Donna M. Lane
St. Gertrude the Great Writing Group
Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)
We take up many things casually every day, most without thinking: our mail, a neighbor’s wave, dinner from the oven, a child from its crib. Taking/receiving becomes synonymous by the time we are adults. If somebody gives us a gift when it’s not a birthday or holiday, we usually receive (not take) it with joyful surprise and, perhaps, a bit of self-consciousness. Jesus’s saying that we must take up our cross is confusing. Take up? When? How? Why? That he endured so much for us is beyond our ability to fully comprehend, but do we need to follow his example in order to enter his kingdom? Both Luke and Mark present this teaching by Jesus as a conditional invitation: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23–24; cf. Mark 8:34–35).
The terms are few, hard, and start with an if. “Take up” involves a clear two-step direction for claiming our own cross: (1) a deliberate action (2) enabled by a painful how: denying ourselves. Why? Jesus says we must lose our life if we want to save it. That paradoxical condition moves the casual act of taking to a difficult choice. Luke alone among the Gospel writers adds the word daily, determining the when and underscoring its difficulty.
As his life on earth drew to a close, the tone of Jesus’s teaching may have had to become more emphatic, perhaps because he was trying to jog the Apostles out of familiar doubt and uncertainty into understanding his purpose. Jesus knew the Apostles before he chose them. He had seen them jump over, around, and through faith, sifting, shifting between the evidence of his parables and teachings, needing his forgiveness, his ready acceptance, and great love. Jesus had been patiently revealing “his way” as they got to know him, but time was short.
The Apostles had just returned from their initiation into proclaiming Jesus’s kingdom, to tell him with great enthusiasm the details of their success; they had witnessed Lazarus being raised from death by Jesus and, most recently, had assisted him in the feeding of the five thousand. But when Jesus asked them, “Who do you say I am?” (Luke 9:18-21), only Peter could identify him as the long-awaited Messiah. Jesus knew that his leaving was near and that most of his closest companions would not be with him when he showed on his cross how much he loved them.
Recoiling from pain and suffering might be a normal, human reaction, but if the first impressions from Luke’s passage cause us to recoil and turn away, we might never see that this pronouncement by Jesus could make sense. As good as earthly life can be, it is always shadowed by the cloud of sin, the threat of death, and drastic change, making it hard to consider that his suffering and death were an act of divine love meant to repair man’s relationship with the source of all life. Perhaps anyone who has not experienced failure, heartache, and the agony of death in their life might not. Even confirmed followers of Jesus talk constantly in their songs and novels about how difficult it is.
The ordinary men at that Last Supper the night before Jesus was crucified must have had intentions to further enjoy his friendship, know him better, understand more clearly his peaceful way of living, remain near his profound goodness. The Crucifixion of Jesus interrupted their plans, just as seeing injustice and poverty pit modern man’s enjoyment of material abundance against our intentions to love and serve others. Like Peter, who denied Jesus, we may stand close to the fire of life, but fail to see its light, feel its warmth, or comprehend our power to give and receive love. We see suffering everywhere and deny it by wishing it would go away. Perhaps, as for Peter, a loving look from Jesus’s eyes can steady us into accepting the challenge of following him and his way of living.
Can we humans admit that denying ourselves is not impossible? Don’t we do so every time we stop what we are doing to respond to another’s need? Jesus says to take up our cross if we are to enter His kingdom. Don’t we do that when we allow traffic to merge ahead, mow our aging neighbor’s lawn, spend Saturdays off helping groups fund charities, honor our parents through trying end-of-life issues, and go about our day-to-day following the most peaceful path? Could taking up our cross be easier if we let go of the useless things that exhaust our hearts? Could we begin a better life by losing ourselves as Jesus did, thinking about others? What would we learn by trying to pray as Jesus did: “Not my will, Father, but yours”?
Luke 9:28 states that eight days after Jesus’s sayings about following him, Peter, James and John were with him at his glorious Transfiguration. In 2 Peter 1:16–19, a much older, wiser, and more saintly Peter gives detailed testimony that at the Transfiguration they heard a voice from heaven proclaiming, “This is my Son, my beloved with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.”
If we pause for a moment to take a second look at the teachings of Jesus, we may discover that our first impression gives way to a deeper, yet straightforward, simplicity that draws us beyond our usual thinking. Can we listen to Jesus’s appeal long enough to hear the difference in his voice and ours? Instead of debating what to take up, if we try following Jesus by taking up the cross, we could, like his Apostles, grow in understanding and come to experience a new, more fulfilling way of being.