Self-Denial?
Text: Mark 8:31-38
One of the things about the sequence of stories in Lent is that if I am not careful, I could myself into a theological corner. Last week, of course, the proclamation was less about resisting temptation but embracing Lent as an opportunity to prepare for the joy at Easter. Lent, of course, has a reputation of being the most sombre, solemn, and frankly downright gloomy seasons of the church year. Where Advent is a time for hope in preparation for Christmas, Lent tends to be more a time of feeling sorry for ourselves, humbled at what God did for us through Jesus on Good Friday. The question is, does it have to be? As Mark reminded us last week it was far more important of the proclamation that Jesus made: that the time is now! The kingdom of God is right in front of us, all we need to do is open our eyes and see it… and live in the joy of the good news. This is Mark’s proclamation of the gospel.
Yet this week’s reading… also from Mark… seems to have a much more grim tone. Jesus predicts that he’s going to suffer and die; Peter tells him to stop saying such nonsense, and Jesus angrily turns on him, going so far as to call him Satan. In the sentences that follow, Jesus then goes on to say these rather harsh-sounding words:
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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.”
This text has become one of the pillars of Lent. It’s grim, it’s sombre, and seems to place an emphasis on self-denial. This is the part where I might feel that I’ve painted myself into a corner given how the sermon took shape last week. But in theory it shouldn’t. Both of these stories are part of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God as being right in front of us, the good news that Jesus calls us to live in is right here, right now. The self-denial is more about what we let go of in order to embrace the kingdom of God in our midst.
The trouble is, we have taken these words from Mark out of context. We have made suffering and self-denial is somehow a virtue… and we have used this text to support it.
Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We have taken this to mean that if we are to be a disciple of Jesus we must deny ourselves, sacrifice ourselves, and wipe out any sense of self that we might have and embrace suffering. We have come to understand discipleship as “suffer now,” in that we might receive our reward in the age to come. But maybe we have cast the net too wide: Mark was after something else. As familiar as we might be with this passage, the traditional way we have interpreted this text actually obscures what Mark is after. Yes… it happens… we layer on our own meanings without even realizing it.
We’ve defined what it means to deny ourselves… but it’s not what Mark means… it’s what we’ve layered on in English. The word in Greek is to simply disavow any connection with a given thing. Quite literally, it means to “affirm that one is apart from.” Curiously enough, the only other time that Mark uses this term is the three times Peter denies ever having known Jesus after his arrest. Peter claims that he has no relationship with Jesus… that he doesn’t know him.
But if that’s what it means, how can we claim to have no relationship with ourselves? It sounds very funny to our modern English-speaking ears… but there closer we look, the harder we listen to what Mark was saying to the early church, the more we realize that to deny oneself is not about self-sacrifice… and yet many of us have grown up with that understanding. In our culture, when we talk about “self” we are talking about each of us as individuals. You, me, him, her… In ancient cultures, personal identity didn’t exist as we know it today. One was identified by their family or social connections. One’s role in life was defined by the family elders, or by tradition… most often both. There was no opportunity to make individual choice.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” If anyone wants to become a follower of Christ, then let them break with the traditional definitions... and run the risk of being persecuted for it. For Mark it was shedding our loyalty to family, clan, caste, nation… it wasn’t to deny who we were as individuals, but to free us from those things that society expects of us. Buck the social trends, be a rogue, and risk persecution. Don’t let someone else define who you are.
Mark wasn’t alone with this. The Apostle Paul is well known for saying in several places that in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, barbarian or Scythian… One’s nationality, family group, or social status no longer mattered. To be a disciple of Jesus meant that you were willing enough to risk being an outcast, risk even being injured or killed for renouncing traditional loyalties. Bearing the cross was the risk that one had to take if one severed those ties.
These days, especially with groups like Focus on the Family, it seems kind of ironic given what Jesus proclaimed. In Mark’s time, to be a follower of Christ meant a big risk. Roman authorities saw a Christian’s willingness to renounce their traditional ties as a threat to society. In the time of the early church, there was a huge concern amongst the Roman authorities that Christians were a threat to family values… precisely because early Christians were far more likely to break with tradition… which included renouncing often oppressive family ties. They were seen as undermining the power of the Roman Empire, and therefore traitors… Which carried a rather severe punishment…
The proclamation that Jesus makes is far more radical than we realize… There are enough people in this congregation of Scottish heritage that this might ring a bell. Many of you probably have your own tartans, cloths that identify one as being from a particular family unit in Scotland. You may be interested to know that Clergy are the only profession represented by a separate tartan. Legend has it is that they needed a separate tartan to wear instead of their own family’s so that they would not be attacked by members of their new congregations who were feuding with their clan. In effect, when one became Clergy, they were no longer part of a clan… So how does this sound? In Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, Slave or Free, MacGregor or MacDonald!
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” When Jesus made this call, it was not an invitation to self-denial, but calling people to take a risk in living out the kingdom of God. The denial he talks about is
throwing off what everybody else thinks we should do, thinks we should be. The risk is the consequences that come from breaking with those often rigid social traditions. We live in a society where much has changed, but at one time it was not acceptable to marry or even associate with anybody outside of one’s social circle. While a lot of this has changed, it has only been within the past few generations… and mostly within North American cultures. While it was before my time, King Edward VIII stepped down as the sovereign of the British Empire because it was unacceptable that he should choose to marry an American Divorcee. Edward denied himself, and risked it all for love.
Imagine in the time that Jesus lived, exactly how strong these bonds were. When Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Taking up one’s cross was the risk that one took with breaking with their social traditions to become a follower of Christ. The consequences were often far more severe than simply having to give up one’s throne, for example. More often than not, early Christians faced death themselves because of their risky choice to become more than what society told them they could be.
When Mark tells this story of Jesus, he does so in the context of the hope and joy of the kingdom of God. The proclamation, the good news, is that Jesus calls us to is to throw off
off what everybody else thinks we should do, thinks we should be… risk the persecution, even risk death itself so that we might live in the joy that is truly the kingdom of God. How’s that for some good news?
Amen.
One of the things about the sequence of stories in Lent is that if I am not careful, I could myself into a theological corner. Last week, of course, the proclamation was less about resisting temptation but embracing Lent as an opportunity to prepare for the joy at Easter. Lent, of course, has a reputation of being the most sombre, solemn, and frankly downright gloomy seasons of the church year. Where Advent is a time for hope in preparation for Christmas, Lent tends to be more a time of feeling sorry for ourselves, humbled at what God did for us through Jesus on Good Friday. The question is, does it have to be? As Mark reminded us last week it was far more important of the proclamation that Jesus made: that the time is now! The kingdom of God is right in front of us, all we need to do is open our eyes and see it… and live in the joy of the good news. This is Mark’s proclamation of the gospel.
Yet this week’s reading… also from Mark… seems to have a much more grim tone. Jesus predicts that he’s going to suffer and die; Peter tells him to stop saying such nonsense, and Jesus angrily turns on him, going so far as to call him Satan. In the sentences that follow, Jesus then goes on to say these rather harsh-sounding words:
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 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.”
This text has become one of the pillars of Lent. It’s grim, it’s sombre, and seems to place an emphasis on self-denial. This is the part where I might feel that I’ve painted myself into a corner given how the sermon took shape last week. But in theory it shouldn’t. Both of these stories are part of the Gospel of Mark. Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God as being right in front of us, the good news that Jesus calls us to live in is right here, right now. The self-denial is more about what we let go of in order to embrace the kingdom of God in our midst.
The trouble is, we have taken these words from Mark out of context. We have made suffering and self-denial is somehow a virtue… and we have used this text to support it.
Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We have taken this to mean that if we are to be a disciple of Jesus we must deny ourselves, sacrifice ourselves, and wipe out any sense of self that we might have and embrace suffering. We have come to understand discipleship as “suffer now,” in that we might receive our reward in the age to come. But maybe we have cast the net too wide: Mark was after something else. As familiar as we might be with this passage, the traditional way we have interpreted this text actually obscures what Mark is after. Yes… it happens… we layer on our own meanings without even realizing it.
We’ve defined what it means to deny ourselves… but it’s not what Mark means… it’s what we’ve layered on in English. The word in Greek is to simply disavow any connection with a given thing. Quite literally, it means to “affirm that one is apart from.” Curiously enough, the only other time that Mark uses this term is the three times Peter denies ever having known Jesus after his arrest. Peter claims that he has no relationship with Jesus… that he doesn’t know him.
But if that’s what it means, how can we claim to have no relationship with ourselves? It sounds very funny to our modern English-speaking ears… but there closer we look, the harder we listen to what Mark was saying to the early church, the more we realize that to deny oneself is not about self-sacrifice… and yet many of us have grown up with that understanding. In our culture, when we talk about “self” we are talking about each of us as individuals. You, me, him, her… In ancient cultures, personal identity didn’t exist as we know it today. One was identified by their family or social connections. One’s role in life was defined by the family elders, or by tradition… most often both. There was no opportunity to make individual choice.
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” If anyone wants to become a follower of Christ, then let them break with the traditional definitions... and run the risk of being persecuted for it. For Mark it was shedding our loyalty to family, clan, caste, nation… it wasn’t to deny who we were as individuals, but to free us from those things that society expects of us. Buck the social trends, be a rogue, and risk persecution. Don’t let someone else define who you are.
Mark wasn’t alone with this. The Apostle Paul is well known for saying in several places that in Jesus Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, barbarian or Scythian… One’s nationality, family group, or social status no longer mattered. To be a disciple of Jesus meant that you were willing enough to risk being an outcast, risk even being injured or killed for renouncing traditional loyalties. Bearing the cross was the risk that one had to take if one severed those ties.
These days, especially with groups like Focus on the Family, it seems kind of ironic given what Jesus proclaimed. In Mark’s time, to be a follower of Christ meant a big risk. Roman authorities saw a Christian’s willingness to renounce their traditional ties as a threat to society. In the time of the early church, there was a huge concern amongst the Roman authorities that Christians were a threat to family values… precisely because early Christians were far more likely to break with tradition… which included renouncing often oppressive family ties. They were seen as undermining the power of the Roman Empire, and therefore traitors… Which carried a rather severe punishment…
The proclamation that Jesus makes is far more radical than we realize… There are enough people in this congregation of Scottish heritage that this might ring a bell. Many of you probably have your own tartans, cloths that identify one as being from a particular family unit in Scotland. You may be interested to know that Clergy are the only profession represented by a separate tartan. Legend has it is that they needed a separate tartan to wear instead of their own family’s so that they would not be attacked by members of their new congregations who were feuding with their clan. In effect, when one became Clergy, they were no longer part of a clan… So how does this sound? In Christ there is no longer Jew nor Greek, Slave or Free, MacGregor or MacDonald!
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” When Jesus made this call, it was not an invitation to self-denial, but calling people to take a risk in living out the kingdom of God. The denial he talks about is
throwing off what everybody else thinks we should do, thinks we should be. The risk is the consequences that come from breaking with those often rigid social traditions. We live in a society where much has changed, but at one time it was not acceptable to marry or even associate with anybody outside of one’s social circle. While a lot of this has changed, it has only been within the past few generations… and mostly within North American cultures. While it was before my time, King Edward VIII stepped down as the sovereign of the British Empire because it was unacceptable that he should choose to marry an American Divorcee. Edward denied himself, and risked it all for love.
Imagine in the time that Jesus lived, exactly how strong these bonds were. When Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Taking up one’s cross was the risk that one took with breaking with their social traditions to become a follower of Christ. The consequences were often far more severe than simply having to give up one’s throne, for example. More often than not, early Christians faced death themselves because of their risky choice to become more than what society told them they could be.
When Mark tells this story of Jesus, he does so in the context of the hope and joy of the kingdom of God. The proclamation, the good news, is that Jesus calls us to is to throw off
off what everybody else thinks we should do, thinks we should be… risk the persecution, even risk death itself so that we might live in the joy that is truly the kingdom of God. How’s that for some good news?
Amen.
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