If anyone wishes to
follow me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever would save their life will lose
it; and whoever loses their life for my sake will save it. [Mark 8:34-35; Matthew 16:24-25; Luke
9:23-24; John 12:25]
It’s interesting always to ask, are there ways we can read
these ancient words so that they strike sparks in our time and lives, in
our language and concepts? If we don’t
at least try to do that, then this utterly central teaching from Jesus simply
gets heard as nice religious words, and it changes nothing much. Two Fridays ago we looked at what Jesus might
mean by denying oneself. Last Friday it
was the idea of taking up one’s cross.
Then, he says, Follow me.
Does that mean going to church? Does everyone at church follow Jesus? Does it matter which church? Does not going to church mean not following
Jesus? If an atheist still respects
Jesus and his teaching, and generally adheres to that, is he/she following
Jesus? How does following Jesus’s
teachings in for instance the Sermon on the Mount, differ from declaring from
the heart that Jesus is Lord, my Lord, Teacher, Master and Saviour…?
The Greek verb akoloutheo
[ακολουθεω] means to follow someone, along the road perhaps, or follow your
big sister to school – it also means in some uses to obey… and even more than
that, it can mean to confirm, agree with, endorse… so that eventually St Paul
can write about putting on Christ, as
one might put on a garment. So it seems,
when Jesus invited someone to follow he was inviting us to do more than come
along and see if it works out. One
celebrity, getting married for the third time, was asked: Do you think this one
will work? She replied that she always
liked to keep her options open. And of
course, in her case, that would be only prudent and sensible. But Jesus was offering one of those scary choices
in which you can’t see the end from the beginning. This choice would initiate a process of serious
change -- a change which might begin with the decision to follow, but which
would grow (I would say, grow up) and develop and mature down the years. It means that Jesus becomes the key to life, but
certainly not in any arrogant sense, or in any legalistic way – nothing is less
like Jesus than Christians booming at others from some moral and religious high
ground.
Jesus is Lord means, in the familiar words of Cranmer: “…for
better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and
to cherish, till death does us… unite”.
I think that is what follow means.
It is a quiet, hidden bond of love and obedience which, as Paul writes,
survives all our lapses and defections. As
time goes by this bond is tested and matures.
It is not something we normally dissect or discuss.
It is a mutual bond, moreover. Jesus is committed in love to his followers –
although that is the kind of statement that is incomprehensible to many. In
John’s Gospel we find Jesus saying, Abide
in me, and I in you. It is a mutuality,
and the bond depends, not so much on dedicated and heroic deeds, as on our
stillness, receptiveness and our grateful hearts.
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