Matthew 16:21 - 27
Alice was a good Catholic girl who was in love with Robert, a good Baptist guy, who loved her too. Since Robert could not in his heart marry a Catholic, and Alice had no intention of leaving the faith she loved, they had a real cross in their lives. Alice was pouring out her heart to her mother, who said, “I have an idea! Sell Robert on your faith. Tell him about the great saints, the mysteries we celebrate, the history we can trace back to the apostles. So Alice did, and for a while it looked promising; Robert was reading books by Scott Hahn and listening to CD’s by Curtis Martin and had even started coming to church with Alice. Then one day Alice burst in on her mother in tears. “What’s the matter,” said the mother. “I thought things were going well with Robert!” “They went too well,” said Alice. He told me he wants to be a priest.” I guess we can’t escape crosses in our lives.
But seriously, when I hear the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel today, I always feel uneasy. Take up my cross? Whoever wants to save his life will lose it? Whoever loses his life for Jesus will find it? And here I am, comfortable, well fed, not in any significant pain, certainly interested in keeping things that way as long as I can -- Where is my cross? And do I really want to take it up? But as Jesus says, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
On the other hand, Jesus isn’t a sadist, and during his lifetime on earth, he was always making things better for people -- taking away their pains and disabilities, healing them of their demons, even seeing to it that they were fed when they became hungry. I don’t remember him telling anyone that he healed that it would be better for them if they just took up their cross. From my reading of the gospels, I have to conclude that Jesus would like it if more people were like I am, and fewer like those desperate people who live in places ruled by ruthless dictators, or those people who have no idea where their next meal is coming from.
Perhaps the key to this mystery is in the words Jesus speaks to Peter: The Son of Man must… suffer, must be killed, and rise again on the third day. Jesus as a human being knew that if he kept doing what he was doing, he would end up the way others who opposed the Roman authorities ended up - crucified. Jesus and his apostles had seen crucifixions; they were very public, and even if you didn’t want to watch, you were sometimes dragged out of your house and made to watch. It was an effective way to intimidate would -be revolutionaries. People who did the crucifying knew how to inflict maximum pain, and yet they made it a point not to kill you outright. And that’s what horrified Peter and led to his remark to Jesus.
But Jesus had no intention of stopping what he was doing; he saw his mission as carrying out God’s will, and accepting the consequences, but he also had total trust in the One who proclaimed that Jesus was the “beloved” son. He trusted -- did not know, as a human being, but trusted -- that even if he lost his life, the Father would somehow turn even this tragedy around. And with that total trust, Jesus would keep on doing what he was doing.
I suspect that is what Jesus is talking about. We all face choices, not every day or even every week, perhaps, but all of us come to those points in life where we realize that we have to make a choice -- where our faith calls us to say or do something that will result in some kind of pain. It’s in those moments when the choice we make can be the one that keeps us comfortable, out of trouble, and unlikely to cost us anything -- we can choose to save our lives -- but we’ve been diminished, we have really lost something. Or we may make the choice that we know we should make, the choice that might be unpopular, might get us into trouble, the choice that is actually in keeping with our faith -- in which case we accept the consequences, because like Jesus we trust that our heavenly father will in the end bring good out of what seems to be bad. And Christians all over the world are making that choice, even today -- the choice that makes them second class citizens, the choice that might get them fired from their job, the choice that puts them on the wrong side of the prevailing political winds. But at the same time, the choice being made is for Jesus’ sake, so they trust in Jesus’ promise. And, of course, Christians all over the world are choosing not to choose; they remain silent about the great evil of abortion; they use their wealth for their own pleasure rather than to tend to the very real needs of their fellow human beings; they spend the moments of their lives -- never to be regained -- on video games, soap operas and other ways of wasting time.
And I’m not sure if Jesus is warning us about going to hell when he talks about losing one’s soul. I think he’s pointing out that if you go through life keeping your head down and not rocking the boat, believing but not being committed enough to those beliefs to actually sacrifice something for them, the constant effort to save your life will wear away at your very nature as a human being, so that very little will be left at the end. You will have lost your soul.
Following Christ costs the follower. Karl Marx once described religion as the opiate of the masses, suggesting that people who practiced their faith did so because it made them feel safe and secure; but the witness of the saints and martyrs is that this is entirely wrong; a person who truly practices his faith is a real risk-taker, someone who models himself on the life of Jesus Christ, someone who has a clear idea of what he believes and why, and is willing to act on those beliefs, because he trusts the same Father whom Jesus trusted.
Someone once said, “Do you know how to get to heaven? It’s simple. Do the things you know you should do, and stop doing the things you know you shouldn’t do.”
