Transcript:

So this passage goes like this. So this passage goes like this. He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them If anyone wants 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. What does he mean by taking up the cross here?

Just a few verses earlier, before what you just read for us, Jesus outlined what his own future would hold, that he would indeed go to the cross, that he would suffer and die to bring new life to all of humanity. So now he goes on to make it equally clear what it will involve for those who follow him, for us who are disciples, and he sets up for us two conditions, if you like, for being a disciple being prepared to deny oneself and then to take up one’s cross and follow after Jesus. Now, denying oneself means placing the demands of being a disciple above all other desires and plans that we might cherish or hold to be significant. It doesn’t necessarily exclude those plans, but it subordinates them to the demands of being a disciple.

In other words, we give up one’s place as the centre of things. We give up one’s place as the centre of things, and then this stark image of carrying one’s cross requires a readiness to follow Jesus to the point of death. Each of us, even if not required to follow Jesus to the point of physical death, even if not required to follow Jesus to the point of physical death, each of us is nonetheless called to a lifelong dedication to him and his good news and his way of life, and a readiness to make a costly entrance into the world of suffering in union with him, into the world of suffering in union with him. So, in other words, the Christian life is to share the way of Jesus, who is the suffering servant. He has set the path for us Disciples. All of us are called to follow, and that means to place him at the centre of our lives before all other things, and then also to really commit ourselves to following him wherever it might take us and whatever it might mean that we experience.