The Gospel is life anew
michael young
From Matthew 16 24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save their life[f] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.
This passage can seem harsh and off putting to many of us. We have to die in order to follow Jesus? We have to give up our very lives, our families, our homes, friends, church? Even our children?
If we read deeper into this passage we will find the invitation to life. For the Divine Christ incarnated in Jesus can be understood as the universal invitation of God to be in healthy/right relationship with God and one another: righteousness or right relationship.
We can see and hear that life with Jesus Christ as our guide is much healthier living for us and our communities. We can hear underneath the proclamation of Jesus that life is not just better if we follow the Divine Christ found in Jesus. We can hear that a life that is lead by our ego driven, self centered way of being in the world is actually not living at all and may even be death instead of life.
We can hear the invitation to give up our worry, anxiety and fear in order to truly take on the dialy work of living as Jesus lived. What Jesus is getting at is something very profound and the disciples were missing the point of Jesus and his life. I’m reminded of that Pixar movie Cars and the line, “if you go hard enough left you’ll find yourself turning right.” If we really want to find our true selves and live a healthy life we must give up our way of life and take on the life of Jesus. It will feel like giving everything we know. It may feel as if we are giving up our self to find our true self: our fully human selves.
What Jesus Christ is helping them realize then and helping us in our realization now: to find our true selves is a journey of giving up and letting go to let Christ live deeper within our hearts. Then and in that place we will find life anew. For most of us this is the daily cross that we carry.