Homily: Take Up

Year B / Ordinary Time / Week 24 / Sunday 

Readings: Isaiah 50.5-9a / Psalm 114.1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9 (R/v 9) / James 2.14-18 / Mark 8.27-35

Sisters and brothers, how do you react when you hear a new word or phrase?  A new word like ‘Ubuntu’ which means ‘I am because you are’ in the Zulu language. Or, an unheard of phrase like ‘There’s no cow on the ice’ which means ‘There’s no reason’ to panic’ in Swedish.

Perhaps, you become curious and search for its meaning. You might feel uncomfortable because it disturbs you. Or, you might find yourself puzzled because you do not know what this new word or phrase means.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross”. Many of us know that his words are to challenge us to live better Christian lives. They make sense because we learn what they mean in Catechism or RCIA class and from spiritual writings and homilies. They teach us that if Jesus bore his cross, the trajectory of Christian life must be similar. 

Maybe this is why we do not flinch or are disturbed when we hear Jesus’ call that we renounce ourselves and take up our crosses. They do not seem to challenge us, as much as they should.

However, what if we were there, with the apostles, at that very moment, Jesus said to them and to us: “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounces himself and take up his cross”? Would we react differently? I think we would. 

We would react like the apostles did. Hearing Jesus’ talk about his death and his call that they take up their cross and follow him, they would have been dumbfounded, anxious, uncertain. “What does Jesus mean?” they might have asked. “Is he, our teacher and rabbi, the miracle healer and preacher, the exorcist and reconciler, really going to die on the cross? Doesn’t he know how grisly, tortuous, horrific it is to die in this way?” “Does he really expect us to follow him by taking up our cross and dying on it?”

“Of course not”. “Not this terrible way to die”. “Never this painful way of following him”. I imagine this is how the apostles would have reacted. We would too if we were with them. All of us would be trying to wrap our minds around Jesus’ prediction of his death and his call that we take up our own cross. With the apostles, I think Jesus’ words would have stung our sensibilities, confused our ears, pained our hearts, and dampened any hope we might have that Jesus is indeed the long expectant Messiah.

But what if Jesus’ words are what God wants humankind to hear?  After all, aren’t we all praying for God to open our ears so that we can hear him? In our first reading, Isaiah speaks of how God opened his ear that he might hear. And what he heard is that God is indeed his true help. Yes, all of us want to hear what Isaiah heard. Jesus preached this Good News throughout the gospels. He embodied it fully when he took up his cross to die for you and me, and the whole world. 

Today Jesus calls us to follow him by taking up our cross. I am sure almost every one of us here, myself included, struggles to take up our cross.  Our head – filled with homilies preached, spiritual writings read, Catechism learnt, lives of saints celebrated – tell us we ought to.  But our hearts – focussed on protecting, caring for, advancing ourselves and our lives – say, “Not now; later, Jesus”, “Not me, Jesus; ask him or her or them to carry the cross”, and even, “You carry my cross, Jesus”. 

No matter our objections and excuses, I believe Jesus demands that we take up our cross because this is the way to salvation. ““Take up your cross”, he insists, because “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it”. 

The sheer strength of Jesus’ words, the insistent demand of his call, the urgent plea he announces must tell us how important it is to Jesus that we do as he did in loving God and neighbour. If we are serious about being Jesus' disciples, we must be prepared to take up our cross not with our words but with all of our life. 

To take up the cross for love of God and love for neighbour must be the first and foremost act of being a Christian. This involves reordering the priorities and principles in our lives. No longer first, ourselves and our needs. Now God and neighbour, must come first. Our own self-survival takes a backseat so that serving and saving another as God wants us to do must be a foremost concern in our lives.

Jesus uses the metaphor of “taking up our cross” to emphasize this needed reordering of our lives. In his time, the cross was the instrument to condemn a criminal to a tortuous death. It brings about a dishonourable death that the Hebrew Bible calls “accursed.” On the cross one does not just lose one’s life. One loses everything – dignity, pride, honour, life –  in wholly inhuman way.

But, Jesus says that it is indeed in such a loss that everything is, in fact, gained. Only faith can understand and accomplish this. Here is faith realized in the good work of losing all we have humanly achieved to gain all that is good that God desires to bestow on the world and us. Only a faith that is alive in good works, not mere words, as St Paul teaches in the second reading, can help us attain God’s goodness and life.

Can we have a faith like this? Can we live our faith like this?

We can. For Jesus’ apostles who did not get it when he first challenged them to take up their cross, and for us who struggle to make Jesus’ challenge our way of life, Jesus himself showed us how this can be done. He took up the cross to lose his life so that God would triumph over evil and all humankind will have the promise of eternal life.

Yes, we can indeed take up our cross and follow Jesus. Shall we, so that we might have life to the full?

Preached at SJI's Year 6 Retreat and the Church of the Transfiguration

photo: theopenbox.com (Internet)