I was irritated with my son this morning because he took down the Liturgy of the Hours book we read from morning and night and left it downstairs. I had my coffee brewed, I’d gone through some amount of struggle to focus my heart and mind, and I really wanted my next step to be to fall into the relaxing arms of morning liturgy. But no. So I sighed heavily and decided to go down to his room to retrieve it when the Holy Spirit flooded me with a familiar feeling that always reads “Woah, kid. Pump the breaks. I have something different for you this morning.” I turned went out on our balcony and looked out on the woods behind the house (the Ladies of the Wood are now up to eight in number this year. We had a staring contest.) and waited.
It didn’t take long until Matthew 16:24 flitted through my brain; the scripture we so would like to minimize and ignore. “If any man would be my disciple let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”
I admit that I haven’t fully understood that scripture. It’s a challenge every time I read it and every time it’s read. What does it even MEAN? Deny myself. Take up my cross. I mean, I figure I understand “Follow me.” We just head in the same direction as Jesus, right? So, nominally all Christians are doing that, so it seems weirdly placed. What does it mean to deny myself? Is that mean to deny myself things I like in an ascetic sort of way? To push myself in fasting and physical disciplines? To reject my sins especially if they are comforts and pleasures? Does it mean to deny there is even a me at all; to reject the distinction of my “self” and eliminate my uniqueness? And especially, what does it mean to take up my cross? The burden of my sin guilt? The truth of the pain, suffering, and difficulty of life that we all must endure?
Coming back into the house I sighed and figured I’d get to studying it “someday”. And then the Holy Spirit nudged and said, “Now would be good.” But…liturgy…prayers…my routine. “Now would be good.” I put up a meager resistance and when I didn’t feel any give, I sat down opened my Blue Letter Bible app and started studying.
Now, some translations say the first part as “let him deny himself” and others “he must deny himself” but in the original language, the English phrase “let him deny” is all one word in the Greek. Aparneomai. It is something of a compound word. The first root word is “apo” which is indication of a separation of a part from the whole with an idea to quickly departing or even fleeing. It can also be a separation from unity with others, to cut off from a group. The second part is “arneomai” which indicates denial. The same word is used in Peter’s denial of Jesus where he rejected the notion that he was associated with Jesus in anyway firmly and boldly. Arneomai can also mean to disregard one’s own interest, and to act entirely unlike himself.
So, it appears that to deny one’s self, is to boldly cut off completely from what we were before; our habits, desires, longings, and what we wrapped our tendrils of identity around. In order to be Jesus’ disciples we have to let go of everything we made of ourselves, everything that we believed we were to the point where we are acting entirely unlike who we were and submit to whom our Messiah and Creator says that He made us to be.
Taking up our cross is a little easier to understand but it doesn’t mean to just be marked by the cross, or be willing to take on the terrible, tragic weight of existence. Jesus here uses the Greek words “airo stauros”.
Airo, means to raise upwards, to carry, to bear, to lift up. It isn’t in the sense of just picking something up off the ground and carrying it. There’s a sense of elevation to it. As with Jesus’ cross, it isn’t just picked up and casually carried in one hand. It goes up, and then down on top of us. We move under its weight. We adjust how we walk because of what is upon us. Consider Jesus on the way to Golgotha. Any other day, any other circumstance it would have been a stroll down a nice road to a not so nice place. Without the cross choices could be made, shortcuts taken, and the option to not go to the execution spot. Bearing the weight, we walk differently and cannot deny our end point.
Stauros very much means the Roman implement of torture we think of as the cross. To the pre-crucifixion crowd this must have seemed like an absolutely horrible mental image. Crucifixions were a common Roman answer to many common problems. Jesus was accused of being the leader of an insurrection and He was crucified between two petty thieves. My point is that everyone knew this image, the convicted carrying their cross or a part of their cross, to Golgotha. It happened all the time. And it would be easy to think that what Jesus means in Matthew 16:24 is that we bear our guilt. However the first phrase, “deny himself” and the final phrase “follow after me” are about submission to God. I believe “take up your cross” is the same.
To “airo stauros” means to follow Jesus in that He submitted Himself to the will of the Father even unto death. We are to follow the example of Christ, to do what the Father asks of us whether we get to see the outcome of it or not. Whether it is to stand on stage in front of millions or to scrub the toilets after those millions have gone home. We are to reject the patterns and “wisdom” of this world and embrace the methods God has given us even when they don’t make sense to our mortal systems of making “sense” even if it leads to our torture and death. We are to die…if we are called to die…and have such a trust in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that we willingly submit to it because we trust Them and fully believe that Their will be done is the best thing that can be done.
To the modern American Christian, that message can be just as offensive now as it was to the Jewish people then.
The final piece of the trifecta of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus is “to follow”. And I wish that I could tell you that this means just agreeing with Jesus on certain things, or thinking He’s a great teacher. I want to be able to tell you that it means you can casually go through life and keep doing what you’ve always done, flirting with the LORD on Sundays and maybe doing what He says and maybe not, abdicating your opinions to a political party, social trend, or how you happen to feel today. I very much want to be able to tell you what that means because it is what I want it to mean as well.
Akoloutheo is the word used here, and it means “to cleave steadfastly to, conform wholly to his (the teacher’s) example in living and, if need be, in dying also.” To best understand the word “cleave” I think we can go to the scene in The Chosen season 3 where Jesus and Peter walked on the water. Jesus rescues the drowning Peter and puts him back into the boat. Peter holds tightly to Jesus and begs Him over and over again to not let him go. He is pressed so tightly, clinging so strongly that, if they had tried, the other eleven would not have been able to pull Peter off of Jesus.
“Conform wholly” is a part of this definition that we see repeatedly throughout the New Testament. Not conform a little. Not conform by about halvesies. Wholly. We are to be cooperating with God to adhere to Jesus’ example in our manner of life as well as our manner in death. This is not to say that we are to all become homeless, wandering pastors who have to die by crucifixion. This is to say that we are all to be submitted to whatever God calls us to, leads us to and through, and makes of our death. Then we will have the same mind as Jesus and be wholly conformed.
That is the challenge. If anyone wants to become a disciple of Jesus they must submit by disowning their self centered interests, trusting the Goodness of God, and following the example of Jesus even unto death. It is a radical abandonment of the World and an equally radical embrace of God. Do you love Him and would you follow Him if His will was to make you rich? Homeless? If the circumstances of life lead you to perfect health? Or debilitating disease? If you are loved by the masses? Or hated and beaten everywhere you go? If you die comfortably in bed surrounded by loved ones? Or tortured and killed by being unjustly tried in prison? Would you still say God is good and follow Him faithfully regardless? Can you trust that no matter what you experience, that God will make good out of it even if it crushes you? Is He good…all the time…no matter what? Would His grace be sufficient?
This is the crux of the matter. Literally.
It IS a journey. It is an EPIC journey that makes Frodo’s walk to Mt. Doom look like a cake walk. And it is also very, very true…that we are not alone in it.
Pax,
W.
Finding Narnia 
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