What are people saying?
What are you hearing about me?
Jesus seems to be conducting something of an opinion poll as our story opens today. And the responses place Jesus solidly in the long tradition of God’s prophets – those who bear God’s Word to God’s people. This is old news to many of us, listening and watching. Interesting, but impersonal – like a lot of contemporary opinion polls.
When Jesus turns the question to “Who do you say I am?” some of us may take it more personally, checking in on our own confidence or doubts about who Jesus of Nazareth really is and what he’s all about, while others of us still feel like comfortable observers – we’re watching a conversation from a long time ago, with Jesus’ special chosen disciples, after all.
And then the story takes a turn (the same turn it always takes, but a sharp turn nonetheless).
From focus group or theological teaching moment to a hard and direct conversation about death.
Many of us are squirming now. Or should be.
Because death is uncomfortable to talk about in the midst of life.
And it doesn’t sound especially friendly, or welcoming, or, for that matter, sane to announce that you’re going to be arrested, rejected, murdered, and resurrected.
Or to encourage everyone around you to do the same.
I’d be quietly unfriending that person on Facebook, if someone I knew was doing that. Or checking to see if they’ve got mental health support services. Peter tries a bit of that with Jesus, and is told in no uncertain terms to butt out. This is for real.
It’s a stark statement from Jesus: that the popular man who heals and inspires people, and brings us right in touch with a sense of holiness and God’s care for us is expecting, shortly, to be suffering, killed, and resurrected.
And that he expects other people – us?!? – to do the same.
Does Jesus really want us to embrace rejection, the loss of all we have and are, and literal death?
Want you and me – not just his specially chosen few, but us – to die for or with him?
Yes.
And yes, my gut lurches every time I look straight at that possibility.
But I’m convinced this is a real ask, a real expectation Jesus has.
That if we want to follow him, we will actually reject, renounce our selves, and deliberately accept death.
And, that when we lose self, life, everything, we also – gain it?
But not by avoiding death?
It’s weird, hard to understand. And just plain hard.
I don’t want to.
Rejecting your own life, your whole self, is a really stark and repellent demand.
It’s a wonder Jesus has any followers if this is what he’s asking for.
His expectations are too high for reasonable people to meet. And he’s talking about being ashamed of us at judgment day if we don’t meet them.
What happened to the nice, welcoming, loves-everyone Jesus we’ve heard about? The one who wants to save us?
Good news and bad news, friends.
This demanding, stark, potentially terrifying Jesus is precisely the radically loving, welcoming, generous Jesus.
The demand to give up our lives entirely is a demand to live in that radical, divine, extraordinary, generous love that Jesus brings us.
Tough as it is, it is welcoming in a profound way, because Jesus is opening this invitation to anyone.
“If any of you want to become my disciple,” he says.
I’ll take anybody. Garbage collectors, the neighbor with the tackiest yard signs, Wall Street tycoons and day laborers, tax accountants, immigrants, girls… even politicians.
In a context where to be chosen as a disciple of a popular and well-known rabbi was probably the end result of a lifetime’s focused education and training and the kind of family investment now reserved for beating the odds into an Ivy League university, Jesus standing in front of a random crowd and saying “if any of you want to be my disciple, you can” is bombshell-radical welcome, generosity, and empowerment.
Nobody is disqualified.
Not the person who has been bored out of their mind by church and Jesus’ other followers, not the person who’s been insulted and rejected, not the hopeless underachiever, not the person who’s broken all ten commandments (or all 613 in scripture, depending how you count) just to keep score.
Anybody can be a disciple – an apprentice – even a close personal friend of this miraculous, popular, powerful Jesus.
Anybody can decide to follow Jesus, which means to become like Jesus.
Which means to become deeply, personally close to God, to become a human being infused with, filled with, the presence and power and love of God’s own self.
And here’s the thing – the thing that I think is so obvious to Jesus he doesn’t do a really good job of explaining what happens when you renounce yourself and lose your life for and with him. It’s that this incredible closeness to God, to God’s self, enables all the self-sacrifice as well as demanding all the self-sacrifice.
The renunciation, the losing of our selves, is the same thing as experiencing the glorious, rich, soul-filling closeness to God Jesus shares. The same thing as the deep, joyous, earthshaking love obliterating all our selfishness and fears.
And Jesus is telling us that that’s what he expects from us.
Expects that we lose ourselves in love.
Sometimes, we give ourselves up because the love takes the lead. Sometimes we get to feel the warmth and joy of love making it almost easy to give up time, or wealth, or choices or opinions or kidneys or other things we take personally, other elements of ourselves.
Other times, the hard decisions of self-denial come first – and then love reveals itself to us.
A bone marrow donor discovering after the difficult process of donation a sense of deep, supportive, familial love and friendship for the stranger who received that physical part of her self.
Someone slowing down his frantic rush out of a burning building – deciding to risk his life – and discovering that he feels no resentment or fear, just love and hope, as he helps lift the office’s most annoying colleague out of danger.
You, reluctantly choosing to go to a movie or concert you expect to hate, because it’s what your child or spouse or friend has been longing for. Then realizing that though you’ve been dreading it for so long (and it is pretty terrible), you’re feeling the peace of love in the experience of it.
Or resenting how much laundry detergent costs, and then – after you grumpily add two more bottles to your cart to bring to the Trinity household needs pantry – feeling your heart lift. And realizing that’s God’s love taking over your heart, whether you planned for it or not.
Renouncing ourselves – giving up our life for love – doesn’t just happen once, in one decision to follow Jesus.
It’s such a big deal, such a high expectation, because Jesus is calling us to a constant attitude of choosing to step away from our self-interest, self-protection, and right into the proactive, generous, overwhelming love of God, whatever it costs us.
Over, and over, and over, and over, no turning back.
Until our whole lives become a sacrament of that generous, welcoming, hope-fueling, divinely joyful love that doesn’t need to protect ourselves, but delights in giving up our selves.
Because we have become like Jesus.
Become love.
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