Living our lives in the spirit of the Gospel means that we are continually "starting over." And that is a challenge for both leaders and followers. Every member of the Christian community contributes to the quality of our faith, our worship, our teaching, and our service. Each of us must reexamine our own commitment to the Christian life because that is the only way we will be able to understand that discipleship is participating with Christ in salvation history. We are the instruments through which God's work on earth is accomplished.
But this comes with a cost. There is no escaping the urgency and total response which Jesus requires of those who follow him. We must sit down, weigh the costs and make a decision because following Jesus is no superficial venture. It requires our full participation. And it will be a struggle. We can never accuse Jesus of making false promises or offering special favors and rewards if we follow Him. Quite the opposite, he makes it quite clear that doing so will cost us.
At its most fundamental level, Christianity is an altruistic religion. It is “other-centered.” And it goes way beyond our own personal relationship with God. At the heart of the Gospel message is the challenge to lose ourselves in concern for others. If we truly love one another as Jesus has loved us, then we can’t look at the risk, or public opinion, or all of the other excuses we can think to make for walking away. We can’t shy away from the cross. The Gospel makes that abundantly clear.
The Gospel says that to be a disciple of Jesus, one must be willing to let go of what one values most - familiar relationships, possessions, and even one’s own life. I don’t really think that Jesus is asking all of us to leave our families, liquidate our finances, sell our possessions and lead an itinerant life for him. Some of our great saints have done that in the past, but most of us have far too many responsibilities to do that.
Yet maybe the challenges and choices of our daily life need to be just as radical. How well do we reflect Christ’s love and compassion to the gay couple who has just moved into our neighborhood, or the Muslim family who now sends their children to our son’s/daughter’s school? How well do we really serve the poor and homeless of our cities? How willing are we to engage others of different faiths in dialog to work for peace? How easily do we fit into a culture steeped in greed, violence, war and selfishness?
Jesus is counter-culture. He always challenged the accepted social mores and political correctness of his times, and was often in opposition to institutionalized religion itself. The early Christians knew what they were doing when they called this new movement of theirs “The Way of Jesus.” They kept the challenge of the cross as the central lesson of the Gospel narratives and no one can miss it today.
Beneath the surface of our lives as Christians, this same challenge is played out again and again. We will be tested as a faith community and as individuals. Jesus will ask us to walk in His footsteps, to take our place among the ranks, to follow the narrow road, to meet with opposition and misunderstanding and to strive for holiness.
But holiness is not "being perfect." Holiness is claiming our weakness in the face of the cross. And the only effective way to deal with the cross is to carry it.
