Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

• Luke 9:23

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

• Colossian 2:13-15

“I cannot help admiring the goodness of the cross. We are worth nothing without it. It makes me tremble and convulses me as soon as I begin to feel it. All that I have said of its helpful operations vanishes away before the agony it brings to my inmost heart. But as soon as it gives me time to breathe, I open my eyes again and I see that it is worthy of praise. Then I am ashamed to have been so overwhelmed by it. The experience of this inconsistency is a deep lesson for me.
“In whatever state we may be, whatever consequences God may give, we are blessed in being given over to his hands. If we should die, it is in the Lord. If we should live, it is living to him. As St. Teresa has said, ‘Either to die, or to suffer.’
“Nothing is more important than the cross, except the perfect reign of God. Indeed, when we suffer with love, his reign has begun in us, and we must be contented with that as long as God defers the completion of it.
“We need the cross. The faithful Distributor of gifts has allotted our portion to us as well. May he be blessed forever. Oh, how good he is to inflict punishment on us for our correction!”

• François Fénelon, Talking with God

Archbishop Fénelon toys with the horrible death that Jesus experienced on the cross, in light of us taking up our own cross.  But then he backs away.  This paragraph is entitled “Joy in Bearing the Cross.”

Yes, God has paid the penalty that we deserve, and all praise goes to Him.  But cross bearing is something hideous.  Rev. Billy Graham called the cross offensive.  The Romans designed this hideous way of killing people just for that purpose – to be so horribly offensive that no one should, in the right mind, dare to start an insurrection.

On the cross, you slowly die of asphyxiation.  You have pain in your hands and feet, and you lose the capability to stand up.  You slump down on the cross.  With your arms in a fixed position above your torso, the diaphragm is limited.  You cannot exhale the fluid that is building up in your lungs.  So every so often.  You push against the nails in your feet to stand erect and cough some of the fluid out.  But the pain from the nails is excruciating.  You slump back.  And more fluid enters the lungs.  This cycle was broken when the guards broke the legs of the criminals, but Jesus was already dead.

I only know of a small fraction of this type of suffering in a military training exercise, but they stopped before I passed out.  And yet, I still wonder about my breathing issues being related to that period of torture.

But François Fénelon speaks of our reward, an undeserved reward.  He speaks of our dedication to live for Jesus the rest of our lives.  The reference to St. Teresa is hundreds of years before Mother Theresa was born.  There were more than one Theresa.

But as I heard Billy Graham say, it is almost like we do the cross a disservice to make it nice, clean, and smooth.  We make it out of gold and hang it around our necks.  But even if it was made out of rough wood and we got a splinter once in a while, we would still miss the point.

Jesus Christ suffered and died an agonizing death.  He did that if you were the only sinner that needed saving.  And He rose again from the dead to show us that both sin and death have been defeated.  Giving each of us a mansion, after giving us eternal life, is simply over the top.

James says that we should count it all Joy when we suffer.  And I think that was François Fénelon’s point.

The point is that Jesus paid the extreme sacrifice.  We should at least act like we understand what that sacrifice was.  Could we ever repay Him?  Praising His name for the rest of our lives falls far too short.

Are you willing to pick up your cross and follow Him?

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.