Taking Up Your Cross

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

“If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” This is Jesus' exhortation in today's Gospel lesson. To follow Jesus, you must deny yourself and take up your cross and take off after Him. Easy enough to say, but what does this mean? How do you deny yourself, and what is the cross that you must shoulder?

The Sixth Commandment gives one example of what it means to deny yourself and take up the cross. The wedding vows taken by the bridegroom contain these words: “Will you have this woman to be your wedded wife... Will you nourish and cherish her as Christ loved His body, the Church, giving Himself up for her?” (LSB 276). To take this woman to be your wedded wife means taking up a cross. It requires you to nourish and cherish her, just as Christ loved His body, even to the point of giving Himself up for her.

To enter into marriage is to deny yourself. When you assent to those vows and slip on those rings, you are no longer free to do as you please. You no longer are your own person – as if you were to begin with! Gone is the freedom to enter into intimate relationships with other people – spiritually, emotionally, or physically. Gone is the freedom to roam the streets and haunt the bars until all hours of the night. Gone is the freedom to come and go as you please, without any thought toward the pleasure of anyone else. You are not your own man, but your body is your wife's, and hers is yours.

To deny yourself means that you must crucify the desires of the flesh and give way to life in the Spirit. You may not look with lust upon anyone but your wife or husband. You may not lie with as your wife someone who is not your wife. A man may not take a husband, nor a woman give herself to a wife. The Lord has given you to that person whom He has seen fit, and to none other. If He has not deigned to give you to a mate, you may not take one for yourself.

Furthermore, your resources are not your own, but are devoted to nourishing and cherishing your wife and children. Christ our Lord handed over all He had, even His very life, to claim and sanctify His bride, and your marriage requires no less of you. The Law demands that you live a pure and decent life in all you do, and especially with your spouse.

Lest you despair, marriage is not simply a trudge toward death, bound to a fleshy anchor. The Lord blesses and sanctifies marriage as a holy estate, and through it He gives many good gifts. In matrimony, He does a new thing, creating one out of two, and from those two-become-one He may be pleased to bring forth children as the fruit of their union. The Lord unites man and wife in marriage for mutual joy and consolation, for it is not good for man to be alone. In marriage, sin is restrained, and the gift of sex as God created can be enjoyed in all its goodness. Finally, and primarily, the Lord sanctifies and preserves marriage because in this union He gives us a fleshly image of the relationship between Jesus Christ and us, His Bride, the Church.

However, this blessing comes with responsibility. In taking a wife, you are promising to love, honor, keep, and be faithful to her. You shall love no other. You shall honor her above all, forsaking all else. You shall keep her in health and care for her in sickness. You shall be faithful to her as long as you both shall live. She is yours, and you are hers. You are no longer your own, and you belong to none other. If you hang onto your old self-interest and ambition, your marriage will fail. This cross will take all your strength to carry.

Jesus says, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” To follow Jesus requires great sacrifice, even more than to be married. To follow Jesus requires that you completely and utterly give up your self-interest and your selfish ambition. You must despair of any merit or worthiness in yourself. You must repent of the idolatrous leanings of your sinful heart.

To follow Jesus, you must submit to your Head and master. He is the bridegroom and you are the bride. He is the leader, and you must go where He leads. He knows best and you do not. He is right, and you are wrong. He has the words of eternal life and the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and you have only death and a ticket to hell.

To follow Jesus, you must get over yourself and live through Him for others. He does not need your service and your stuff, but He has placed you amongst those who do. Your wife needs your love and your affection. Your husband needs your respect and your care. Your children need your leadership and your counsel. The poor need your treasure and your time. The sick and distressed need your visits and your prayers and your letters. The house of God needs your hands and your sweat and your support.

But you want to do your own thing. You want to pretend that you know best. You want to think that you are an island unto yourself. What you have is your own, to do with as you please. Your wife can deal with whatever you toss her way. Your children are grown and don't need you. Who cares what you do with your money, as long as the bills get paid eventually?

Love has become a throw-away word. To love someone is to use him, her, or them to make yourself feel good. When the warm-fuzzies fade, it is time to move onto the next person, place, or thing. Rather than loving and cherishing those to whom Christ has joined you, you use them to stroke your ego and serve your needs. Service to the needy becomes simply a tax deduction or a chance to get your name in the paper. You would much rather shirk all that responsibility, and instead find your happiness out on the lake or in the deer stand or wherever you feel like it.

However, Jesus has not simply given the command, and then left you to wallow in despair because of your sins. “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” Even when you fail to love your spouse perfectly, Jesus has loved you beyond compare.

Jesus knew even before coming to this earth that He must suffer and die to redeem His bride. He came anyway, and He gave Himself up in order to win for Himself a pure, spotless bride. Even though you were once in sin and given over to death, He has shed His blood to take away your trespasses and to make you pure and holy and acceptable to God in heaven.

Jesus, the great Bridegroom, loves you so much that He gave Himself up to death, even death upon a cross, in order that He might save you from eternal death. He took up the punishment for sin that was not His so that He might give you the life that is His.

And He will never leave you nor forsake you. Although the love between you and your spouse will falter and fail, Jesus' love will never waver. He has bound Himself to you by water and blood. He has taken all the rubbish that belongs to you – sin, death, and destruction – and has given you all the wondrous things that are His alone to give – forgiveness, life, and salvation. He has sealed you with His holy Name and marked you as His own. He has made you who you are in Him, and has called you His bride. And He will be faithful unto the consummation of the ages.

So take up your cross and follow Jesus. Filled with the Holy Spirit, your burden is light, for His yoke is easy. Fear and love God with your whole heart. Lead a sexually pure and decent life. Love and honor each other as husband and wife. These things are easy, because your Lord has already done them for you. What is left for you is to follow your Bridegroom to the wedding feast. He has made you perfect in all love and faithfulness. And He will keep you in the one true faith by His Word and Spirit. For the love of Christ dwells richly in you, even as the Holy Spirit is working in you to perfect you in purity and faithfulness toward God and toward one another.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.