Deny
yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Christ. If you will save your
life for heaven, you will lose your life for Christ on earth. But if
you seek to spare yourself suffering, trial, and persecution while
you're alive, you'll just end up losing your eternal life. The choice
couldn't be any clearer, or any more depressing. To follow Christ, it
seems, is to live a life of self-sacrifice and self-denial; grimly
determined to slog through this valley of tears, hoping and praying
that our lives after this one will be better. The most we can hope
for while trapped in this mortal coil is that we'll be given the
chance to die a martyr's death and escape a long sentence in
purgatory. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. And follow Christ to
your execution in the Valley of Skulls. Of course, what this dreary
picture leaves out is the daily reward of following Christ: the peace
that comes from detaching ourselves from the weight of impermanent
things; the joy that comes from forgiving and being forgiven; the
knowledge that our love for others is perfecting God's love in us. It
leaves out the part where self-sacrifice and self-denial are our ways
of offering God praise, of giving Him thanks. It forgets to ask, “Who
do you say that you are?”
Paul
starts us on the way to an answer. Addressing the Galatians, he
writes, “Through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus.
For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ.” Who do we say that we are? Let's change Paul's
declaration up a bit: “Through faith we are all children of God in
Christ Jesus. For all of us who were baptized into Christ have
clothed ourselves with Christ.” Who do we say that we are? Children
of God in Christ. Dead, buried, and raised with Christ in baptism. We
have put on Christ, been clothed with Christ. We belong to Christ.
So, when we deny ourselves, we only give away that which is no longer
ours to keep. When we take up a cross, it is Christ's cross that we
lift up. When we follow after him, it is not our lives that we are
spending but his. What is truly dreary, truly dismal is living a life
ordered toward the things of this world, the things that will pass
away, that will inevitably abandon us. What's truly depressing is
spending your life staring at an end where nothing begins, where your
only hope is that after you die someone might remember you. Is that
who you are? Who you will be? A memory—fond or not—just a memory?
How
do we get to the best answer to the question of who we are? We can
start with the questions Jesus asks his disciples. First, he wants to
know who the crowds say that he is. They answer. Then, he turns to
his friends and students and asks them, “But who do you say that I
am?” Peter answers for the disciples. Note that Jesus first asks
about the crowds, then he directly questions his friends. What do the
disciples know about Jesus that the crowds do not? This is exactly
what Jesus wants them to recognize and confess. They know who he is,
and those in the crowds do not. Knowing who Jesus truly is means
knowing what his purpose is, what he is here to be and do. The crowds
think that Jesus is a just another prophet, like Elijah or John the
Baptist. So, at most, those in the crowds will see a miracle or two;
maybe two or three of them will be healed. But b/c the disciples know
and confess Jesus' identity as the Christ of God, they belong to
Christ; they are Abraham’s descendants; and “heirs according to
the promise.” The best way to answer the question of who we are is
to correctly answer the question: who do you say that Jesus is? Who
you say Jesus is is who you are.
And
if you say that Jesus is the Christ, then you will deny yourself,
take up your cross daily, and follow him. If you will save your life
for heaven, you will lose your life for Christ on earth. But if you
seek to spare yourself suffering, trial, and persecution by denying
Christ while you're alive, you'll just end up losing your eternal
life. The reason for this is simple: you belong to Christ. We
all belong to Christ. And belonging to Christ has consequences. As
heirs to the promise, we have our own promises to keep. To seek
holiness through self-sacrifice and self-denial. To bear witness to
the mercy we've received from God. To forgive those who have sinned
against us. To enthrone the Holy Spirit in the tabernacles of our
hearts and surrender all of our gifts to His service. None of these
promises is easy to fulfill. But they are all the more difficult to
keep if we shy away from confessing that Jesus is the Christ, if we
persist in following the crowds and making him into a latter-day
prophet, or a social reformer, or a political revolutionary. He
showed us the way to eternal life on his cross—sacrificial love.
And it is sacrificial love that will nail each one of us to our own
cross. . .if we will follow him; if we deny the Self and all that
bloats and rots the Self in this world.
So,
who do you say that Jesus is? Do you follow after a Barbie Doll
Jesus, changing his designer outfits whenever the whim strikes? Do
you say that he was just a religious leader that died in the first
century? Some biblical scholars argue that Jesus was really an early
second century literary composite of many different prophets. The
gospel writers and editors invented Jesus to help the early church in
its PR campaign against the Jews and Romans. Or maybe you would say
that Jesus was a peace-nik vegetarian hippie prototype with serious
Daddy issues? Just remember: whoever you say that Jesus is tells
you who you are. And what you have promised to do with your life.
And what you will be after you are gone. Our Lord isn't a Barbie Doll
or a literary composite. And following him isn't always a parade. He
tells the disciples what will happen to him: “The Son of Man must
suffer greatly and be rejected by the [religious leaders] and be
killed and on the third day be raised.” If they follow him, they
can expect the same. And so can we. Knowing this, expecting this: who
do you say that Jesus is? Not just “who is Jesus to you” but who
is he really, truly? If he is the Christ, deny yourself, take up
your cross, and follow him. Daily. Daily, seek to spend your life
living as a child of God clothed with Christ. You belong to Christ.
You are Abraham’s descendants, and you are heirs according to the
promise.
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