Living in the Spirit
August 31, 2014
Scripture Reading: Matthew 16:21-28
Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? — Matthew 16:24-26
Denying self is an unheard of concept in our culture today. We want what we want and we want it now. It is really hard to escape. I can rarely remember chapter and verse from the Bible, although I do remember lots of scripture. I quoted Jesus recently in a study group and someone said that they had heard me say that before but they had never been able to find it in the Bible. Before I could say that I would look the citation up and get it to them later, one of the other participants had found it on their cell phone and gave her the reference. My immediate thought was, “I’ve got to have that App.”
It’s funny, but I think I understood denying self and taking up the cross of Jesus better when I was a child. My favorite hymn as a child was, Must Jesus bare the cross alone and all the world go free. No there’s a cross for everyone and there’s a cross for me*. We do not even sing it anymore. It is not in our hymn books.
We know what cross Jesus took up. He bore the cross of our salvation but what is our cross? We hear this phrase many times applied to circumstances beyond our control. “Her disability is such a cross to carry.” The cross Paul is discussing is one we take up by choice, something to which we are willing to dedicate our very lives. I heard on the news yesterday and interview with a staff person at a Catholic center for youth in Guatemala. She has worked there for many years and described how much worse the situation was now with gangs and violence. Yet she works every day at providing job skills training for young people in the hope that a skilled job will lift them away from the stumbling-blocks regularly thrust in their paths. This woman seemed to be at perfect peace though she was expressing great sadness for the situation. She is there by choice. She has found her cross. What is mine? What is yours?
Prayer: Christ of the Cross, it is so easy to get caught up in mundane things that really do not matter. Refocus my life so that I may make the right choices in your service. Amen.