Sunday, September 15, 2024
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
What does it mean to deny yourself and take up your cross
Rev. Mark Wilkinson
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
Katy, Texas
There are many directions you can go with today’s gospel and the passage from James about the danger of an unbridled tongue is also inviting for a sermon in today’s political world. We are seeing the danger of unbridled tongues in the current campaigns for a variety of offices so I think I will just leave that there and encourage all of us to take James’ message to heart.
I want to focus today on our gospel and a progression through several things that Jesus says, because we have one of the most unified teaches in a short passage that Jesus gives us in Mark. Three points to consider. The rebuke of Peter where Jesus says, “for you have setting your mind not on heavenly things but on earthly things” Second he says to the disciples and the crowd, “Deny yourself and take up your cross.” Thirdly the reference to saving and losing your life. These are all connected and while each could be its own sermon I want to look at them as a complete teaching by Jesus.
Peter as always is one of my favorite figures in the Bible. If there is a way to mess up he will usually find it and as such becomes a perfect teaching vehicle for Jesus. He also gives me great hope for if someone who messes up as much as he did can be an important disciple, well there is hope for me as well.
Jesus is telling Peter what is going to happen in this first teaching about Jesus coming arrest, trial and execution. Peter loves Jesus and doesn’t want to see him killed so he rebukes him, probably telling him not to go to Jerusalem or do what he is going to do that has and will anger the Jewish leaders. Jesus’ reference to Satan is not about the devil. Satan as learn in the book of Job is an angel who tests, challenges, tempts people. So Jesus really isn’t calling Peter the devil, but is acknowledging that he is having a hard enough time with all this and he doesn’t need his friends tempting him to take an easier way out.
Peter’s focus is on his human emotions and needs. Jesus is looking towards God’s will and desires, heavenly things. Sometimes we have to set aside those human desires and needs and look toward something bigger as part of God’s desires. Notice I didn’t say God’s plans. I do not believe or teach that God has some huge plan with the details of everyone’s life written out. I believe God gives us the freedom of will but that doesn’t mean God doesn’t desire the best for us, but we have a part to play and choices to make. Putting our minds on heavenly things and not earthly is one of those choices we need to make sometimes on a daily basis.
The second point I raised is the famous line “Those who wish to follow me must deny themselves and take up their cross.” There may be no more important line in scripture or no line that has been misinterpreted as badly. This line is often agonized over and dissected. Many people see deny yourself and something like a Lenten discipline. Giving up something or denying yourself things that you like. When you go that route than the take up your cross becomes a burden, but remember Jesus also says his yoke is easy and his burden is light. So what is another way to look at this verse?
Deny yourself. All of us have what Thomas Merton refers to as a true and a false self. The true self is God centered. The false is ego centered. The self that we need to deny is the small self, the selfish self, the tribal self that is focused on me, my group, my tribe.
We are in a world of divisive dualistic thinking, and I believe that this tribalism is the greatest threat to our society. This is certainly the problem in our political discourse. This dualistic mind set is black and white, right and wrong with no middle ground. Retreating into a world where the other is not only wrong but evil threatens the very fabric of our society. Especially when this tribal false self has taken conflict to the “we must destroy the other” extreme.
This is the self that Jesus asks us to deny. The self that must be right at all costs. The self that will not allow for a difference of opinion or see that there may be more than one side to a question or more than one solution to a problem.
With our focus moved off the ego centered self and into the God centered self we can then become part of the solution. The God centered self can look at what does God desire from us. What can we do so thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. This becomes more than a prayer that we recite without thinking about what a profound prayer this really is. I have a story where God engages a person saying the Lord’s Prayer in a conversation and basically asks them, “Do you really mean it or are you just reciting something you learned as a child?”
I want you to then think of take up your cross as not something horrible and burdensome, but as an act of unity with God and look at it with joy even if it is hard work. For you will not be carrying your cross alone if that cross is in harmony with God’s desire.
The third point is: “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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” This builds on the previous idea of deny yourself. The lost life is the earthbound ego centered life and the life is going to die at some point in time. The question the Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr ask is are you willing to lose that life, that ego centered false self/life to gain the God centered true self/life. We all need at some point to let that ego centered life go and move into the God centered life. Some people do it at a young age and many finally get it only at the end of their human life. Jesus is inviting us today to make that choice.
I’m sure Jesus was frustrated, maybe irritated at Peter in this passage. However he still loved and loves Peter. Oh, make no mistake he calls him out but then uses this teachable moment to teach all of us how to be followers. Put your mind on heavenly things, get out of our selfish bubble and put God at the center. Lose that self-centered life and put God at the center, take up your cross, the work that you are called to do and then you will in fact save your life and make the world a better place.