Tending, Loving, Caring: Dying to Live
Mark 8:31-38
25 February 2024
Focus Statement:
As followers of Christ, we are called to die to ourselves by letting go of our false selves to become who we are meant to be, and finding life when we give of ourselves for the sake of the gospel and the kin-dom of God.
Prayer:
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, God, Earth-maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver who calls us to die so we may truly live. Amen.
When I first attended seminary 20 years ago, I remember taking a Pastoral Counselling class and during our very first class, my professor told us this one thing that I will never forget. He said many Christians have sustained emotional and psychological damage due to the widespread misuse, misunderstanding and misinterpretation of verses such as: “Deny yourself, take up the cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34) as well as “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)
Christians sometimes understand this to mean that in order to be a good Christian in any situation, you must die to yourself. Other people’s interest should always come first. Your unique personhood is not important. In fact, you must decrease so that God can increase in your life – ie. make yourself smaller until you almost disappear.
This is a very dangerous message because this has resulted in some Christians believing that their lives and who God made them to be is not important. And such verses have been used out of context to encourage many to serve to the point of destroying their health, stay in abusive relationships, let themselves be taken advantage of, bury their God-given talents, or allow others to walk all over them.
It has even been twisted into messages like “If you want to be a follower of Jesus you must deny your gayness, pick up your cross of straightness and follow him.” Or “deny your human dignity and pick up your cross of domestic abuse and follow him.” Or “deny your spiritual experience and pick up your cross of trusting religious leaders to tell you what to believe.”
Today’s lectionary passage gives us an opportunity to look deeper into these verses, and as we do so, I want to invite you to ask yourselves, “What did Jesus really mean when he asked his disciples to deny themselves, take up the cross and follow him?”
Mark 8:31-38 (NRSVue)
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34 He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come[i] after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 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,[j] will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words[k] in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
There are two verses in this passage of Scripture that I would like us to focus on today. What did Jesus mean by:
“Deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” and
“Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it”
Question 1 (Word Cloud)
What do you think Jesus meant by “deny yourself?”
We know that “Deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” is explained by and closely related to the second statement because Jesus immediately follows up the “deny yourself” statement with “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.” So we can conclude that these two statements are intimately connected and help explain one another.
But not only that. There is a third statement that further elaborates on the first two statements: “For what would it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
Reading in context is so important, right? We can’t just take one phrase and tell people they should deny themselves in whatever situation we think they should deny themselves. Jesus is basically giving us clues to better understand what he was trying to say, and we should realize that denying ourselves has to do with losing our lives for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel, and then finding ourselves when we understand that our greatest profit is not to gain the whole world but to give of ourselves.
Context is important. When verses are ripped out of context and used as a weapon, it’s toxic and potentially harmful. You will know when you’ve internalized a toxic interpretation of Jesus’ words. Jesus’ words should be life-giving. Yes, it can be challenging and nudge us out of our comfort zones, but ultimately Jesus’ words should be life-giving. If instead of Jesus’ words giving you life, you find yourself hurting, exhausted, empty, and overwhelmed, this is when you need to re-examine your understanding of what Jesus says.
So let’s zoom out and take a look at the larger context of this passage because when this passage is taken out of context, it seems to suggest that the mission of Jesus and his disciples is to suffer and die. Therefore, we are all called to suffer and die. However, when we read it within its narrative context, we come to see that the mission of Jesus and his disciples is actually to give life.
At the beginning of Mark 8, we see Jesus feeding the four thousand out of his compassion for them and he invites his disciples to help feed the crowds too. He then heals a blind man at Bethsaida, and later in a conversation with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, he acknowledges that he is indeed the Messiah, the anointed king through whom God will deliver God’s people.
And then we get to our passage for today which begins with “Then he began to teach them…” This is right in the middle of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples after numerous examples showing how Jesus’ mission is to give life.
In this context, Jesus explains that he must undergo rejection, suffering, and death (v.31). Jesus dies because powerful humans oppose both his healing mission and the disruption his mission brings to established religious and political laws. But Peter couldn’t understand this and rebukes Jesus for saying he would die. And Jesus rebukes him back, telling him he is not setting his mind on divine things but on human things.
So, the divine thing that Jesus wants us to set our minds on is this whole next section on how denying ourselves has to do with losing our lives for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the gospel, and then finding ourselves when we understand that our greatest profit is not to gain the whole world but to give of ourselves.
Question 2 (Open)
Have you experienced losing something and then realized you’ve gained much more? What was it like?
Jesus’ teachings often seem paradoxical but they contain deep spiritual truths and wisdom within them. Dying to ourselves means letting go of our false selves to become who we are meant to be.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk who first suggested the use of the term, “false self” to help clarify the meaning of Jesus’ teaching here in Mark 8:35. This verse has caused much havoc and pushback in Christian history because it sounds negative and was usually interpreted as an appeal to deny the body.
But Richard Rohr explains that “the full intent is personal liberation, not self-punishment…Your “false” self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, or divine union. After you have spent many years building this separate, egoic self, with all its labels and habits, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’t you be? It’s all you know. To move beyond this privately concocted identity naturally feels like losing or dying…Merton rightly recognized that it was not the body that had to “die” but the “false self” which is always an imposter posing for “me.” -Richard Rohr
Jesus uses this beautiful metaphor to explain what dying to yourself means. It is found in John 12:24-25 (MSG).
“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.”
A grain of wheat must be buried deep in the ground in order to become what it is really meant to become. That burial is like a death. That grain stops being a grain when it gets buried. The false self falls away. Then the kernel of the grain sprouts, and grows, and reproduces itself many times over. That little grain eventually becomes all it was meant to be. But it had to die in order to live.
Nadia Bolz-Weber says: “When Jesus says deny yourself… maybe it’s really about denying the self that wants to see itself as separate from God and others. Deny the self that does not feel worthy of God’s love. Deny the self that thinks it is more worthy of God’s love than its enemy is.”
In other words, deny all that belittles who we were born to be and all that belittles what others were born to be.
Because what I really want you to know is that dying to the false self no matter how painful, will bring you real life. It takes losing your false self to find your true self – the one God created you to be.
That’s why I titled my sermon today “Dying to Live.” It has two meanings – like the grain, we need to allow our false selves to die before we can truly live, and I hope we are all dying to live in that we are desiring to live as fully as we can.
If you don’t remember anything today, I hope you remember this:
As followers of Christ, we are called to die to ourselves by letting go of our false selves to become who we are meant to be, and we truly find life when we give of ourselves for the sake of the gospel and the kin-dom of God.
Poet and retired pastor Steve Garnaas Holmes explains it really well.
He says, “To deny ourselves is to deny whatever fears keep us from loving fully. It is to let go of our self-centeredness, to transcend our ego, to abandon our little skull-caged, death-leashed bit of fear, and desire instead to become the infinitely alive and loving children of God we truly are.
As those who embody God’s love, we give of our lives for love; we are not afraid even of death, because we trust that with love and grace God overabundantly renews life in us. So, we follow Jesus out of our selves and into infinite life: without fear we take up our cross, practice compassionate selfgiving and join Jesus in loving the world into its newness. You are love; you are Beloved. Deny anything less, and love without limit.”
There is freedom in the letting go; in the letting go of our need for control, of our need to be our need to be respected and liked; strong and right. Though costly, the way of Jesus, the way of the cross, leads in the end to resurrection.
Question 3 (Open)
What is one thing you will commit to doing to help let go of your false self so you can become who God meant you to be?
So, I want to end by sharing with you a poem by Steve Garnaas Holmes. I want to invite you to allow the words to sink in as we read it slowly and prayerfully.
Take Up Your Cross
by Steve Garnaas Holmes
The Christian faith is not a set of opinions about Jesus.
It is a life of following him, practicing his self-giving love.
To follow Jesus is to enter the suffering of the world.
The cross is not an annoyance, a burden, an injustice.
Your ‘cross to bear’ is not the overbearing aunt.
It is the fear of the abused, the tears of the deported,
the rage of the dismissed, the weariness of the exploited,
the despair of the condemned, the loneliness of the forgotten.
It is bearing in your heart—perhaps even in your flesh— the suffering of others,
and their infinite worth, to act for the sake of grace in their lives,
to be in solidarity with the poor for the sake of justice.
It is to embody God’s grace amidst human failings.
It is your grateful choice to suffer for the sake of love.
Lay down the sword of doctrines and arguments,
the shield of your separate self, your privileged security,
and take up the cross of Christ, the risk and vulnerability of the Gospel,
the courage to confront injustice and embody healing,
the love of God, weak, naked and tender in this world,
and more powerful than a hundred armies.
As you follow Christ, may you learn to die so you may truly live.
Amen.
