If You Want To Be My Disciple You Must Take Up Your Cross And Follow Me
Knowing You Jesus . . . There Is No Greater Thing . . .
By Fr. Dexter Brereton
[simpleazon-image align=”left” asin=”1594714673″ locale=”us” height=”375″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41D4d01lVDL.jpg” width=”281″]If you are looking for an insurance policy against hard times, against grief or even against spells of unhappiness, Christianity, true Christianity, is not the answer. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks to his disciples of the importance of weighing the ‘Cost of Discipleship’. ‘Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’ In 1937, with the Nazis rising to power in pre-war Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book with the same name. He distinguished between “Cheap grace” and “costly grace”. Cheap grace according to him is a gospel that is preached without the demand for painful conversion and change. It is all about basking in the consolation of forgiveness. Costly grace on the other hand compels someone to take on the ‘burden’ of Christianity as he or she follows Jesus no matter what.
I felt a deep sense of joy and freedom reading this Gospel. None of it matters, not career, not money, not even my personal safety! My life, my ultimate security is anchored in a reality that is beyond this world! Jesus was calling me to “hate” all these things. Hate here must be understood as a Semitism a Jewish form of speech which means “to prefer less.” In other words then, having a job is a good thing, even a GREAT thing, but not as great as knowing Jesus, so if ‘push comes to shove’ then I am prepared to give up my job. Having the love of my family, my relatives is indeed a wonderful thing, but if ‘push comes to shove’ I am prepared to go my own way if they begin to think that loving them means that I compromise the Gospel message. Being alive is God’s gift, it is a wonderful thing, but if ‘push comes to shove’ then I am prepared to give up even my life so as to remain faithful to Jesus Christ.
In other words, for the sake of the Gospel message, when worse comes to worst, I am prepared to act even against my own natural interests for the sake of my relationship with Jesus Christ and for the sake of the life which he offers me, a life which is not based in this world but in the next. St Paul said it well in Philippians 3: 7 – 8
Whatever gains I had these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. And again in verse 10: I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Lord, we thank you for the precious gift you offer us, which is relationship with you. You challenge us to “hate”, mother, father, wives, husbands and children, even our own lives for your sake. You ask us to give first place absolutely to the Good News , to the Kingdom which you proclaim. Lord we thank you for the freedom which this gives us. So many people spend much of their lives worrying about these things. We thank you however for the many people who are living examples of what it means to live ‘freely’ as your disciples. We thank you for those people who prefer to give up jobs, promotions or even profit so as to do the right thing. We thank you for journalists who continue to put their lives in danger so as to bring to light the suffering of oppressed people. We thank you and bless you for medical personnel from all over the world who leave their home countries and risk life and limb, bring medical assistance to war-torn countries. We think Lord, especially of medical personnel in places like Syria who continue to risk their lives to help the victims of war. For all these we bless you, Amen.
