Every summer for ten years I went back packing in the Wallow Mountains Eagle Cap wilderness. After a week of sitting on logs and sleeping on the ground I longed for a chair to sit back in and a comfortable bed. We are comfort loving creatures. We seek ease and pleasure and try to avoid difficulty and unpleasantness. And yet, if we stop to think about it, there seems to be a law written into the universe that nothing really good comes without struggle, or even pain and suffering.
Look at the great athletes who have been in Eugene for the Olympic trials these past ten days. How many stories have we read about the long hours, working to the point of exhaustion, and then running long distances with heart pounding, lungs bursting, muscles aching, to the finish line -- and then the joy.
Or look at the mother-to-be. Weeks, sometimes months of morning sickness, a growing discomfort, and finally, labor pains. I knew a young minister who once said to a woman who was having a long, difficult delivery, "I know how you feel." You can imagine her response.
While it can be misapplied when exercising there is a great truth behind the slogan, "no pain, no gain."
This truth is certainly seen in the cross. There is an old gospel hymn that says, "The Way of the Cross Leads Home." What is the way of the cross? We could well answer: it is the way that Jesus took for us. As another hymn says, "Jesus Paid It All." The way of the cross is the way Jesus took to bring salvation to us, a way that involved sacrifice and suffering.
But the way of the cross can apply to our journey as well. In fact, Jesus said to those around him, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt 16). The way of the cross is for us as well.
Last week I attended some of the Oregon Christian Convention at Turner and was struck by a speaker's statement that expressed exactly what I wanted to say in this communion meditation. He was talking about how the cross was central to Paul's thinking in 1 Corinthians and said something like this: the cross is not just a fact to be appreciated; it is a way of life to be practiced.
The symbolism of the cross was transformed by Christ. It was a symbol in the Roman world of criminality and guilt on the one hand and of cruelty and persecution on the other. But Christ made it a symbol of self-giving sacrifice, of giving one's life on behalf of others, and an expression of unconditional love. This is the way of the cross, the way that Jesus asked us to travel with him. It is not easy or comfortable but the way of the cross leads home.
