"Get Thee Behind Me Satan", James Tissot (1886-1894)
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
This statement by Jesus has always been at the heart of what is required of people who want to follow him.
So today, let’s spend some time with this sentence and see how it might apply to our lives as 21st century Christians.
First of all, “if any want to be my followers….”
In the gospel according to Mark, Jesus has people following after him all the time. The crowds come from everywhere to hear him preach, to be fed by him, to be healed by him, to have demons banished—people are attracted by the good news.
Now Jesus has a way of seeing that is more than just casual observation. Jesus can see into the souls of people. This inner seeing on Jesus’ part is quite evident in John’s gospel. How Jesus sees is also part of Mark’s gospel. This kind of seeing into people’s souls is a part of what happens when Jesus calls the disciples to follow after him and to help him carry out his ministry.
In the very first chapter of Mark, Jesus is passing along the Sea of Galilee and he sees Simon and Andrew and calls to them—“Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”
James and John—Mark says only that Jesus sees them and calls them. In Chapter 2, Jesus sees Levi, the tax collector, sitting at the tax booth and he says to him, “Follow me.” And Levi got up and followed him.
The wonder and joy of today’s passage is that we find out that Jesus not only calls the disciples, but he calls all of us.
Mark tells us that Jesus calls the crowd to him with his disciples, because just as Jesus has seen Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John and Levi, Jesus also sees the crowd, sees their inchoate longings, their hunger, their need for healing, their secret and not so secret miseries.
And even now, Jesus sees all of us all the time. He sees our longings, our hungers, our need for healing, the miseries that all of us have that we keep hidden from the world.
Jesus sees us doing the things we do in our day to day lives—whatever our day to day lives hold, and all the time, he’s saying to all of us who are in the crowd
“If any want to be my followers….”
The first condition of being a follower of Jesus is to want to be a follower. Not just to want to follow while the sun is out and the way is easy, but to still want to follow even when all you can see is Jesus way out ahead in front of you carrying his own cross and nothing but darkness beyond that, and you’re stumbling along dragging your cross along and you can’t keep up.
Following Jesus is a longing that nothing else can satisfy—not human love, not success in this life, not fame, not money. We often settle for the joys these things bring, and tell ourselves that you know what, this is all there is, so I’ll take it and be satisfied.
But ultimately, this longing to be a follower is only fulfilled by following, which Abraham knew as he heard God say yet again that he would be a father of nations even though by now God had been promising and promising and nothing had happened and the clock was ticking and Abraham and Sarah were old, too old to have children, and so even though Abraham and Sarah laughed and doubted God’s plan, they followed anyway.
In the end, their longing for God was greater than their need for security, stability, and certainty. And so they simply followed, just as the disciples did centuries later when Jesus called them to follow him. Of course, like us, they all failed miserably much of the time, but still, they kept trying.
So Jesus sees us, in fact Jesus is always looking for us, and Jesus is always calling us. “If any want to be my followers….” Jesus longs for us to long to follow him.
So if we figure it out—that yes, we do want to be followers, not just the hangers on in the crowd, then we have to pay attention to the next part of this sentence.
“Let them deny themselves and take up their cross.”
Here’s where the complications set in and discernment on our part becomes necessary.
First of all, denying ourselves.
Our culture is all about indulging ourselves.
Many ads and commercials that we see are all about indulging ourselves because we deserve it. The very idea of denying ourselves of anything we want is downright counter-cultural.
And then there’s the denial that can go badly wrong.
Did you all read that article in the Free Lance-Star on Friday about Jonathan Hollingsworth? Jonathan and his mother, Amy, have written a book called Runaway Radical: When Doing Good Goes Wrong. In Jonathan’s case, denial of himself in order to do God’s work in the world became all about his own work, his own power to deny himself, his own effort to BE Jesus, and he ended up clinically depressed and unable to do anything. He crashed and burned because he picked up every cross that he saw and tried to carry them all. He tried to BE Jesus and forgot that he was following Jesus.
And this is a danger for all of us—pride and self-reliance and the ego getting caught up in showing what great people we are because we have so much to do, and so many crosses to carry.
So there has to be a lot of prayerful discernment about what it is God is calling us to deny in ourselves that is keeping us from God, (like the need for admiration and approval, the need to be needed, etc, etc,). For instance, sometimes we take on the crosses of others so that they won’t have to bear them. In the end, this cross bearing doesn’t solve anything for anybody.
We need to be in prayer to discern exactly what crosses are ours to bear.
The Greek is clear here. “The cross of him,” that is, our individual crosses. God is not asking us to be the Savior of the world, but simply to take up the cross that is ours to bear.
A whole lot of prayer is simply around the issues that come with picking up crosses and bearing them. And this is where spiritual direction and friendship can come in handy. To have someone to share these prayerful dilemmas in our lives with us can be really helpful, because we all know that there are more crosses in the world, right in our path, than we can pick up and carry alone.
St Ignatius came up with what is known as the Spiritual Exercises in the 16th century, and these exercises are widely used today. I use them loosely as a guide in my day to day life of prayer, especially when I’m trying to discern what God’s will might be in any given situation, including which crosses to carry and which to put down, and which not to pick up at all.
St Ignatius says that right discernment ultimately brings peace, which I have found over the years to be true. When we make prayerful decisions that align with God’s will for our lives, then God fills us with peace, the peace that passes understanding.
The last part of the call Jesus gave to the crowd was “Follow me.”
Following Jesus is a unique journey for each one of us.
For one person, following may mean devoting herself to caring for children. For another, working to care for the earth, or being honest at work when everyone around you is being dishonest, for another, serving in the military.
Kayla Mueller , a young human rights activist and humanitarian aid worker who recently died while being held captive by ISIS, said this about following. “Some people find God in Church. Some people find God in nature. Some people find God in Love. I find God in suffering. I’ve known for some time what my life’s work is, using my hands as tools to relieve suffering.”
During this season of Lent, spend some time in prayer about how Jesus is calling you to follow him along the Way.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus Christ, who carried your cross for our sake, we know that you see into the hearts of each one of us, and that you long for each one of us to follow you. So we ask that you give us the vision to see what it is that blinds us to your light and presence in our lives, and to let go of those things. Give us the wisdom to know what crosses are ours to bear, and the courage to pick them up and carry them, knowing that your yoke is easy and your burden is light.
In Your holy name we pray,
Amen.