The Bible certainly isn’t a book about how to succeed in five easy steps, or how to get things in life to go our way! And it isn’t even about how to make everybody think we’re cool. The Bible even says it is better to give than to get. The Bible challenges us to a different way of seeing and thinking, and of viewing life and work and service.
We are well into the Lenten season in the church, and Easter will be here before we know it.
As the days approached when Jesus knew that soon he would face the cross in Jerusalem, he began to prepare his disciples for the sobering challenges lying before them. It must have been a difficult time for them, because he began talking to them not about high elation and crushing their enemies, but of sacrifice and of suffering and of facing times tough to be endured. At the very same time, he was not presenting to them a negative and cynical view toward life, but calling them to know life - life that is real, life that is genuine, life that does not fail. Some have called this the Christian paradox, because it seems to put together two things that many people would not see as going together.
In Luke 9:33 and following, Jesus says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself.”
We sense that our world today for the most part doesn’t want to hear this.
We would rather hear how if we will just think a certain way we will get all the things we want without all that much effort. Promises of easier success have sold thousands of books, and made money for scores of motivational speakers. But it isn’t what we hear from Jesus. Jesus says, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself.” Jesus certainly wasn’t strategizing to say things that would be exciting and popular when he said that self denial is part of the road to true life. But we understand that he said it because it is true: There is more truth in it than in the exciting promises of easy success and popularity.
How could self denial be part of the way to true life? Some religions have a take on this that focuses on attaining contentment by eliminating the desire for things. That’s like thinking if you will only quit wanting anything you won’t be so disappointed when you don’t get it. No, with Jesus, the self denial points beyond itself, and beyond the thought of how contented we are or how pleased with the way our life is going.
There is something greater to be attained than self-pleasing.
Jesus has two things to say which go beyond the self-denial itself. Let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily. Jesus is teaching self-denial and cross-bearing. I’m afraid there are some people who take this as the idea that they should stoically and placidly just wallow in the misery that life is to them, as if the more miserable you are the holier you are.
They tend to perpetuate their miseries and to inflict them on others. That certainly was not Jesus’ way. Jesus bore the cross in caring for others; he bore the cross in winning life’s freedom from the destructiveness of sin; he bore the cross in winning people to a better way, a higher way. And, he teaches that we who follow him have a part to play in ministering to others, bearing our cross in caring for others.
We have a part to play in sharing Christ Jesus’ love for others, in encouraging one another, in helping one another, in seeking to be mutually supportive with one another; and in sharing joy and hope in the midst of the experiences and stresses of life.
Jesus also says, come follow; come go with me.
There are great things to live for. Let’s go that way;
come along with me. Let’s not fall into the hatreds and jealousies and cynicism's and negativism of the world around us, let’s go the other way; let’s follow the better example; let’s follow the greater vision for life. This is not to say let’s put on colored glasses so we won’t see the real and tough world around us.
It is more to say, let’s see beyond the heartache and the ills of life, and know that God is able to recreate and make new, and that he will do so as we deny our selfish inclinations, take up our cross in new and disciplined service, and follow the way of Jesus, who took up his cross for us all!
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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Church, Pages 2 on 03/13/2013