Sunday Sermon -- Proper 19, Year B

Eric Gill, Second Station: Jesus Receives the Cross, Wesminster Cathedral, 1915

Mark 8:27-28

And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it."

Some commentators observe that in this passage Jesus violates the rules of successful advertising. Most advertisers begin by telling you how wonderful their product is, and only later tell you the cost, in the small print. Or if they do advertise the cost, it’s to tell you how low it is and what a great deal they’re offering you.

We live in a consumerist culture that conditions us to expect the instant gratification of our desires, however we choose to define them, with a maximum of ease, comfort, and convenience. Experts on church growth tell us that in order to attract and keep new members, we need to make church as user-friendly as possible.

In order to fulfill this imperative, some churches build huge parking lots, so that parishioners don’t have to circle around looking for a parking space. Some churches go farther and try to make their worship accessible and easy to follow. Since traditional hymns are considered too difficult and old‑fashioned for contemporary people to learn and sing, these churches replace them with repetitive jingles sung to the accompaniment of guitars, electric keyboards, and drums. The prayers, responses, and song lyrics are projected onto a wall above the altar as the service moves along, since contemporary people supposedly find it too difficult and intimidating to find their way around a hymnal.

I don’t mean to be totally scornful and dismissive of such approaches to church growth. Perhaps the only real chance that many people have of entering the life of any church is through just this sort of “seeker-sensitive,” “user‑friendly” religion. And the results can be impressive. Churches employing these techniques are often packed. Clearly, they’ve tapped into a powerful current in our consumerist culture, by offering to satisfy the ubiquitous demand for ease, convenience, and comfort.

Yet any form of Christianity that’s too easy, too convenient, and too comfortable will have a hard time coming to terms with our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “If any one would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Here Jesus tells both his disciples and the multitudes the cost of discipleship up front. He’s just told Peter and the Twelve that in order to fulfill his own messianic vocation he must be betrayed, suffer, die, and on the third day rise again; and now he warns the disciples and the multitudes that to follow him they must be willing to sacrifice everything, even their very lives.

What’s the purpose of all this self-denial and sacrifice? The first point to get clear is that Christianity is not what some of its detractors make it out to be, a masochistic religion preaching self-denial and sacrifice for its own sake. Yet at the heart of our faith lies the paradox summed up in our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: “Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

To put it another way, when we pursue our own happiness and fulfillment as ends in themselves, we inevitably end up frustrated and disillusioned. Conversely, when we forget our selves and our own needs, and instead seek God and his will for our lives, in the short term we may incur some painful sacrifices, but in the long term we shall end up in possession of infinitely greater happiness than we could ever have attained by pursuing our own self-interest.

This point is not some piece of esoteric mysticism. From our own everyday lives, we’re all familiar with the principle that any worthwhile goal requires self-denial and sacrifice.

Look, for example, at the athletes in the Olympic Games in London this summer. Did you see the enthusiasm, the sheer joy and delight on their faces as they entered the stadium in the opening ceremonies? Yet most of them have spent years in arduous and grueling training to get there. They have undoubtedly made enormous sacrifices. There must have been times when instead of going for a pre-dawn six mile run it would have been more inviting to stay in bed; when instead of going to the gym to work out it would have been more comfortable to watch TV. Yet, “no pain, no gain.” And in the end, competing in the Olympics brings those athletes a degree of joy, fulfillment, and happiness infinitely surpassing any comforts they could have gained earlier on by indulging their immediate desires earlier on to the neglect of their training -- a degree of joy, fulfillment, and happiness that indeed makes all their sacrifices totally worthwhile.

In today’s Gospel, our Lord tells us that this same principle holds true for the life of faith. So we must beware of any presentation of Christianity that makes it seem too easy, too convenient, or too comfortable; or that seems to gear it too much towards the immediate fulfillment of our own needs and desires.

The Catholic faith is a tough religion that makes demands of us, challenges us, and stretches us, in a variety of ways: intellectually, to keep on learning the truths of the faith as expressed in scripture and tradition; morally, to examine our lives, repent of our sins, and grow in virtue; spiritually, to deepen our knowledge and love of God through disciplines of worship and prayer; and indeed even financially, to give of our treasure, time, and talent for the spread of the kingdom of God. For we’re not here for the satisfaction of our consumerist desires, but rather to be remade into a new creation in Christ – and that’s a process of change and growth that can be uncomfortable and at times even painful.

When taking up the cross and following Jesus seems too hard for us, as sometimes it will, we read on a little further in the Gospel to where our Lord foretells his coming “in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” For, again, the purpose of all Christian discipline, self-denial, and sacrifice is precisely to prepare us for glory. Think of the glory of those Olympic athletes entering the stadium magnified to an infinite degree. And even now, in our worship, in our music, in our prayers, we catch glimpses of the glory that awaits us, the glory for which we were created, the glory that indeed makes all our present sufferings totally worthwhile.