“If anyone want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”
Last week, we talked about those passages of the Gospel that make us cringe a little bit…Well, I guess this whole denying yourself and carrying your own cross thing would be one of them! If that’s what following Christ is all about, one could wonder why one would do such a thing, unless something’s wrong with them. It may make us think of some clichés that go around about piety, like in the Dan Brown’s stories where Christians literally enjoy beating themselves up. But without going to such extremes, this invitation to discipleship certainly clashes with today’s philosophy of well being, where we hear all the time that people are meant to be happy and to enjoy their lives. And this way of seeing thing is certainly present as well in our churches: We are invited to find our true selves in Christ, to bloom and flourish and to find out about God’s (big) plans for our life. In our chuches, there is really this idea that when we follow Jesus, we are going to thrive, and not suffer and die correct? Because, again, otherwise, who would want to do it unless they‘re insane? And yet, it looks like we have to think again, because it’s right there in the middle of Mark’s. This passage actually splits the Gospel in two, where Jesus reveals that being the Messiah is not about being a successful leader opening a new era of prosperity for Israel, what everybody would have expected at this point in Jesus’s successful ministry, rather, well aware of increasing hostility on behalf of the religious leaders, Jesus teaches that the Son of Man is the one who have to “undergo great sufferings, be rejected and killed“. And those who want to follow him are to expect some similar fate.
So how are we to understand this? There is certainly something very wrong in preaching that Christians should deny themselves any possibility of being happy, that Christian life should be all about suffering in sacrifice, and yet maybe there is also something wrong in making of Christianity a sort of “self help therapy“ leading us to worry-less, prosperous life. This is certainly not the example Jesus sets for us and Peter had to be seriously disillusioned for thinking it could go any other way.
So let’s have a closer look at Jesus’s invitation
1. Deny yourself
Jesus announces the program of what it means to be the Messiah. In spite of the crowd’s expectations, including the disciples’, Jesus is not the one who is going to bring them the good life, fill their bellies and save them from the pain and humiliation of the Roman occupation. Yes, he does some healings and miracles but there are meant to be signs of God’s kingdom, this kingdom the people must seek instead of clinging to earthly realities. And now, far from letting the crowd crwn him their new King on earth, Jesus is going to renounce all power. He is the first to deny himself, he who as the Son of God came on earth to be with the most humble people.
As Paul puts it: “(…) being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6)
Jesus denies himself for the sake of being in solidarity with people, especially those who had no power. He didn’t want to rule over people but to serve them and give himself to them.
In the same way, we have to choose in this life if we want to single ourselves out as the hero or if we want to be in community, in a relationship with others. Do we want to live our lives for ourselves or do we want to share our lives and even to give it for others? I think there is something in most of us that quite naturally makes us want to care for others, to help them and to bring them joy, and when we live a life where we don‘t do any of that, we are never really happy or we may lose our sense of purposefulness. And so when Jesus asks his disciples and all those who want to follow him to deny themselves, it is not meant as self sabotaging, rather it’s a bout giving what’s best so we can be truly ourselves beyond the selfish ego, we can be the people God has created us to be: in relationships, caring for one another and loving one another.
2 – Pick up your cross.
There is indeed something quite scary and rebuking in being asked to pick our cross as we follow Jesus and yet, there is also something very simple, and humble in doing that. Jesus does not ask us to get a PhD to follow him, he does not ask us to become a doctor or a lawyer, as maybe our parents asked us to do! Jesus isn’t asking about our accomplishments, not even our religious accomplishments, our good deeds. Jesus says that to follow him, we just have to live our life as it is, offering it all up to him. Sufferings are there for sure in our lives, more surely than any kind of success and accomplishments. Our sufferings can be due to illness, rejection, loneliness, or even just due to the strain of everyday life, the weight of routine and daily frustrations (Don’t we use the word to suffer as a synonym to being patient!).
But again we have the choice, we can suffer in isolation, trying to soldier it on or let our suffering turn to anger or violence, or we can live our suffering in communion with those who suffer and in communion with Christ who suffered for us. We can let our suffering teach us vulnerability and compassion. In some ways, it’s the easiest thing because there will always be suffering for us in our lives, our crosses are right there for us to pick up, all we have to do is take them as we follow him so we open ourselves to him in the midst of our trials. It’s again an invitation to love.
3. Follow me
And then Jesus invites us to follow him. I read an interesting commentary saying that it sounds funny and counter cultural in a world where we are always encouraged to become leaders, certainly not followers. We are encouraged to do our own thing, to be better and bigger. But spiritual life isn’t like a competitive exam. Again, Jesus showed us an example of solidarity, being the leader he acted like a servant (see again Philippians 2). As for us, we need to follow him in imitating his life of love and service, openness and vulnerability. Once again, it sounds hard and scary, when it’s in fact reassuring and simple: It says that we have someone walking ahead of us and guiding us. We don’t need to do this on our own.
Then maybe, even more deeply, it’s an invitation to let God be God and surrender to the mystery, living our life with trust. Because of his fear and lack of trust, Peter was not able to hear what Jesus’s message was really about. Yes, Jesus announced his passion, his rejection, suffering and death but he also announced his resurrection: “(…) 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.” We deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow him not to suffer and die, but through suffering and dying, Jesus leads us to real and eternal life. It may means to have to lose our lives in this world (however we understand that) but it’s for gaining something much bigger. When Jesus asks: “(…) What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” it’s because he teaches that our soul is much more precious and important than all that we can wish to possess. Again, far from self sabotaging, it’s about becoming who we truly are. But instead of trying to do it on our own, we do it by him, and with him, and in him, as we remember each week when we celebrate the Eucharist.