August

Carrying our cross – thoughts on a talk given by Rev. Bridgette Siepker on Sunday 27 July 2026

What the talk meant for me, by John-Peter Gernaat

​Rev. Bridgette Siepker has carried a theme through much of this year: being on the way. This theme carried us through festivals and into the periods of Trinity between festivals.

The festival of St John is one that is new in the Movement for Religious Renewal. It forms part of the festivals that we relate to the Holy Spirit. When we arrive at the period of Trinity between the festivals of St John and Michaelmas we can reflect on the festival we have left and prepare for the festival that lies ahead. The pericopes during this period of Trinity aid greatly in this journey, on the way.

The first of these pericopes from Mark’s Gospel contains two statements of Jesus. The first is a question to the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” When I answer this question for myself I must also take into account what this response means for me. If I acknowledge the incarnation of the divine into the human being as the anointed one, what does this mean for me and my life? If I acknowledge the Christ-in-me, what responsibility does this place on me?

Then Jesus said something that we may think of as natural after the crucifixion, but to think that Jesus said this before there was any talk of a crucifixion must raise a question. Jesus has spoken to his disciples about the suffering that the Son of Man must endure, that he will die and rise again. Then, Jesus suddenly exhorts those who would follow him to take up their cross.

What does this mean? The Trinity epistle is helpful in discovering something of this. The Trinity epistle tells us that everything that we are comes from the Father God. This means that what I am and what I have that is good and also everything that is bothersome and unredeemed comes from the Father God. The Son God takes what is, out of the hands of the Father God and creates. He creates us and creates in us. What I create can only be created through Christ in me. The Spirit God is treated differently in the epistle; the Spirit God is spoken of in statements but rather in requests or possibilities.

How does this relate to the cross?

What I am, the good and the bad, my gifts and my karma come from the Father and are my being. This could represent the upright of the cross.

What I transform and become through the Christ working in me and me working with the Christ-in-me in all the aspects of my being – body, soul and spirit – is the outstretched horizontal of the cross.

What is enabled through the Spirit God is the binds the relationship between my being and my becoming; it is the binding force that holds the cross together.

Therefore the cross takes on a new image, no longer the culminating point of death, but the possibility for a becoming.

The challenge to pick up my cross is now a completely renewed challenge: can I accept all that I am, can I open myself to the Spirit so that I may work with the power of Christ in me to transform in me what I bring as unresolved karma so that I become ever more the future human being on the way of becoming.