There was a well-intentioned move a few years ago to replace crucifixes (on the walls of churches, classrooms and homes) with a simple crosses without the figure of the dead Christ.

I understand the shift. We do need to appreciate that we Christians are people of the resurrection.

However the fact is that resurrection is possible only after an experience of death, and most of us spend most of our time and energy trying to avoid any experience which carries even a hint of death.

Then we hear today’s second reading which provides the key to understanding the gospel invitation to “take up your cross and follow…”

Let’s take a moment to consider a couple of verses from that Romans reading.

“When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death; in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.

“But we believe that having died with Christ we shall return to life with him: Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead will never die again. Death has no power over him any more. When he died, he died, once for all, to sin, so his life now is life with God; and in that way, you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.

While many celebrations of the Sacrament of Baptism are a rather polite affair, often with gatherings of people who may have little appreciation of the death-confronting-transforming opportunity of the Sacrament, the reality is that Baptism is a death-confronting and life transforming moment.

Early baptismal fonts have been excavated, many built as tombs enabling the one baptised to pass through the tomb to rise.

As one AI commentary puts it well and concisely:

“dying with Christ in baptism means that your old self, bound by original and personal sin, is sacramentally crucified and buried with Jesus. Emerging from the water, you rise as a new creation, freed from sin and empowered to walk in newness of life.”