalem. He’s going to suffer. He’s going to be killed. And on the third day, he is going to be resurrected.
Peter, who just aced last week’s pop quiz, immediately fails this week’s. He pulls Jesus aside and says, essentially, “Absolutely not. That is not going to happen to you.” And Jesus turns and says words that still stop us cold: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.”
That’s pretty harsh. That is a hard word for Peter to hear, and honestly, it’s a hard word for us to hear as well. Because I think most of us, most days, are standing there, right next to Peter. We want a faith that adds good things to our lives without asking anything of us in return. We want the resurrection without the Friday that comes before it. We want the good news, but we’d rather skip the part where Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
“Take up your cross.” That phrase is one that can get used pretty casually these days. We say things like, “Well, that’s just my cross to bear,” about a bad knee or when our spouse does something to annoy us. But that is not at all what Jesus is talking about here. In Jesus’ day, everybody knew exactly what a cross was. It wasn’t a metaphor for inconvenience. It was the way Rome executed people. Jesus is not talking about minor irritations. When he says “take up your cross,” he is inviting his followers into a whole different way of measuring what life is all about.
Here’s the line that I think is the real heart of the passage, and it’s the one that used to trip me up the most: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
You could almost read that like some kind of threat. Like Jesus was saying, “Give up your life, or none of this…is for you.” But I don’t think that’s it at all. I think Jesus is describing something more like what happened on that morning before those Boundary Waters trips set out. He’s not punishing us. He’s asking us…and helping us to set down the things that were never going to get us from here…to there.
Think about what we spend our lives…and our energy…and our time trying to preserve:
- Our reputation.
- Our comfort.
- Our sense of being right.
- Our grip on control.
We carry those things like they’re essential gear, and some days they’re so heavy we can barely take the next step. And Jesus looks at all of that and says, “You don’t need that. Set it down. Follow me instead. There’s a lighter way to live, and it’s called love.”
The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it about as plainly as anyone ever has. He wrote that when Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die. That sounds harsh…and scary…until you realize what he meant: it’s not death for its own sake. It’s the death of the version of us that is exhausted from carrying everything alone, so that something truer and freer can live in its place.
That’s not bad news. That is genuinely good news. It’s just good news that doesn’t look like good news at first glance, kind of like that guy dumping your Duluth pack out on the floor of the cabin before the trip has even started.
So what does this lighter way of living actually look like, day to day? I think the apostle Paul gives us our packing list in the reading from Romans this morning.
Listen to how practical he gets:
- Let love be genuine.
- Hate what is evil.
- Hold fast to what is good.
- Rejoice in hope.
- Be patient in suffering.
- Persevere in prayer.
- Bless those who persecute you.
- Live in harmony with one another.
- Do not repay evil for evil.
- As far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.
- Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Sometime this week, I invite you to go back and look this scripture from Romans up again, and read this list once more. It is a description of what people look like when they’ve already set down the heavy stuff and are traveling light. It’s a description of a community that isn’t spending all its energy protecting itself anymore, because it trusts that God has already secured the future.
When I think about Paul’s words here,
- I think about the folks in this congregation who show up at Community Pathways week after week to help distribute food or clothing.
- Or the ones who show up here on Thursday nights to prep a meal for “Table for All.”
- I think of the 19 Trinity folks who showed up at the new Lighthouse Shelter two weeks ago and collectively spent 187 hours assembling furniture for the new shelter space. 187 hours!
- Or the ones who drive a neighbor to their chemo treatments, or who sit with someone in the hospital.
Nobody makes them do that. They’ve just discovered that carrying love for someone else is somehow lighter than carrying only themselves.
Here’s what I want you to hear and understand today: Jesus is not asking you to white-knuckle your way through self-denial like it’s some spiritual diet plan. He’s just inviting you to trust him enough to set some things down:
- Your need to control every outcome.
- Your grudges.
- Your fear that you have to save yourself, that it’s all up to you.
Dump that heavy pack out…and set those things down. Jesus has already carried the cross that needed to be carried. You don’t need to do that. What Jesus is asking of you now is to follow him, together, traveling light, loving genuinely, and trusting that the road he’s on leads somewhere good.
Because it does. On the other side of Good Friday is always Easter. On the other side of losing your life for his sake is finding it, really finding it, maybe for the first time…maybe for the thousandth.
So take up whatever cross is actually yours to carry. Set down everything else. And follow him. The road is long, but I promise you, it goes somewhere beautiful.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
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