a high calling

Today's passage (Mark 8:34-9:1) is a hard one to swallow. Jesus calls us to 'take up your cross and follow me.' When you sit and ponder what this means, you begin to realize that Jesus is not just asking us to follow him in his way of suffering, but all the way to death itself.

At our retreat, we went through some of the Catholic Stations of the Cross. This was a tangible way for us to understand what it really means to 'take up our cross.' The cross was not a pleasant instrument. It did not give Jesus' audience warm fuzzies when he referenced it. The cross was an implement of torture and death. Those who were executed on it were some of the worst criminals of their time: serial murderers, violent sex offenders and the like. The cross was not a 'humane' way to execute people, either. It was brutal and just about as unmerciful as you could get. It was not a quick death. It was a slow suffocation in extreme pain. It sometimes took days for the person to die.

And this is what Jesus calls us to. The road of suffering. The road of death. Why would he ask this of us? Didn't he die so that we could live? Yes. But he died so that we could live in right relationship with God, not so that we could go on our merry way and have everything be neat and perfect. Following Jesus costs us everything. It demands our death - death to ourselves, our selfish ambitions, our disregard for others. But if we lose that life, we gain a new one. We gain a life we can't even imagine.

We gain freedom because we're able to give and recieve forgiveness.

We gain access to God in all his glory. Following Jesus down the road of suffering and to death also includes following him into glory. You can't just saunter into the glory without everything that comes before it. You can't turn your eyes away from the suffering of your Jesus, thinking, 'Why would he let himself be humiliated that way?' and assume you can still follow him.

It makes me wonder again - is true joy possible without suffering? I don't think the two can exist seperately.

Christianity is a high calling. Following Jesus is not always pretty. Yes, we get to experience forgiveness, miracles, healings and the like, but we also experience suffering. Rejection from a world that believes in a 'Me First' philosophy. Sometimes we're even rejected by the people closest to us.

But there is a payoff. We get to experience God's glory. We get to throw off the sin of this world and run like little kids into our Dad's arms to be loved completely and forever.

I can't wait.