When Father Lowder, a famous Anglo-Catholic priest of the 19^th century, became curate of the St. George’s Mission in the East end of London, he found the people there so ignorant that they thought Baptism was some kind of vaccination and they used to ask whether it would hurt!  Perhaps they weren’t all that ignorant because Christian Discipleship, which begins at Baptism, is not without its cost and it does indeed sometimes hurt.  If we have any doubt about that cost, Jesus reminds us of it quite forcefully in today’s Gospel. The words I refer to are very familiar:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’

Self-Denying Cross -carriers who Follow Jesus sounds a splendid programme for Spiritual development and a perfect description of Christians but each of those three elements carry a cost. 

In Lent we think a little about Self-Denial because it is a custom that we give things up – usually some luxury item like chocolate or cake – which is to take a healthy option and will certainly improve the waist-line for summer but is it really self-denying?  It isn’t too arduous and is hardly much of a sacrifice.  Not that I want to pour cold water on anyone’s Lenten observance – at least it’s a start .  Please don’t give up giving up.

Charles de Foucauld, a French hermit man really did deny himself when he gave up a life of debauchery and embraced Christ.  He went so far as to go off to the Sahara Desert and there lived amongst an Arab tribe to whom he revealed the Gospel.  His simple, nomadic life was a great contrast with his former life of privilege and self-centredness. When he wrote about ‘Giving up’ he wrote from the heart.  This is what he said:

"We must be poor in spirit, stripped of all love and attachment for what is not of God, utterly emptied of everything that is not of God; loving nothing that is not God; thinking of nothing that is not God, desiring nothing that is not God.  Stripped of ourselves and others, not looking for our own or other people’s good for its own sake, but pursuing only the glory of God for his sake alone.”

Now we might think that to be very extreme but it is perhaps a little nearer to what Jesus meant than giving up chocolates.  The point is that self-denial is actually very costly and often sacrificial.

In the Sacrament of Baptism which turned us into Christians, we are called to reject everything in our lives which thwarts the love of God and prevents it growing in us.  In the service we are told that God has  called us out of darkness into his marvellous light  and that to follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life  in Christ.  Spelling this out, the service asks us if we reject the devil and all rebellion against God; and calls us to renounce the deceit and corruption of evil and also to repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour.  We are then asked to overlay those negatives with three positives – to Turn to Christ as Saviour; to Submit to Christ as Lord and to Come to Christ, the way the truth and the life.  We are then signed with the Cross – the symbol of faith in one who denied himself totally for us and we are told that Christ claims us for his own and the sign of that claiming is the Cross.

Self-Denial then goes hand in hand with our giving our lives to God when we live no longer for our own gain but for his – and it involves a Cross.  That is why Jesus followed up his instruction to self-denial with Cross-carrying.  I wonder what sort of image that conjures up in your minds?

My first image is that of Simon of Cyrene being dragged out of the crowds on the Via Dolorosa to shoulder the massive cross-beam which Jesus was, by then, too weak to carry alone.  That’s a very stark image but in what way can I relate that to our own lives?  It is true that, for many, life has its crosses which we must bear – the crosses of illness, of suffering, of bereavement, misunderstanding, darkness and so on.  For some Christians in the world today, to be simply a Christian is to shoulder a Cross which, through persecution can be a very real Cross in that faith leads to death.  But in our dark world which groans under the weight of sin and evil there is a Cross carrying which is about identifying ourselves fully with those who struggle to make good.

Thanks to television we are now able to see the immediacy of suffering that goes on in the world and because Christ came to save the World and not just an elite group who happen to enjoy being together as the Church, we are bidden to follow him into the World.  We are to be his instruments of love in a loveless society – bearers of his grace in a graceless society.  The Love of God can never be separated from the love of others.  To deny the needs of others and pursue our own salvation is both a nonsense and an act of self-centredness.  Rather like the pious lady who went to Church every day and on her way there she passed some young beggars who she ignored, keeping her head down as she clutched her prayer book.  This happened every day and once when she arrived at Church she found it locked.  What was she to do.  Her daily devotions were most important for her.  Then she happened to see a notice pinned on the door. “I’m out there” it said.

Carlo Caretto, a spiritual writer who was inspired by Charles de Foucauld wrote a beautiful book called ‘Letters from the Desert’ and at the beginning he tells of arriving at a nomadic camp in the desert.  As always in the desert, once the sun goes down the temperature plummets and he noticed an old man shivering with cold. Caretto had two blankets and he thought about giving the old man one of them.  Self-interest took over, however, and he was frightened of being cold later on his journey.  So he let the old man shiver.  The image came back to haunt him in his dreams when later he was sheltering under a great rock. In his dream, the rock crashed down on him and trapped his body.  Just then the old man appeared in a vision and Carretto tried desperately to give him his blanket, but was unable to move his hands.  It was a gesture too late.  But the dream changed his life.

Contrast this with a story told to me by a friend who worked for Christian Aid.  He was giving out bread to the poor and came across a destitute man.  He was offered food but he shook his head and refused.  “Round the corner,” he said, “you will find a man in greater need.  Give it to him.”  Who was carrying the Cross and who was denying himself? The monk or the destitute man?

We are called to live out our lives as Cross-bearers and though we cannot do much for the plight of world’s poor, (though we can give to Christian Aid and buy more Fair Trade goods) we can stand with the suffering at that point where the love poured out from the Cross meets the agonies and pains human beings inflict on each other.

We can live sacrificially and with the right priorities.

Perhaps we can begin this Lent to sort out those priorities and ‘give up’ those things in our lives which prevent us reaching out to the world’s need for love, care, friendship, compassion and hope.  We will not need to go into the desert or to Africa to do that.  Those needs are on our doorstep if we but look.  Supporting the BOX for example is a way of helping local young people with real needs to know they are loved and valued.

When we look at the Cross that Jesus bids us take up we need to remind ourselves that for Jesus the loneliness of the Crucifixion was made more bearable by those who supported him.  In most of our lives at some time we experience something of the pain of the Cross – during illness, through bereavement certainly but sometimes it is a life circumstance that throws us into darkness when all the seeming certainties of our lives are threatened.  It is then that we need the love and support of others and this empathy, this sharing of another’s burdens is also about being Cross-bearers – of standing alongside someone in their need and being the non-judgemental, open-hearted friend they need – the St John, the Mary Magdalene, the Blessed Mary of Calvary.  What you do for one of these, says Jesus, you do for me.  But also, you do it because you have accepted Christ’s call to be his follower.

When Jesus asks you to ‘Follow’ Him, he isn’t asking us to shadow him or walk behind him.  He is asking us to be like him.  We are to work on those qualities in our lives – and they are always present if we seek them – which slowly but surely polish up his image in us.

To follow Christ means:

Live close to Him and learn from him to be self-giving; God-centred; other- affirming; wound-binding; freedom giving; love sharing lives which are undergirded by prayer and are built on faith in a Lord who showed all these qualities – and more.

Jesus calls us to give ourselves in the kind of costly service that builds up His Kingdom and to do that with real joy and true conviction because that mirrors his own vocation.  As it demanded his all so it demands ours.

It is our offering of self and I can put it no better than in some words written by a co-worker of Mother Teresa of Calcutta:

Do you want my hands, Lord, to spend the day helping the sick and the poor who need them?

Lord, today I give you my hands.

Do you want my feet, Lord, to spend the day visiting those who need a friend?

Lord, today I give you my feet.

Do you want my voice, Lord, to spend the day speaking to all who need your words of love?

Lord, today I give you my voice.

Do you want my heart, Lord, to spend the day loving everyone without exception?

Lord, today I give you my heart.