“Kreuztragung”/”Carrying the Cross” (1523-1524)
Compare Matthew 10:33, 38-39; Luke 12:9; 14:27; 17:33; John 8:51-52; 12:25; 21:20-23
1.
These passages make it clear that discipleship can and often does require sacrifice. And I see such examples on a regular basis.
Our long-time neighbors across the street will leave soon to preside over the Norway Oslo Mission. Accepting this call has already dramatically transformed their lives; they’ve put their house up for sale, and he will leave his position as a physician and executive at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center.
Other friends, from Arizona, have suddenly been called, owing to a medical problem in the current president’s family, to assume leadership of a mission in the Ukraine (a place that has been much in the news of late). They’ve had very little time to arrange their affairs. He had retired, and they were looking forward to enjoying a new ranch that they’d just bought.
Finally, I’ve just heard a report, as yet unconfirmed, that a friend and colleague will shortly assume leadership of a newly-announced mission headquartered in Istanbul. If so, it will be his second mission presidency, and it will (I’m guessing) effectively bring his academic career to a close.
And these are just three recent cases. (We have other friends, for example, currently presiding over missions in Samoa and Brazil.) I could recite scores and scores of parallel cases off the top of my head, where people have accepted callings or simply served others at considerable inconvenience and cost to themselves.
2.
When Christ tells each follower to “take up his cross” (ἀράτω τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ) he’s advising each of his disciples to do metaphorically what he himself will soon do literally on our behalf. Accordingly, he has a claim on us.
And, by the way, the Greek word for cross, stauros, is used in modern Greek, with modern Greek pronunciation, as the masculine personal name Stavros.
3.
The Lord tells us that, if we’re ashamed of him in this life, he’ll be ashamed of us in the next.
That’s a stern warning for all of us, but, perhaps forgivably, I tend to apply it in my own mind to academics.
4.
I confess that I also tend to think of academics when I think of someone gaining the whole world while losing his soul. What price academic respectability? How much is status really worth? Academic glory is, in the bigger (eternal) picture, a pretty paltry thing. (There are some great passages on this in C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce.)
Of course, many lose their souls in quest of money and/or power. The temptations are everywhere, but they vary.
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