You might remember comedian Yakov Smirnoff.  When he first came to the United States from Russia he was not prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores.  He says, "On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk--you just add water, and you get milk.  Then I saw powdered orange juice--you just add water, and you get orange juice.  And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to myself, what a country!"

Is there such a thing as "powdered Christian?"  Just add a sprinkling of baptismal water and you get a Christian.  For some expressions of Christianity, becoming a Christian is a matter of being baptized the right way.  What is the right way?  Their way, of course.  For other expressions of Christianity it is a matter of repeating a particular prayer or incantation.  Viola!  All of a sudden you are saved.  You have joined that elite group of saved believers that is going to heaven rather than hell.  As Yakov Smirnoff might say, "What a religion!"

According to pope Pius IX of Vatican I fame, "outside the Church there is no salvation."  Which Church?  Well, that is sort of like asking which is the right way to be baptized (although it must be noted that exceptions were allowed for aboriginal tribes and others who were unavoidably ignorant of the Roman Catholic Church).  Martin Luther, who ushered in the Protestant Reformation, took a different view.  He said, "solo fide," salvation is by faith alone.  So there are many different standards within Christendom that determine whether or not someone is saved.

Perhaps you have been approached by someone asking if you were saved.  It often strikes me as a spiritually passive-aggressive question that clearly assumes the questioner is saved while the jury is still out about you.  This is not the kind of question that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.  The answer requires a little clarification, such as, "I am saved according to: a) the Jehovah’s Witnesses, b) the Southern Baptists, c) the Roman Catholics, or d) (fill in the blank), but I am therefore not saved according to most of the other 34,000 known expressions of Christianity around the world (as catalogued by the World Christian Encyclopedia from the Oxford University Press), not to mention other world religions.

"Are you saved?"  That would be an interesting question to ask a lady leaving her local bank.  "Madam, are you saved?"  "Well, I have a savings account.  I participate in a payroll deduction savings plan.  I don’t know if I’ve "arrived" in terms of saving, but I am in the process of saving."  To me salvation is much more a process than a once-for-all, powered Christian, add the right baptismal water, or pray the right incantation kind of thing.  St. Paul counseled the Philippians, …continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-12).

Salvation is a continuing process that can stop just as readily as it starts.  The BTK Killer was a churchman of the first order in his local Lutheran Congregation.  He occupied the highest elected office, much like Peter French does in our congregation (and I hope that is where the comparisons end).  I am sure that the BTK Killer made his public profession of Christ.  I am sure that he was baptized.  I am not so sure he was saved once and for all.

If the process of salvation involves more than lip service or liturgical correctness, what does it involve.  What must we do to avail ourselves of God’s saving power?  The title of our message gives us a hint: "The Cross is a Must."  He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again (Verse 31, underscored added).

Our text is part of a larger discussion Jesus is having with his disciples.  He has just asked them who people say that he is and who the disciples themselves say that he is.  It is a reasonable question to ask since the disciples have witnessed Jesus performing myriad miracles feeding the multitudes, stilling the storm, healing the sick, casting out demons, walking on water—that sort of thing.  Peter answers, You are the Christ (1:29).  You are the long-awaited Messiah that the prophets foretold would save God’s people.  And Lord knows that God’s people could use some saving about then.

At that time Judah was a vassal state of Rome under the burden of heavy taxes.  Their king was a sociopathic puppet installed by Rome, and their religious leaders were complicit in maintaining the status quo because of the preferential treatment they were receiving relative to their more common countrymen and women.  Finally God had sent his Messiah to throw off the yoke of Roman domination, usurp religious leadership in the Holy Land and save God’s people from all their problems.

"Wrong Messiah," Jesus tells Peter.  "I am the Messiah, but not the victorious ruler you are envisioning, I am the suffering servant proclaimed by the prophets" (as in our Old Testament lesson for this morning—Isaiah 53:4-6).  "I am not going to run the Roman Governor Pilate out of town or replace the hypocritical religious leaders.  Quite the contrary, they are going to crucify me."  He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him (Verse 32).

For once Jesus is speaking plainly, not parabolically or proverbially or poetically.  And we can see why he was not prone to speaking plainly because people could not handle the straight-up truth.  Peter rebukes Jesus.  "Jesus, I cannot believe what a downer you are being.  Why are you being so negative?  Nobody wants to hear that stuff.  You see all these people who have come out to see you?  They are here because of your saving power.  They need a Savior.  Tell them how you are going to save them."  And so he did.

Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it (Verses 34-35, underscore added).  He who wants to save his life will lose it.  He must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  "The Cross is a Must," not just for the Savior, but for the saved as well.

A few years ago I was invited by my seminary to return to teach a class.  I really enjoyed that, and hope to do it again sometime.  One of the questions I was asked by the class was this: "Now that you have been a pastor for 25 years, and looking back, what do you wish seminary would have taught you that it did not?"  That was a thought-provoking question, but it was the wrong question.  The right question was, "What did seminary try to teach me that I could not, or would not, learn?"  Indeed, what did the church and Christianity try to tell me that I refused to hear?  And the answer is the same thing that Peter refused to hear.

Do you know what is front and center in this sanctuary right now?  Hint: it is further out front than the choir loft.  It is the cross.  And if it is not centered enough, we have emphasized the point by putting another cross in the center of the altar which is, by the way, itself an image of sacrifice.  The cross is central in Christian faith tradition.  It is always front and center, first and foremost.  Seminary tried to tell me that ministry was an exercise in cross-bearing, but I did not want to hear it.

I supposed I romanticized the cross much like young men romanticize war until they march off to fight in one and discover that war is hell.  Seminary graduates march off to their first pastorate singing, "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war, with the cross of Jesus going on before."  But then they discover that holy war is holy hell.  Louis Evely had it right in that quote printed at the top of our bulletin: "The cross which God sends us must of necessity always be humiliating, painful, paralyzing, difficult.  The cross is precisely what hurts us in that place where we are most disarmed and vulnerable."

The crosses I must bear may not be a big deal to you, and the crosses you must bear may not be a big deal to me, but a cross is always a big deal for the person who must bear it.  And "The Cross is a Must."  Jesus said we must take up our crosses to follow him.  No wiggle room there.  So while we expect Jesus to save us from our problems and wow us with his wonderworking power, he is telling us that all he has to offer is the suffering and shame of a cross?  No wonder Peter rebuked him.

But our experience in life confirms what Jesus is trying to tell us.  We all do have our crosses to bear, do we not?  No exceptions.  I guarantee you that the pope himself had a bad hair day last Tuesday.  You know Tuesday is my day off, and do you think I go away for one day off without coming back to a big mess in the church on Wednesday?  Nooooooo!  Well if the pope has his crosses to bear, and Jesus had his crosses to bear, you better believe you and I have our crosses to bear.

M. Scott Peck, in the opening words of his huge bestseller, The Road Less Traveled, wrote: "Life is difficult."  Indeed, to put it slightly differently, the Buddha listed as the first of his Four Noble Truths: "Life is suffering." If there is someone here who has never known suffering, difficulty, disappointment and grief then I would like to know who you are, because you would be the first such person I have ever met, Christian or otherwise.

Now some astute member of this congregation may be thinking, "Rev. Schnell has said that one of his favorite biblical passages is where Jesus says: I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10).  Rev. Schnell seems to suggest that following Christ is in our enlightened self-interest.  Well how does Rev. Schnell reconcile the full life Jesus came to bring us with the humiliating and painful crosses we must bear to follow him?"

Well that is a very good question, and I do not have a good answer for it so long as the cross is the end of the story—the end of the "Bad News" about Jesus.  But the cross is not the end of the story about Jesus.  After the cross comes the crown, which is why the story about Jesus is called the Good News and not the Bad News.  You will notice that Jesus told his followers that he must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again (underscore added).  Peter didn’t hear that part because Jesus had already lost him with the parts about suffering, being rejected and killed.

God makes us suffer because he loves us, just like we make our children suffer because we love them.  How do we make them suffer?  We make them suffer every time we turn off the tube and make them do their homework.  Ask them, they do not want to do their homework or take examinations at school.  It is hard.  It is difficult.  Life is difficult, but it brings the best out in us.  In the end, when our children have a diploma in one hand and an acceptance letter to college in the other, they are glad Mom & Dad made them suffer.  It was worth it—more than worth it.

As the psalmist says in our Call to Worship: It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees (Psalm 119:71).  As St. Paul says: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (Romans 8:18), or again: For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all (II Corinthians 4:17).  We’re talking about surpassing glory—incomparable glory.

Once we hear Jesus out—once we understand that the cross leads to the crown—we are going to see our crosses differently.  We are not going to see them as diminishing or destroying our lives, but saving our lives.  We are not going to avoid them at all costs; we are going to take them up to follow the Master.  To where?  To Glory Land—to the Promised Land.  Therefore let us not settle for cheap grace or being "powdered Christians."  That is not the way of salvation. The way of the cross is the way of salvation.  "The Cross is a Must."