This is one of my favorite texts in the entire Bible, which is probably a strange commentary on my thought process. I know it isn’t a particularly comforting passage in the classical sense of some of the Psalms. When I read it, I don’t often feel peace. I’m weird that way.

And yet, this passage is central to our understanding—both about who Jesus is and about who we are as his followers. It’s certainly pivotal for Mark.

In the first eight chapters, Mark locates Jesus in all kinds of strange places, among strange people—and that, in itself, makes a theological statement about the reign of God—which is always to be found in the back alleys and dive bars where the respectable people rarely go—which is to say, where any sensible person would least expect it.

The next eight chapters, find Jesus en route to and having arrived in Jerusalem, a not so strange place, peopled with the powerful and influential.

The contrasts are fascinating: Jesus spends the first part of Mark’s Gospel in Nebraska, then he takes a fateful journey to Washington D.C. And our text for today stands as the threshold—the point at which, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus makes the first move on his journey to Jerusalem. He’s been here, now he’s going there.

Portentous. Big deal. The narrative picks up speed from here.

Dr. Albert Outler tells the story of the warrior-king Charles XII, who in 1716 visited a little village seaport town named Ystad in the south of Sweden. King Charles arrived unexpectedly at the village church for worship. When the pastor realized that the king was at the service, he puzzled over what he should do about his sermon. Should he preach the message he’d prepared or take this opportunity to praise King Charles and the royal family for their leadership of Sweden? You know, call him maybe the greatest king in history, a tremendous leader, probably done the best job of any king ever.

He decided to lay aside his sermon and suck up to the king.

After the service the king, a man of integrity, greeted the pastor and went on his way. A short time later the church received a special gift. The Pastor called the congregation together to share in the opening of the gift.

When the large box was opened there was a life-sized crucifix. Attached to the cross was a note from the king: “Let this crucifix hang on the pillar opposite the pulpit, so that all who stand there will be reminded of their proper subject.”

We, of course, have read the final chapter and we know what happens when Jesus gets to Jerusalem—as did Mark’s readers. So, we can’t help but read our text for today with a sense of foreboding.

We know what it’s ultimately going to cost Jesus as he makes this final prescient speech. And so we cover this tough passage again because somewhere at the center of it all is what we confess about who Jesus is, and who we are now because of him.

Our Gospel this morning looms as a constant reminder of what is, for all of us, at stake in our faith. The cross stands at the end of this journey for Jesus, and it is the cross Jesus commands his disciples to take up.

According to Mark, Jesus knew, as he walked down the narrow path that day, that there was no way for him to be faithful to the purposes of God and avoid that cross. He knew that his challenge of the powerful on behalf of the powerless couldn’t help but appear threatening to the ruling authorities. He knew the special kind of death reserved for Messiahs, for those who would presume to challenge Caesar.

In David James Duncan’s book, The Brothers K, the family is discussing a little girl with a cleft palate at church named, Vera, whose parents won’t let her have an operation to fix her lip because it is, as they say, “her cross to bear.”

One brother, Peter, observes that “There were some crucial things Vera’s parents were forgetting about crosses ... One was that Jesus was nailed to His by his enemies, not by Mary and Joseph. And another,” he said, “was that it killed Him. Christ’s cross killed Him. We’ve got to remember what crosses are ... They’re not just decorations on steeples. They’re murder weapons ... the same as guns, or gas chambers, or electric chairs. Only much, much slower. So Vera’s parents ... were one of two things. They were either fools without the slightest idea what Christianity or crosses are. Or they were unbelievably evil people.”

Jesus isn’t talking about some subjective experience, some inconvenience, like being near-sighted or having an uncle whose an overbearing loudmouth nobody wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. The cross is something we decide to bear, something we take up, not some physical infirmity, our aches and pains. This is a voluntary thing, not something thrust upon us by genetics or lack of aptitude or just sheer bad luck—things over which we have no control.

The crosses we bear, like Jesus before us, have to do with the consequences we suffer in our determination not to stay silent in the face of injustice, with the pain and suffering we embrace as those who try to live like Jesus by saying “yes” to the vulnerable and the destitute, while saying “no” to those who operate the machinery of the death-dealing systems of domination.

In Christianity, the cross is central to what it means to be faithful.  I’d like to be able to tell you otherwise—that crosses are an optional part of the travel package, but in fact, they are both the destination of this journey, as well as the baggage we strap to our backs. That’s a fairly bracing bit of information to hear from the cruise director, but Jesus isn’t a good salesman. He’s the anti-Zig Ziglar.