Why have we decided to follow Jesus?

First of all, because his way is the way to life. He is the way and the life. I don’t know anyone else who gives life to the dead, do you? Or who is himself risen from the dead, or who gives us the bread of life to eat. Where else would we go?  It is it Jesus Christ who has the words of everlasting life.

Yet his message to us today makes clear how starkly paradoxical is this way to life. It is the way of the cross. If we are following Jesus Christ in order to save our lives, we need to listen to this: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35). Say what now? See what I mean about a paradox?

This is the message of the cross: life – but life out of death. And get this: It’s our life out of our death.

I am often struck by the fact that the words of Jesus we hear today on this Sunday of the Cross are his first words about the cross. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the first cross Jesus mentions is not his own cross. It is our cross.

“He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:38).

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

Or, as Luke has it: “”If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Luke adds that “daily” in his recollection of the teaching. Not only is this our cross Jesus is talking about – it’s something we’re to take up daily – not only once and at the end of our lives, as the image of crucifixion may seem to suggest, but every day.

Later, according to Matthew, Jesus will prophesy that he will himself be crucified (Matt 20:17-19), but before that, how must this teaching about the cross have sounded to his first hearers?

The cross was a known instrument of torture, humiliation, and death. And it was not yet known as the life-bearing tree – the tree of life, upon which Christ, the life of all, conquered death by death. Yet Jesus is already teaching that this is what it is to deny ourselves and take up the cross – the paradoxical way to life through death. Later on, he will prove it – by dying on the cross and rising from the dead. But imagine the faith of those who accepted his teaching about the cross ahead of time! It’s almost unimaginable.

Here’s the thing, though: I promise, as we face our own cross – as we each assuredly will (and even do daily, as Luke reminds us) the promise of life through it is going to sound hollow to us – at least at times. The thing, the dream, the identity we’re going to have to give up to follow Jesus is going to seem to us like our true self and the life that Jesus is offering us is going to seem like less. Not worth it. There will be moments of feeling like this. I believe that Jesus himself felt this way upon the cross when he cried out to his Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We will feel like God has forsaken us when we behold our cross.

If the cross we’re imagining don’t seem like denying everything – our very selves, our very lives – then I’m not sure we’re actually imagining our cross, but perhaps something else.

Now this doesn’t mean that we all need to be tortured to death for the sake of Christ – though many martyrs give even that witness. At every liturgy, the deacon leads us in prayer “for a Christian, painless, unashamed, peaceful end of our life.” But if we’re not to be tortured to death, we might find that we’d prefer that to the actual cross we must personally carry.

For example, perhaps we will be called upon to forgive an abuser. There’s an injustice as great as crucifying the innocent. If someone hurts one of my babies, I’m supposed to love and forgive that person? Believe me, I’d rather you nail me to the cross.

Or sometimes we have to watch the one we love more than anything in the world suffer and die before our eyes. You know that’s a thousand times worse than being the one suffering and dying ourselves. May the Lord heal the sick throughout the world today.

Whatever it will be for us personally, if we have decided to follow Jesus, we will all have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. We will recognize it as the cross rather than as self-destruction because love will demand it – not pride or shame or some other foolishness. But remember the paradox: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

The life that the Lord is giving us through our crosses is our true life. The life he asks us to lay down is something else – an identity we’ve constructed rather than our created nature. It’s dear to us and seems to us to be our real life, and that is why it hurts as much as crucifixion to lay it down. But when we do, we will discover a joy on the other side of the cross greater than anything we can imagine – like the joy of Pascha morning – the sun rising on the empty tomb – the dawning realization that life has just begun.

Wisdom! Be attentive! Let us pay close attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it (Heb 2:1). Our Lord has declared our salvation as already begun! How will we escape a just requital if we neglect this declaration (Heb 2:2-3)?

Our salvation in our incarnate Lord and God Jesus Christ is preached to us today. The Lord declares our salvation and those who hear him, attest to that salvation (Heb 2:3). And this proclamation of our salvation is part of our salvation. Because, as St. John Chrysostom says, “I do not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not try to save others.”

We know our salvation because it has been shared with us. Those who knew Jesus, and witnessed his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection proclaim it to the world. And those who believe proclaim it to the next generation and so on and on until the present. This is tradition – traditio – that which is handed down to us from Jesus Christ through his apostles and their successors by the power of the Holy Spirit in unbroken continuity to us here today. This is the gospel to which God bears witness by signs and wonders and various miracles (Heb 2:4) such as the healing of the paralyzed man in today’s gospel (Mark 2:10-12).

A purpose of all of healings and miracles – including those that many of us here today have personally experienced – is to point to our new life in Christ – the everlasting life in Christ – that is, the resurrected and glorified life through death that awaits all of us who come to believe and live faithfully.

If we really hear and really believe the gospel, then we don’t stop with hearing. We can’t. Because it is the gospel that we must go and preach the gospel (Mark 16:15). We are to evangelize.

My, how we Catholics often loathe the thought sharing the gospel with our neighbors. Of admitting to people how in love we are with Jesus Christ. But if we don’t share, they won’t know.

We tend to cling to an old model of church growth through fertility – of passive proselytism by propagation if you will. We don’t mind sharing our faith with our children, but we’re terrified of sharing it with a neighbor who might disagree with us about it. I think our accommodation of our surrounding culture has become too deeply ingrained at this point.

We must learn again how to evangelize. How to preach the gospel to the world – to every creature – to the whole cosmos (Mark 16:15). It doesn’t involve casting our pearls before swine (Matt 7:6), but it also doesn’t involve hiding a light under a bushel basket (Matt 5:15). There is mystagogy only for the initiated, there is catechesis for the uninitiated, and there is evangelism for everybody. To all people, we preach Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1:23).

The Philokalia, or the writings of holy father Gregory Palamas in defense of holy hesychasm probably don’t make a good opening salvo in our proclamation of the gospel to the world. These are like pearls before the world’s swine. These are treasures that aid in living the life in Christ, after we have answered his call and entered into his holy mysteries.

But our light shining before all – which comes from living this mystery – is our love for one another, for God, and for all. This is a word for all: Christ, and him crucified – that our God so loves us that he comes among us in every way but sin.

Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17). If we never hear this word, we never have an opportunity to believe it. So we must preach the gospel at all times, and use words constantly – not with wise-sounding words, but with the word of the cross (1 Cor 1:17-18).

The words of the gospel are good to speak. They need to be heard. And so they need to be preached – with words – but also with the example of life lived in Christ. The gospel is worth talking about, and it’s even more worth living. Without this, we can actually do a disservice to the gospel we preach. Our hypocrisy can be a bad witness.

I used to be a bumper sticker guy. So, I used to want to put bumper stickers on my car that express my Christian faith, and my own perspective on Christian faith. So I designed one that said, “Is the pope Orthodox?” – playing on the expression “Is the pope Catholic?” And I designed another one that said “Liturgy is Life,” playing off those old “Basketball is life” or “Football is life” stickers that I used to see. Anyway, I’ve always hesitated to actually put Christian bumper stickers on my car because I’m such a bad driver. I mean, I’m all over the road, and I have a lead foot, and I crash into things a lot. I probably shouldn’t have a license. I feared, you understand, being a bad witness. It’s one thing to share with people how much I love liturgical worship, it’s another thing to share it with them while I’m cutting them off in traffic, which is a selfish and unchristian thing to do. Lord, have mercy.

Let us share the gospel with words and with our way of life – and even with how we drive. Evangelism is all-encompassing and cannot be reduced to any technique.

But what is the gospel really – the εὐαγγέλιον – the good news?

Jesus gives a foretaste of the good news today in his healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:10-12). And he has been healing many people. As soon as Jesus begins his ministry, he immediately begins driving out unclean spirits (Mark 1:22-26, 34), lifting up those who lay fevered (Mark 1:29-31), cleansing lepers (Mark 1:40-42), and healing many with various diseases (Mark 1:34).

“What is the point of all of this?” some have objected. All these people that Jesus heals will only get sick again anyway and someday die. There is a seeming finality and inevitability about death. Well, these healings are signs pointing to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel is that our coming healing is not temporary, but everlasting.

Imagine for a moment that you know a doctor who has a diet plan that is the cure for cancer. I’m talking about a cure. Cancer killed both my parents. And it’s killing people right now in its many and varied forms. So it is our enemy and we rightly seek to destroy it. Well, what if you knew a doctor who has the cure? Would you say, I need to tell everybody about this doctor, but only use words when necessary? No, I hope you would tell everyone by every means available to you. I hope you wouldn’t hesitate and worry, what people might think of you if you fail to keep this cancer-curing diet yourself at times. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet, whether you keep it or not. If the diet cures cancer, tell me about the diet using spoken and written words and images and videos and Facebook and social media and everything available to you and yes keep the diet yourself, but even when you fail in some of this, don’t neglect the rest.

Well, the gospel is like this. I really do know a guy who has the cure for cancer. In fact, though my parents are already dead from cancer, he can still cure them. Not only can he, but he has cured them. He has risen them from the dead in the eschaton which is present, as well as future. And I can only see it with eyes of faith, but I can see it. I’ve been given eyes to see. I’m going to tell you about him. And I’m going to use words, which are at all times necessary.