Today’s Gospel reading pretty much sums up
what it means to be a Christian:
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
This is a mystery and a paradox:
that we lose everything by trying to hold on to it
and we gain everything by letting it go,
if we surrender everything for the sake of Jesus.
It also presents us with two paths:
the path of holding on
and the path of letting go.
If we follow the path of holding on,
we discover that there can be no end to our grasping
and our efforts to retain control of what we see as ours
end in desperation and destruction.
We can see this in our first reading,
which tells of the fate of Israel’s foe,
the city of Nineveh,
which sought through warfare
to secure its wealth and power
and dominate its neighbors.
But the conqueror is eventually conquered,
and in our first reading
the prophet Nahum offers us
vivid and horrifying images of ancient warfare:
the sound of approaching chariots,
the sun glinting off of swords and spears,
piles of dead bodies.
It is a terrifying scene,
but presented as just recompense
for Nineveh's warlike ways:
in seeking to save their lives,
they lost them.
If we turn ourselves into little Ninevehs—
if we become people who seek
to secure our lives by control and domination—
we too will lose all,
we too will find our lives ruined
by the very power we sought to wield.
But Jesus says that there is another path to follow,
another way to live:
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.”
Jesus’s call to his followers to take up their cross
is a call to live our lives
with open hands and open hearts,
to surrender ourselves to his way.
This is crucial for us as we seek
to find our way through these difficult times
of pandemic, civil unrest, and political division:
we might be tempted by the path of grasping
as we seek to gain some sense of control over our lives;
we might be tempted by the path of anger and blame
directed toward those who seem to threaten our security;
we might be tempted to abandon the path of Jesus—
the path of love and gentleness,
the path of mercy and forgiveness—
as unrealistic or impractical.
But our faith tells us that
in the great paradox that is the Christian way,
in the great mystery that is the path of cross and resurrection,
it is by surrendering to God’s love that we are saved;
it is by turning ourselves over in faith to the path of Jesus
that we truly find ourselves in him,
beloved children of God sharing in life eternal.
What does it profit us to gain the whole world
if we cannot find ourselves in Christ?
