It’s really great to have our children in church every week in our 9:00 service. Many of you share my delight in hearing their little voices join in praying the Lord’s Prayer. Sometimes, though, you hear funny things when you listen to the words they’re actually saying. They do what we all do sometimes. If they don’t quite get what something means, they just translate it into words they already know. One mom said that her son prayed: “Our Father, who art in heaven, how didja know my name?”

One dad said that he grew up thinking God’s name was “Howard,” because he thought the Lord’s Prayer began: “Our Father, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name.”

All of us translate what we hear in church into words that make sense to us, and then there comes a time when we need to stop and rethink in case we got it mixed up a bit. This morning we’re going to explore some of what Jesus means when he tells us to take up the cross. Taking up the cross willingly, to bear the cross gladly, as we Christians are evidently supposed to do, isn’t an easy thing to get our minds around. No wonder a kid in Sunday School heard this as a story about “Gladly, the cross-eyed bear!”

Taking up our cross may be one of Jesus’ more familiar teachings, but surely not an easy one to understand, let alone to live. This morning, I want to look at it from a couple of different perspectives.

We usually tend to think of this passage in individualistic terms…the cross I carry, the burdens I bear, the challenges I face…and so forth. Carrying one’s cross has come to mean something about personal fortitude in the face of suffering and pain. The cross we bear has come to mean an illness, a difficult relationship, and any persistent source of trouble and aggravation in our lives. From this perspective, we carry our cross all alone, praying to God for strength as we wrestle with our own difficult questions, temptation, exhaustion and fear.

This highly personalized notion of carrying one’s cross comes out of the powerful images we all have in our minds of Jesus’ own suffering on his cross. And if Mel Gibson succeeds in finding a distributor for his new movie, “The Passion,” in Aramaic and Latin with no subtitles, the movie-going world will be subjected to what is reported to be a new particularly graphic and bloody depiction of that death.

I’m not convinced that the world or the faith will be well served by this new rendition of the crucifixion. Scaring people into belief leads more often to fear than to loving discipleship. Instead, you see, taking up our cross should point us away from our own suffering to the suffering of others. It should engage us in ministry with and for one another, in the name of the Christ. Taking up the cross is something we do together, for the sake of the whole Body of Christ.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean. The visual image that comes to mind is that of many hands literally carrying a very large cross. In many parts of Mexico and Latin America, Holy Week is still marked by processions of the faithful. Perhaps you have seen pictures of these people processing from one village to the next, fifteen, twenty of them carrying aloft a large, heavy wooden cross to remember their Savior. Many hands, many strong arms holding up the cross. A cross so big that none could carry it alone.

Another kind of community cross-carrying can be found in a practice that comes out of the Amish and Mennonite farmlands of Ohio, Eastern Pennsylvania and Delaware. It is the tradition of barn-raising. Perhaps some of you are familiar with this. During the summer, in the time between planting and harvesting, the community would gather together to build a new barn for a newly married couple just starting out or to re-build a barn destroyed by wind or fire. They’d start early in the morning and be finished by sundown. In a way, it’s not so different from the kind of work our own youth did on the Appalachia Service Project Team, except that in the very traditional Amish community, the men did the work and the women did the cooking. No girls on those work teams!

But they had a grand old time, anyway. Traditionally, it all happened in a day, the men doing the construction and the women preparing a feast, everybody taking part.

One Mennonite woman found an account of a barn-raising in her grandmother’s diary. Their farm had burned down. All their friends and neighbors came on a specified day to put up the barn and bring livestock to replace those who had been lost. While the men were working to put up the framework for the barn, the cooking went on with a few iron pots in the kitchen. Backyard tables were made with sheets of plywood and saw horses. Some sat on blankets in the yard.

Here’s the list of the food the women put out: 115 lemon pies, 500 doughnuts, 15 large cakes, 3 gallons applesauce, 3 gallons rice pudding, 3 gallons cornstarch pudding, 16 roasted chickens, 3 hams, 50 pounds of roast beef, 350 light rolls, 16 loaves fresh baked bread, 3 gallons beet pickle and pickled eggs, 2 gallons sweet pickles, 1 gallon bread and butter pickles, 6 pounds stewed prunes, 5 gallons boiled white potatoes, and 5 gallons baked sweet potatoes.

And she added: 20 shoo fly pies, 3 roasted Pigs’ Stomachs, and 3 gallons coleslaw. Roasted Pig’s Stomach was her specialty and she gives her recipe for it, for all you cooks out there.

All of this was to feed, she said, 175 men and 25 women.

Her granddaughter, who’d been a little girl at the time, reflected on her own memories of that day: “We began to cook days before and stored up things in the spring cellar in her basement. We loved it! You heard laughter coming from the barn and sometimes they would sing hymns…I remember catching tears coming down my grandma’s face as the shape of the barn began to take place…instead of the black mess that was there from the fire was a barn taking shape and all built by the love of friends and neighbors that had farms of their own to work on but that did not matter this day…

I think back and see how the neighbors and church family would help in times of need. When a neighbor was sick [or a baby born], grandma would make sure food was sent. When my dad had polio and was in the hospital for 5 1/2 weeks, my mom did not have to take care of the chickens and we had 5000! Nobody worried that one family would have more than the other. Nobody worried about themselves but rather took care of the rest that needed help.”

Is this not a beautiful picture of carrying the cross together? Of being church for and with one another? Of coming together as the Body of Christ to serve one another’s needs? Of giving our own lives to others and in so doing finding that there is indeed life abundant for all? Many hands raising the barn, many hands preparing the food, many hands lifting the cross!

The same time goes on around here all the time. It’s maybe not as dramatic, but it’s part of this cross-carrying business just the same. A group comes together, gives their own time and talent and love—and we have a beautiful new pictorial directory. A group of youth and young adults work all summer to produce a fabulous Summer Adventures program for children and teens. The new prayer quilt ministry group creates these beautiful quilts for us to tie with love and prayer to comfort and assure others in times of pain and need. Members of the United Methodist Women’s work party come every Wednesday for hours making crafts to sell at the Christmas Bazaar. I am going to have to check and see if they’ve served Roasted Pig’s Stomach at one of their lunches!

Our own kind of cross-carrying barn raising is going on this morning and maybe we don’t even notice:

-The group of Sunday School teachers with kids from two years to sixth grade

-The youth counselors

-Our usher corps at both services, making sure that we’re welcomed into this sanctuary and caring for us while we’re here

And today, of course, we lift up the cross-carrying ministry of our Stephen Ministers. These dedicated folks give hours and hours of their own time to be trained and then to care for us and accompany us in Christian love through our times of need. Because as we all know, there are times in each of our lives when our barn burns down. Tragedy strikes. Death comes. Depression persists. Illness invades. Colleagues prove untrustworthy. A marriage ends. Times when the cross is way too heavy to carry all by ourselves. Times when we need one another. And our Stephen Ministers are there to help raise a new frame out of the ashes of the old. And like makeshift tables laden with food, the milk and honey of God’s love fills our cup to overflowing.

You know, maybe the Amish people are more fortunate than we are in a way. Their way of life precludes them from using electricity and mechanized tools. True, they have now made an exception and a crane may be used in a barn raising. But to this day, everything else is done by hand. As a result, you see, they know their need of one another. They don’t even think about trying to tough it out on their own. They know how much they need one another. And everything about their community life assumes that they will work joyfully meet one another’s needs. They will be cared for and they will care for one another. They carry the cross together in Christian love.

We have so much that sometimes we don’t get it. We tell ourselves we can tough it out alone, and we don’t avail ourselves of the many resources of love and support ready to be offered. Or we give of ourselves only stingingly, grudgingly, preoccupied with how busy we are and how little time we have. To us, Jesus says today: “Reach out. Join hands with others who carry my cross with you. Draw strength from their strength. Give it back, as you are able. Lose your life, give it away, to save it and find your life in me. For I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

Brothers and sisters, we’re in this together. Last week, we made a church with our hands and I’ve heard that some of you had a bit of a hard time getting it right. So I’m going to give you another chance today. And in the spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance, help out your neighbor if their “barn” isn’t quite coming together.

Let’s try again—start with your fingers pointing down….”This is the church, this is the steeple. Open the door and see all the people!”

It takes more than one to be the church. It takes more than one to be God’s people. Only together can we raise the barn. Only together can we carry the cross. Only together can we build a church. Only together can we be the Body of Christ. Only together can we find our life.

Alleluia! Amen.

Notes: The children’s quotes are from an old Ann Landers' column