Bible Reading: Mark 8:31-38
Dear Friends,
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For us, living after the crucifixion and resurrection, this text makes sense. We probably don’t even flinch. We have our cross to bear too. And when we bear that cross, we become more and more like the One who bore the cross on Calvary. And, that is the point of a life of faith.
“take up their cross.” When Jesus says this here, a long time before Golgotha, these words would have had to sting and confuse the ears of his listeners. Take up our cross? What cross? Oh, you mean a cross of crucifixion? The instrument of death for a slave? There are some who clearly want to toss this passage in the historical-Jesus-didn’t-say-this bin. They may be right. This verse hardly makes sense precrucifixion. And yet we could argue about that or, we could imagine the sheer linguisitic power that he was conjuring up to make his real point here: 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.
When you follow Jesus it means putting your own self-survival in the backseat. The first act of following Jesus is totally reordering your priorities and principles to the way of the Kingdom. It’s no longer about saving your life. Following Jesus means that your priority is to lose your life. And, what better way to talk about that than the cross. It’s an instrument where not only are you condemned to a tortuous death, but you’re also succumbing to a dishonourable death. A slave’s death. A death that even the Hebrew Bible calls “accursed.”
On the cross you don’t just lose your life, but you do so in a wholly unfashionable way. You lose everything. Life. Honour. Pride. But, Jesus says that in such a loss everything is, in fact, gained. And, just in case Jesus’ first audience didn’t get it because they were scandalized at the thought of dropping those last few pitiful rungs on the societal ladder Jesus himself follows this up with showing them how it’s done.
How to lose. And how to triumph. For God and His Kingdom.
Shalom Solomzi