take up your cross
Reflections on the Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Luke 9:18–25
Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” They answered, “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.”
He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, saying, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”
What is Lent?
This is the central question I want to use the Lectionary to explore over the course of these forty days in this writing project. Why do we, as the church, observe 40 days of fasting and penitence before Easter? And, for those of us in more liberal or progressive church spaces, why should we observe Lent? How does this season prepare us to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world, to do the work of justice and mercy for our neighbors?
This passage from Luke is a good place to start this Lenten season. As usual, Jesus’ own words point the way: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” This passage is thrown out a lot in discipleship conversations, and those fleeing evangelical spaces may have a negative reaction to it, but I really do think it fits the season of Lent really well. Lent is a season of self-denial. It is the time in the church year when we imitate Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the desert. Anticipating the death of Jesus on the Cross, it is the time we look inward to examine our lives, to try to discern whether we are living into our calling to be cruciform in our dealings, day in and day out. The practice of self-denial - muting all the outside stimuli in our lives that drown out our own selves - is for the purpose of taking stock, of trying to become better aware of how we our living.
We obviously cannot be the Messiah. Very few of us will ever be mistaken for Elijah or Moses or John the Baptist. That is not what we are preparing ourselves for right now. Instead, we are simply called to deny ourselves, take up our own crosses - whatever they may be - and be imitators of Christ, for the sake of the world, for the sake of our neighbors.