From the Daily Lectionary for Thursday in the Nineteenth Week after Pentecost
Luke 9:18-27
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? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. But truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
Luke is now stepping out of the narrative action and making a theological proposition as to the identity of Jesus. He is of course employing the use of typology, recurring archetypes from the tradition. “Who do the crowds say I am?” Jesus asks. He is John the Baptist, the rustic prophet who calls for repentance, a new-found “reasonableness” as to Israel’s purpose; he is Elijah, the truth-speaker to power and healer who was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot; he is the Messiah, the one anointed by God for the sole purpose of the liberation of God’s people; he is the “Son of Man” the apocalyptic warrior from heaven come to judge and alter the way of things.
Luke is writing for a second generation of followers of Jesus who already know the story. They know of Jesus’ teachings, his bold challenge of the oppressive system of hierarchy, his advocacy for the outcast and the poor; they know of his being arrested, his mock trial, torture and execution at the hands of the Romans with the appalling complicity of the Judean leadership. This community for whom Luke writes is in comparable danger to which the first disciples were subject. In other words, the stakes of this latter day discipleship couldn’t be higher. To be the church was not a means of staying apart from public life, an escape from the slings and arrows of injustice and abuse. It was a sacred allegiance to a way of life that sought to bring justice and dignity in the face of power, no matter the cost. T.S. Eliot says we will know reality “by its seriousness.” To follow Jesus is serious business.
Jesus calls this radical allegiance “taking up one’s cross,” which is to endure whatever darkness the empire can muster. The church, the community of the faithful, are the bearers of love to and for the world. Our mission begins amid the world’s fearsome darkness. Our very lives, all that we are, is to illumine the world’s darkness with the unquenchable light of love and truth. The church is not a hobby. It is not an extracurricular activity. It is not merely a notation in our obituaries. It is God’s very life for the world’s sake.
We are, in short, to be “all in.” The church for centuries has struggled with its relevancy. We are now being called into a radical relevance. To be followers of Christ, to serve God’s vision for the world God loves, is our first, perhaps our only priority, no matter the cost. All else, in all seriousness, is mere distraction.
A Prayer for the Church (BCP p. 291)
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
