Homily for Fifth Sunday of Lent
Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The readings today serve as a premonition, a preview of the forthcoming events. Jesus tells his followers: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain. But if it dies, it yields much fruit. When I am lifted up from the earth I shall draw all to myself." By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die, John tells us. The cross casts its shadow over tonight's readings then. In fact Jesus had already told his followers that if they did not take up the cross they could not be followers of his. In fact this is a precondition for discipleship. If you want to be a follower of mine, you must do this, he tells us. The cross is central to our faith and to our lives. Many commentators down the ages identify this injunction as the fatal flaw at the heart of Christianity. It scars an otherwise uplifting and humanising creed. It introduces into Christianity a fatalism and an acceptance of suffering that is destructive of humanity. It produces a submissive people who too readily accepted tyranny and injustice, some will argue.
Whether we like it or not, whether we believe anything or not, the cross intrudes in some form or other into all our lives. If Christianity doesn't challenge us, it is not Christianity. If it doesn't challenge us to reach out beyond our selfish shells, then it is not working for us. For example, if our comfortable lifestyle is not challenged by the plight of the poor, then we are not living out our Christianity in any meaningful sense. This aspect of Christianity will never be popular in any age. But in an age of self-indulgence and self-promotion, it will meet with derision and outright hostility. And we will experience that challenge as a cross. But, contrary to popular belief, it is a civilising and humanising cross. Without that challenge, we would be a lesser people, a less human people. We are sensitised and humanised by the needs of others. If we ignore them, we are less than human; if we respond to them, and experience the discomfort of putting the needs of others before our own, then we are conforming to the will of God for us; we are renouncing rugged individualism and we are taking up our cross daily.
So the cross is intrinsic to Christianity itself. It is at the core of its message. But the cross is a reality for every human being, as much for the atheist and agnostic as for the Christian. But when Jesus tells us to take up our cross daily, he is not imposing a burden on us. He is merely inviting us to recognise reality, to acknowledge a truth that is central to human experience. That truth is as follows: loss, pain and suffering are almost constant companions. They are at least as present to us as laughter and song. The cross symbolises for us this reality. In symbolising it, we are enabled to come to terms with it. This is not a very popular message. No one likes to be reminded of loss or pain. But ignoring the reality won't banish it. We don't glide automatically towards Christian maturity. We struggle, suffer and fight for it. It is indeed a question of taking up our cross daily. Many commentators have noted that society today has passed a negative judgement on suffering, age, pain and death. These inevitable realities of life have been pushed to the margins; they have been sanitised in hospitals, in rest homes and in funeral parlours. The wake in the home has been replaced by a viewing at a funeral parlour. The wake is reduced to a cosmetic exercise, in more senses than one.
The cross keeps our minds fixed on the realities of life and of death. Jesus did not impose the cross upon us. He merely encouraged us through his example to face and embrace the cross that is at the heart of human experience. But this is not a fatal attraction. As Christians we believe that it is in facing up to reality that we triumph over it. And our triumph is not a personal one, but is due solely to the fact that our God is beside us and is struggling with us in our times of crisis.