"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross, and follow me" (Mk 8). 

The Gospel today contains a confession and a call: a confession of faith in Jesus by Peter, and a call addressed to all the disciples by Jesus himself. Jesus questions the disciples about his identity: who do people say that he is, and who do the disciples say that he is. It is Peter, the leader of the group, who speaks for them: Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one who is to establish the kingdom. Jesus, in response, calls the disciples to follow him.

What ties the confession of Peter, and Jesus' call to the disciples to follow him, is the way of the cross. When Peter confesses his faith in Jesus the Messiah, Jesus makes clear to him that he is a different sort of king. He is the sort of king who is to undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the leaders of the People, and be killed; then, three days later, he is to rise again. This is difficult for the disciples to understand. Peter, who has gotten the right answer a moment before, now gets it wrong; he takes Jesus aside and tries to straighten him out! It ought to be encouraging to all of us how often the disciples get it wrong; in the Gospel of Mark, in fact, they hardly ever get anything right. The disciples are perpetually in the wrong place, saying the wrong thing, setting off in the wrong direction and drawing the wrong conclusion. Not only wrong, in this case, but devilishly wrong; as Jesus says, "Get behind me, Satan".

Jesus is a different sort of Messiah, one who will establish God's kingdom through his own act of sacrificial love. This is at the heart of the call that Jesus then addresses to the disciples, a call to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him. They too are called to give their lives, following in the way of the cross.

Here we must be very careful. The Gospel is so often misused that we need to say something about the false crosses that are sometimes imposed upon us. The Gospel calls for real sacrifice, for the denial of ourselves; but it will never involve the sacrifice of the love that God has shown for us, or for a denial of the image of God that is within us. That would make nonsense of the Gospel. The Gospel calls for salvation, not self-destruction or the abyss. It is about love, sacrificial love, given joyfully even if at great cost. This love will be shocking to worldly sensibilities, but its authenticity speaks for itself and can be clearly distinguished from any false cross that may be placed upon us.

In our Gospel reading, then, there is confession, and there is call. As in the disciples' day, so now in ours for we who are his disciples today. As Christians we too must come to know Jesus for who he is, and follow him in the way of sacrificial love. There is a confession of Jesus that we must make before the world, and a call from him that we must answer. Love and joy must be at the heart of it, or it will not be true to Jesus.

This is true for us as individuals, and true for us as a community of faith. At our Annual Meeting last May, I told you my intention to introduce a new Sunday schedule, for which we had been preparing for some months; I also told you my intention to bring another full-time priest to Covington in the Summer of 2001. The reason for these initiatives was to do our job of confession and to carry out our call more effectively. Well, we are now embarked on the new schedule, coping with the demands and challenges that it involves; conscious I hope that it is making it possible for us to reach out in a new way, confessing Christ and answering the call that exists for us in one of the rapidly growing areas of Louisiana.

There have also been developments in adding a priest to our clergy staff. I believe that this addition will strengthen our ministry to and with teens (which is already up and running!), and allow us to re-deploy our human resources in ways which will strengthen all our ministries, especially our ministry to seniors. In any such addition, the really hard part is finding someone strong who will compliment what already exists; someone who can bring new things to birth and help them grow. Finding the resources to do this is always tricky; it calls for sacrificial love and a willingness to give of ourselves. But it really isn't the hardest part. The good news for us is that I believe we have identified our person, and are ready to move forward. Again, the project we are engaged in is to come to know Jesus better, confess him more faithfully, and answer the call to ministry that exists for us in West St Tammany parish.

Why do I mention these things now? Because I'm convinced that joy and love are going to need to be at the heart of these new ministries if they are going to be true to Jesus. We have that capacity within us; we were made for it and God has given us the grace to accomplish it. Following the way of the cross is a journey we take with joy and love.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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