Take Up Your Cross
Mark 8:31-9:1
Was Jesus telling his followers that they must all be willing to be crucified?
Artemis Ghasemzadeh
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." And he said to them, "Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." - Mark 8:31-9:1
In Jesus's day, the punishment for claiming to be a king or for following someone who so claimed was a crime against the Emperor, and the punishment was death by crucifixion.
So, when Jesus says you must be willing to take up your cross, he is talking about that. You must be ready to die for your faith.
And that was a horrible death.
If someone threatened you with death, saying you must deny Jesus or die, what would you do?
We tend to think the persecution of those who followed Jesus ended when Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the empire. Still, there are many places in the world today where Christians are threatened with death.
According to Persecution.org, a website by the International Christian Concern, an interdenominational human rights organization, Iranian Christians seeking asylum in the U.S. were denied asylum and sent to Panama, where they have thirty days to find a place to go.
Artemis Ghasemzadeh, shown in the photo, converted from Islam to Christianity while visiting a church in Turkey. In Iran, leaving Islam is a crime punishable by death, so her claim for asylum seems legitimate.
She is bearing her cross.
We all know that our current administration has shut the doors on immigration, fearful of the massive influx of gang members and criminals, and many are protesting that action.
But instead of fighting for the MS13 members to get due process, why aren't we shouting about the Christians who need asylum?
If we claim to be a Christian nation, shouldn't we open our doors to persecuted Christians who are carrying their crosses?
Or will we let them go to their death the way Jesus did?
More to come...