Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me

 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."  And He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power."

- Mark 8:34-9:1

Yesterday, we read that Jesus came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him, and begged Him to touch him.  So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the town.  And when He had spit on his eyes and put His hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything.  And he looked up and said, "I see men like trees, walking."  Then He put His hands on his eyes again and made him look up.  And he was restored and saw everyone clearly.  Then He sent him away to his house, saying, "Neither go into the town, nor tell anyone in the town."  Now Jesus and His disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea Philippi; and on the road He asked His disciples, saying to them, "Who do men say that I am?"  So they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets."  He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Peter answered and said to Him, "You are the Christ."  Then He strictly warned them that they should tell no one about Him.  And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  He spoke this word openly.  Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him.  But when He had turned around and looked at His disciples, He rebuked Peter, saying, "Get behind Me, Satan!  For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."

 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me."    While the cross was a dreaded instrument of Roman punishment, says my study bible, it's also a symbol of suffering by Christians in imitation of Christ.  Self-denial is for the sake of the love of God and the gospel.  This is the opposite of "punishment," something one must grasp in the love of Christ and in grace.  It's not an end in itself but rather a means to overcome and to transcend a world fallen away from communion with God for the sake of the Kingdom.  The cross becomes an exchange of one way of thinking and being for another, a way of deliverance.  Galatians 5:4 speaks of "crucifying the flesh with its passions and desires."

"For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it.  For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." My study bible says here that the central paradox of Christian living is that in grasping for temporal things, we lose the eternal.  But in the sacrifice of what is "worldly," we gain eternal riches that are unimaginable (1 Corinthians 2:9).  

And He said to them, "Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power."   The following reading is of the Transfiguration, which we will read about tomorrow:  this is a direct reference to the apostles who will witness it -- and also to those in each generation who will experience the presence of God's kingdom, says my study bible.

What does the Cross mean to us?  How do we associate our own crosses with the Cross of Christ?  We know that the Cross gives us sacrifice, but for what, for what reason?  This is a hard question to answer, except in retrospect, in knowing of the Resurrection.  Jesus will say, "Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends"  (John 15:13 NKJV).   The image of the Cross is about sacrifice for the sake of love.  One example from every day life would be the things one sacrifices for those whom he or she loves:  a child endangered, for example, would produce immediate self-endangerment from a parent trying to save them.  This is sacrifice for love.  Caring for others whom we love involves a degree of self-sacrifice, for example, in caring for parents who are aging and infirm.  Love is a kind of exchange, in which our own self-interest is seen as limited, and we're opened up to a bigger kind of opening and experience, a bigger view on life, for things that transcend the "temporal."  But when we put our lives in God's hands, a much greater and bigger picture takes shape.  Christ is the One who's gone before us, and set the real example for heroic self-sacrifice for the sake of love and the "bigger picture."  He teaches us the example of what it is to lose one's life in order to save it, the Resurrection teaches us of a Kingdom into which we're each invited, into which He wishes to take each one of us -- and maybe more importantly, which must dwell here and now in this world with us, and imbue our own understanding of life with its values and meanings.   That's a much greater reality, an exchange in which we give up our own limited understanding of life for the beauty of Christ's way.  All of this is tied to faith and to the experience of faith.  Through prayer, we will know moments when we're called to sacrifice something we might want or think we know for something quite different, that brings us into a greater picture.  We might lose one job we think we want in exchange for something unplanned.  We'll find that helping someone who's treated us poorly brings us a grace that is unsurpassable, a sense of ourselves and the great goodness of which we're capable, the strength that comes from God's grace we didn't know we were capable of having.  All of life is about a giant exchange in the point of view of Christ:  one life for another, one world for another that is endowed with the life of the Kingdom, one self-interest for an expanded understanding of love, life as competition for life as endowed with grace.  This is where we go, what He puts us through.  It's all for a reason, an exchange, a kind of growth so far outside of our own box it feels like the Cross while we're working through it and in it.  Faith is the trust that we put in Him, to follow Him.  It's the trust He teaches to place in the Father and the Spirit.  It's the reality of understanding a kind of heroism that gives us the true nature of what that really means.  It makes us realize the lie in selfishness, the false front that life is what we appear to have and not what we truly own as persons in our souls.  We give up one way, for His Way.  Where is our loyalty?  Whom do we trust most?  What leads us from chaos to the values that give us a truly "civilized" life?  Faith is the acceptance that what we seem to be called by God to sacrifice in our lives is leading us to a greater place God calls us to, something fuller, deeper, what it means to have "life in abundance."  We follow in the footsteps of countless others, but the experience belongs to us each in our own way, with our own crosses.  We know the love of God for us; where we're called, we're called by love.

He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much

"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?  No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon." 

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

"The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."

- Luke 16:10-17,18

Yesterday, we read that Jesus also said to His disciples:  "There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.  So he called him and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you?  Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.'  Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do?  For my master is taking the stewardship away from me.  I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg.  I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.'  So he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'  And he said, 'A hundred measures of oil.'  So he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.'  Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?'  So he said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.'  And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.'  So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly.  For the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.  And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home."

"He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.  Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?  And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own?  No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon."   My study bible says, "The test as to whether God will bestow heavenly blessings (true riches) on a person is directly related to how that person spends his money.  The money we consider our own is actually another man's, that is, belonging to God, or at least to the poor.  The Fathers universally see a person's failure to give money to God's work as stealing:  'nothing less than embezzlement of money belonging to someone else' (Theophylact)."   Yesterday's parable gave us an idea of what it is we "work for" -- how we use our worldly goods (to my mind, that is everything in our lives, including our health and talents and time) -- is a key to what we do with our lives.  Do we serve God or mammon?  If God has invested in us, then how do we use that loan of our lives?  Jesus tells us that we must make a choice.

Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him.  And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.  For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God."  A note says that "the things which are highly esteemed among men include money, power, position, and praise."

"The law and the prophets were until John.  Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it.  And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail."  A tittle is the smallest stroke made in forming certain Hebrew letters.  My study bible says that the whole of the Law is affirmed as the foundation for Christ's new teaching.

"Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery."  In Matthew's Gospel, Jesus has chastised these men for the easy availability of divorce for a Jewish man; there really needed to be no important reason.  (Jewish women could not initiate divorce; Roman women could do so.)  We may not understand this as moderns, but this quotation here isn't really a separate topic at all from the earlier verses in today's reading.  Jesus has been preaching on how we use the things we have, how we use all the gifts of God, and whom we serve.  Easy divorce could mean destitution for women, and certainly a lack of social standing.  It was an injustice in the marriage, and this is what He tries to correct in citing their hardness-of-heart as the reason Moses gave divorce to the men in the society.  (See Matthew 19:8-9.)   Indeed, it is in thinking of the marriage partner as some sort of "goods" rather than in what Jesus describes as a true marriage, that this type of easy divorce is facilitated.

We get the picture from all of these sayings that truly Jesus is emphasizing what ways we use our resources in life, and all those resources are meant as "loans" or gifts from God, investments in us as human beings.  He's speaking to a group of men, leadership of the temple and religious practice.  And He reminds them what their lives are for.  The marriage example seems like another subject, but it's really not at all.  It's an example of how selfish behavior affects community, how the use of personal wealth with hard-heartedness destroys community, the foundation of the society and its relatedness at the most intimate levels.  If we cannot serve God and mammon, then we really have to think with each decision we make who exactly we are serving in our choices.  It's going to be one or the other, in accordance with the mindset of Jesus in these teachings.  Do we serve love or avarice, community or self-centeredness?    Let us consider how many ways we think it is the other way around, that God is supposed to serve us.  When I hear people speaking about God's perfect plan, I often wonder how much of the Bible has been read.  God's plans don't necessarily serve our greatest dreams of financial and social success, but so often we feel that the reward is in these material terms.  A heroic life is a different sort of life than this, than this perspective.  A hero lives to do what is best, even if nobody appreciates that in his or her immediate circumstances.  Jesus Christ is the ultimate hero, going voluntarily to a sacrifice (in accordance with the verdict of a corrupt world, his formal community in using its laws and representatives both religious and state governing), even though He dies to bring the greatest gift of grace to all the world and for all time.   Christ is our great Witness; His death is a testimony, and so is His Resurrection.  What we seek in serving God is a life full of the highest meaning.  Those who have been through life or death circumstances will tell you that this is the greatest gift to anyone:  a true depth of meaning and purpose.  It's a kind of confidence that passes understanding.  It is something that is so far beyond the goals of "money, power, position, and praise."  While these things may certainly be gifts of God in a blessed and well-lived life, they are not the goals for which we follow our love for God.  They are not the goals in themselves.  And, you know, even if we are not always the greatest examples of "success" (just as in Jesus' time), it's really up to us to decide who and what we serve in life, even if it doesn't seem praiseworthy in the "eyes of men."  That is, it's up to us to decide how we are going to live, what we are going to live for, and thereby whether or not we serve truly what is best -- whether or not we live heroic lives with meaning and purposes that surpasses only materialistic perspective.  Many of the characters of the Bible are crowned, not with gold, but with crowns of glory.  And we have to think hard about what material wealth means without an interior meaning, without this relationship in which we are assured of a kind of love that is totally steadfast, a safe place to fall.  Psychologically, wealth cannot by itself comfort us, and in that situation without faith, material wealth can totally distort our image of ourselves as human beings and even take away hope and life.  I can testify that God has blessed me with very much material comfort (see Matthew 19:29), but I have also been called to give up things most dear to me.  In my personal journey of faith, God calls upon me to shirk from nothing, but to deal with it all, everything -- good and bad -- that life presents, and to make the tough choices.  But there is nothing greater than the meaning God gives to our lives and the purpose of doing whatever we can to make our whole community a little better, whatever size that may be, to live with honor and integrity of purpose even if nobody else understands you or what or whom you are trying to serve.  The kind of life He calls us toward is the greatest in reward, but perhaps it takes experience and discernment to understand it.  That's the wisdom He offers.