Our Crosses

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Matthew 16:24

What are the crosses we are called to bear as disciples? Are these burdens, trials, or struggles that we receive once we are following Jesus? The answer is both “yes” and “no”. 

Following Jesus will clearly bring new struggles into our lives, most obviously those having to do with confronting our own sinfulness. However, that burden is far less than being a slave to sin. As disciples we experience an estrangement from the world, but living according to this world is death and not life. These are a couple ways in which following Christ gives us new burdens.

However, more than our crosses being new struggles that start when we follow Jesus, it is obvious that every person, Christian or not, has difficulties and burdens in life. No one has a care and trouble-free life. Jesus, knowing that we are all beset with confounding struggles, offers to lessen the burdens that we are already bearing. This is part of the invitation to follow him.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

We all have hardships in life, both enormous and difficult as well as small and annoying, simply because we are human beings. In the mystery of grace, Jesus promises to lighten our struggles, providing relief although he does not take away everything that troubles us. To do that would mean we would have to leave this world, for certain difficulties are inherent in this life. Jesus experienced them and so do we. No one has the option to live in this world without any heartache, disappointment, or struggle.

Given the inevitability of burdens, we may try to bear these as fates distributed arbitrarily by an uncaring universe if we do not believe in a spiritual realm, or we may search for a spiritual way to make sense of our suffering and cope with it. The cross is shorthand for how in Christ we accept our burdens, discover that they are transformed by love, and while they certainly are suffering, find a meaningful way to live. 

To take up our crosses involves a new way of living with the same troubles we had before we started following Jesus. The suffering we perhaps fought, trying unsuccessfully to avoid or discard, we now pick up as a cross. In Christ we find a place for our pain. We are participating with Christ in the mystery of our own salvation. Love transforms our burdens instead of us trying futilely to deny, disown, or hurtfully place them on anyone else. Though we do not see how, with respect to each trial or burden, the cross declares that each is leading to resurrection. This is enough to bear our crosses in hope.

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:10-11