It can feel like there’s so much a Christian has to give up, to be a Christian.  If it were just a matter of giving up things like kale, I guess I could.  But it’s not as if Jesus isn’t asking a lot of people.  He expects, demands, everything, unless we just want to return the one talent and tell him what he can do with it—never even really wanted it in the first place, anyway.  Jesus wants nothing less than our lives, the sacrifice of our old lives, the lives we lived and maybe even loved, sometimes, before Jesus became real for us.  Beloved, I grew up in a Christian home; I knew about Jesus; I prayed, and I can tell you now, looking back on it, that, real as Jesus was to me for all those years, he became really real for me only about twenty-two years ago.

Yes, Jesus wants something from us; he expects a sacrifice.  Having just reminded Peter and the rest of the inner circle about whose plan was at work and whose way they were to go, Jesus “called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’” (8:34).  The wants I want, even today, are not all the same wants as God wants.  Nudging God’s wants my way won’t do.  Realigning God’s Word with my will, my wishes, my politics or my pleasures, won’t work.  Oh, doing so will get you something, get you somewhere, but if you’ll trust me on this, it’s nowhere you want to be and nothing you want to have.

But deny yourself.  No, no.  Indulge yourself, pamper yourself like the most important you you know.  That’s one message this world, these times, wants to sell us.  We like the idea of being kind to ourselves, especially when so few others seem to be.  If we’d truly be kind to ourselves, though, we’d heed what Jesus tells us.  Deny yourself.  Paul elaborates on this in Romans.  The self Jesus urges us—may I even say begs us?—to deny is not a friend, no ally.  The appetites, the passions, the old habits and ruts drag us through the mud of this world; they run us through the meatgrinder.  No self-control, no self-discipline, just letting yourself go.  It’s not really so hard to do.  The Greek philosophers of old knew about this; it isn’t a new thing.  The ancient Greek philosopher Plato taught about the chariot of the passions and appetites, and how the reins needed to be firmly in hand.  Some of you ride horses.  You know about horseback riding; some of you enjoy rodeo: when you let go of the reins, or when there aren’t any reins, what sort of ride are you in for?  How do you stop?  I’ve been thrown, and I suppose you have been, too.  We’ve all been thrown, all fallen; that’s why God sent someone for us, to lift us up, to raise us.

Jesus tells us we must sacrifice the old life: the life without reins, without wanting reins, acting as if there weren’t really ever any reins, not even the reins God offered to put on us.  No reins, thank you!  Just freedom, more freedom, freedom to be Me.  And who are we serving, then?  And when we’ve stopped to reflect upon the trail of hurt and debris doing so left behind, and not just in the lives of those around us, what did we see?  So long as no one else gets hurt, what does it matter, how I hurt myself?!  I tell you, it matters to God.

So, we believers, we faithful, we disciples now must take up our cross.  We know what was done with the cross Jesus carried, so maybe we want to say, um, no thanks.  No cross carrying for me—I shouldn’t have to!  Jesus carried it for me; Jesus paid it all!  I’ve splashed all around in that fountain filled with blood, and now I’m free!  And we now in Christ are free, indeed, free to serve God, no longer enslaved to self, which is enslavement to the powers that rule below.  No freedom so futile as serving self.

With Christ, we now take up our cross.  Mine doesn’t look or feel like yours.  Yours neither looks nor feels like mine.  Your passions and appetites aren’t the same as mine, nor are mine the same as yours—though they may not be so very different, either!

Is passion bad, then?  Are we not to live with passion?  What is life without passion: Christianity?  But passion—I think you may already know this, too—passion, at root, means suffering.  For what are you willing to suffer?  For whom?  In other words, for what are you willing to meet resistance, objection, criticism, rejection, condemnation?  For what are you willing to persevere, endure?  For what are you willing to practice courage, fortitude?  In a world hooked on instant gratification, for what are you willing to wait?  And you know you’ve been waiting—a long time!—for several things.

“For whoever wants to save their life [their soul] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (8:35).  A paradox?  A contradiction?  If you want to live, you’ll die?  To die—for Christ—is Life?  We all have more than enough pain, frustration, and discontent as it is—why add to it?  Many people have many ways of trying to manage—medicate—their hurts, and only one can heal.  All I know about the comedian of forty years ago, Andy Kaufman, was what I saw in the movie with Jim Carrey twenty-five years ago.  The part I most vividly remember is how Kaufman, dying from cancer, makes a desperate trip to Mexico, where there is a clinic or surgeon who claims to be able to perform a miracle surgery that will completely remove the cancer.  Sound familiar?  Glory, hallelujah, yes please!

The most poignant part of that scene is where Kaufman sees the wet, messy glob the surgeon stealthily pulls from a nearby bucket, then to skillfully, miraculously pull it out of Kaufman’s body—Here’s the cancer!  I’ve got it out, now!  You’re going to be fine!  That’ll be three thousand dollars, American, payable in cash, now, thank you.  It’s all a sham!  A lie!  No, it’s show business, playing upon that willingness to believe, that need to believe.  And Kaufman, showman that he was, bought into it—put his faith in it.  It matters, beloved, where we put our faith, in what, in whom.  Oh, you can save your life, and still lose it.  The coup de grâce is to lose your life, yet live.  But when has that ever happened?

All for Jesus, I surrender, I surrender all.  But all is a lot.  How about almost everything?  Nearly all?  All, except that one part?  The stuff I don’t like, I surrender, but the thing I can’t live without and still be happy, I guess I’ll hold onto that.  Let us take up our crosses, together.  Let us be done with the old life, the old ways: time for new life, risen life, Jesus life.

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?  Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (8:36-37).  A sell-out, in other words.  The world seems to put a lot out there, on offer.  Just consider the materialism we allow mass communication to cultivate in our children.  They’re listening; they’re receptive!  Latest phone, latest shoes, latest gaming laptop, latest PlayStation—well, they watch us, too, and learn this is the good stuff—bigger, better, more: what life is all about.  But it’s hard to give it all up, I know.  And Jesus, why, he came (didn’t he?) to make things easy.  He couldn’t really expect us to, you know, follow his example, or make do without, to sacrifice the God-ignoring thing I can’t live without and still be happy.  I often wonder if it isn’t easier to be a Chrisitan in a poor nation, like maybe Mozambique or Albania.

What is your soul worth?  A five-bedroom, three-bath house on three acres?  A Mercedes?  Oh, comfort and luxury count for something, I know—and we work hard!  Don’t we deserve a little something, after all?  Some little splurge on self: a gift to ourselves?  Beloved, Jesus is not overly concerned with our things, though he has some thoughts about being helpful, useful, for others.  Jesus is concerned about what we value, and how our living aligns with our values, because our living will tell us, and others, about our values—what matters to us, where our heart is.  Our heart, Jesus reminds us, will always be with our treasure.

“If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” (8:38).  It seems as if the “adulterous and sinful generation” has always been around, never gone away.  My grandparents knew all about it; my parents, too.  To my grief, it seems my children also will.

A person can only be ashamed of Jesus if he or she has claimed some connection to him.  No one is ashamed of someone they can’t stand: that’s not being ashamed, that’s just revulsion.  You’re ashamed of someone you love, who matters to you, who seems to you to be doing or saying something unwise, foolish, shameful.  Jesus says many beautiful, bracing things, things we love and cherish.  We sometimes even try to talk with people about those things.  Jesus also says some things about which we don’t really want to have conversations with our unbelieving friends and family: hard things, obscure things, things that don’t quite align with the best standards of decency as taught in our times.  Like Jesus coming back with a bunch of angels, for example.  To do what?  To whom?  Why?  My Jesus would never.

Then, there are all the things Jesus says that seem just to be flatly contradicted by how we know things turned out.  “And he said to them, Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power’” (9:1).  Well, the Second Coming hasn’t happened yet, despite what some small, off-shoot groups may claim.  So far as we know, Peter and all the rest died, and no kingdom, yet.  We hear what Jesus says, and we think one thing when he may have had something else entirely in view.  What is the surest evidence that the kingdom has come with power?  Christ in the clouds with ten thousand angels?  All the nasty people getting their long overdue comeuppance in some bona-fide revenge fantasy like Hollywood dishes out?

Beloved, Jesus still has many miracles to work before he returns.  He has sent the Spirit for this very purpose.  The staggering foretaste of that return, there at the tomb in the garden, was also the work of the Spirit, the Spirit of Life, the power of the Word, raising the dead to life.  All the apostles, except Judas, saw Christ, risen.  They knew beyond all doubt, that the kingdom of God had indeed come, with power.