DENYING ONESELF (MATTHEW 16: 21-28)

  
A wealthy man died and went to heaven.  Upon arriving at heaven, the wealthy man, having heard that the heaven is full of mansions for Christians, asked the guide angel to show him to his house.  The heaven was indeed full of beautiful mansions, of all shapes and sizes.  Whenever they passed a beautiful house, the wealthy man, anxious to find out which one was his house, kept asking the angel whether the house was his.  Strangely, the answer out of the guide angel’s mouth, every time the wealthy man asked, was “no.”  After they passed several mansions, the wealthy man noticed that the quality of the mansions degraded; naturally, he started getting nervous.  “Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake and passed my house?” The man asked nervously. 

The angel answered abruptly, “no!”  When they arrived in front of an old house—or rather, a shack;that was about to fall over, the angel turned to the wealthy man and said, “Here is the house that you are to live in.”  Upon hearing this, the wealthy man, from shock, nearly fainted.  The man asked, “How can this old house be mine, when there are so many other beautiful houses—like the ones that we passed—in heaven?”  The angel’s reply was, “Well, this is all we could manage to build based on what you invested up here, in heaven, while you were living on earth.”

 This humor is about the type of house we get in heaven based on how we lived on earth. whether we lived for our Lord and the heaven or not.  This does not mean that one will live in a giant mansion in heaven if one made large offerings to church and God; rather, it tells us the simple truth: Our lives in heaven will be determined by how we live as Christians on earth.  As it is promised in today’s scripture, in Matthew16, verse For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works how we live as Christians here on earth will determine how we will be received in heaven.  Today is the first week of Lent.  Today is the start of a season where we must remember that Christ suffered on the cross for all of us.  This Lent must be a season in which we ponder, deeply, on how we can become true and complete disciples of Christ. 

 Today’s gospel records the events after Simon Peter, the chief Disciple of Christ, confessed to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Upon hearing Simon Peter’s confession in Caesarea Phillipi, Christ was overflowing with joy.  Nothing could have meant more to Jesus than to have one of His Disciples, who He taught personally, recognize Him for Who He truly is.  Afterwards, in Matthew 16, verse 21, Jesus “began to show to His Disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”  Up until that point, Jesus did not mention a word concerning suffering at the cross and resurrection; He must have thought that the time came for Him to prophesy about the sufferings of a Messiah. 

 The problem was that Simon Peter, who correctly recognized Jesus as Christ, the Son of God, did not understand Jesus and replied, in verse 22, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!”  In truth, the Messiah that Peter envisioned was not One who would be tragically crucified at the cross; rather, Peter pictured a Messiah who would deliver the suffering people of Israel to victory and glory.  Peter did not imagine a Messiah of defeat, One who was powerless, shameful, suffering, and for the time being, dead; rather, he saw, in his mind, a Messiah of victory, authority, glory, blessing, and life.  Therefore, it was perfectly logical for Peter, who held such idealistic notion of the Messiah, to protest upon hearing that Jesus was to suffer.

 However, Christ, knowing that God has planned His fate to burden the weight of the cross—to save mankind, chastises Peter.  In verse 23 of Matthew 16, Jesus states, “Get behind Me, Satan!  You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men,” criticizing Peter for his lack of understanding.  Jesus, through verses 24 to 26, teaches us, in detail, the path of true Disciples.

 First, in order to become a true Disciple of our Lord, one must be able to deny oneself.  During the time of Christ, it is said, there was no concept of personal time or “privacy” for people of Israel.  There was no concept of individual or privacy, for any activity always encompassed a portion of the family or other similar community.  Because one could not accomplish anything or survive without family or a “community” during the time of Christ, denying oneself entailed severance of all ties with one’s family and community.  Therefore, in Luke 14, verse 26, in order to become a true Disciple of Christ, Jesus states that “If anyone comes to Me and doe not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my Disciple.” 

This implies that personal relationships, such as those with our parents, siblings, and kin, cannot become more important than our relationship with God.  It tells us that our relationship with God cannot be placed on the back burner because of our secular relationships, the ties that we have with those around us.  Denying oneself, or self-denial, means transformation of our egos—to serve God, His will, generosity, love, and peace, rather than serving our own interests, honor, popularity, and authority. 

 Second, in order to become a Disciple of our Lord, one must bear one’s own cross.  In the New Testament, the word “cross” appears 47 times.  This tells us how important a role the cross plays in the lives of Christians.  Bearing the burden of the cross signifies one’s willingness to undergo suffering for Jesus.  This suffering could entail death; in other words, one must be willing to die for our Lord in order to become His true Disciple.  In Zaire, a country in Africa that was once known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, a celebration took place to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the Western Christian missionaries.  Towards the end of the commemorative ceremony, one aged man, near the end of his days, got up to deliver a speech. 

The old man started his speech by saying that he held a secret, which would forever accompany him to the grave and disappear if he did not divulge it at the present time.   According to the old man, when the Western Christian missionaries first arrived in Zaire, the people of Zaire weren’t quite sure whether they should believe the gospel that these white missionaries were preaching.  A plan that these people of Zaire had was to add a small amount of poison to the food of these missionaries and watch them as they slowly died as a test to see how they accepted their fate in order to gauge their faith.  Ultimately, as according to the plan of these people of Zaire, numerous missionaries and their families died without an apparent reason after taking in the food that was laced with poison. 

Upon watching these Western missionaries, who died peacefully without contempt, complaint, or protest, the people of Zaire were greatly graced and began accepting the gospel of Christianity.  Like the confession of the old man, the missionaries died without knowing why they were dying; more importantly, they died without realizing that they were martyrs of Christianity.  They merely remembered that bearing the cross for our Lord was their task, their chosen path, and without fame or light, they died in obscurity.  These missionaries, as it is stated in Matthew 16, verse 25—“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”—willingly gave up their lives for Christ, and enabled the work of Jesus to blossom in the desolate land called Zaire. 

 Third, and last, we must follow in the path of our Lord.  It goes without saying that the Disciples of Christ must follow Him.  The Disciples, despite the fact that the path of their mentor is not one of joy and glory, must be willing to follow in the same path that their mentor has chosen.  The early martyrs of the Christian church—to include Peter—are said to have been crucified, upside down, on a cross and subsequently martyred.  These martyrs, realizing that they lacked too many things in comparison to their patriarch Jesus, requested that they be crucified upside down, not worthy to be crucified upright as their Mentor had been.  Lent is the time to follow in the path of Christ.  We must remember that Lent is the season in which we all must think about sharing in the suffering of our Lord.

From time to time, I watch professional wrestling on TV.  I often find myself surprised at being able to relieve some tension and stress through the vulgarity and the violence that is offered through professional wrestling.  According to one statistic, the average length of time that children between the ages of two and five watch television is 3.5 hours per day.  Furthermore, adults spend about 5 hours a day watching TV.  The statistics show us that besides working and sleeping, Americans spend more time watching TV than any other activity. 

After the advent of the Internet, the fourth most popular activity for these people may be spending time in front of their computer terminals.  Popularity of TV and the Internet is not bad; however, the real problem lies in the fact that people who watch these programs prefer programs with overly violent and inflammatory contents.  According to the analysis done by experts, an average American child, by the time he or she graduates from elementary school, will have witnessed 8,000 deaths and over 100,000 violent acts via television and the Internet.  The number of teenagers in the US convicted of murder rose some 55% over the past decade.  The report also confirms that the number of US teenagers dying from guns and violence far exceed the number of US teenagers dying from disease. 

 Without realization, we are becoming violent people living in the midst of a society that is also full of violence and chaos.  It is during this time that Jesus is commanding us to become a true Disciple, and turn violence into tranquility, mercilessness into mercifulness, ego with humility, hate with love, and war into peace.  If we, as true Disciples of Jesus, deny ourselves and willingly burden the portion of the cross that we must burden and follow Jesus, the world will gradually turn for the better.  From now on, we must play close attention to the words of Oswald Chambers.  “When you fear God, you fear nothing else; whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”