What Shall It Profit a Man?

(Mark 8:34-9:1)(18th Sunday after Pentecost: 20 Sept/3 Oct, 2004)

What’s your aim in life? What are your goals? What do you hope to achieve? Riches? Fame? Power? Or maybe it’s just to be comfortable, to have everything you need to enjoy life, and take it easy. If we think only in worldly terms, seeking riches, or fame, or power, or just being comfortable, as long as we don’t hurt anyone, or break the law, make sense. But in the Church we learn that the only goal worth having is to save our soul.

Here’s what our Lord said: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” In a way, He is asking us, “Why do you work so hard to gain wealth, or fame, or power, or anything else that the world has to offer, instead of focusing on the one thing needful?” The way in which we do this is given in this same Gospel passage: we must take up our Cross, and follow our Lord Jesus in the way He directs.

So: What does it mean to take up our Cross? For our Lord, it was literally true: As He went to His death, He carried the instrument of His execution upon His back. For the Great-martyr Eustathius, it meant being tortured and killed, together with his family, for having left the service of the emperor to be a servant of the King of kings and Lord of lords. For the martyrs Prince Michael of Chernigov and his counselor, Theodore, it meant being beheaded by the Tatars for having failed to participate in a ritual meant to honor their pagan idols.

There are places today where Christians are at risk for practicing their faith; where they are still at risk of being tortured, even killed, because they will not give up their faith in Christ. They, too, know what it means to take up their Cross, and follow Him. But none of us are at risk of torture or death in this land. None of us here are in danger of being thrown into an arena with wild beasts, or placed inside a white-hot brazen ox, or of facing death in any way, simply because of our Christian faith.

Maybe it’s because it isn’t a “life or death” situation that we have so little commitment to living our faith. If today, we were at risk of being arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed for the “crime” of being a believer, for saying, “I am a Christian,” we wouldn’t be so complacent, so neglectful, of living and thinking and acting as Christians. If you’re afraid of being noticed, afraid of being taken, afraid of torture and death for your faith, you don’t stand out, you follow the crowd, you do what everybody else around you is doing. We don’t have to fear these things - -at least, not as yet – but isn’t that how we tend to live? We don’t want to be noticed; but, if you are carrying a Cross, you can’t help but be noticed.

Let me ask you this: When it’s time to have lunch, where you work, at your school, do you start by giving thanks to God, and blessing your food? Do you make the sign of the Cross, as we all should? If not, why not? Surely you don’t think someone there is an informer, waiting to turn you in to the police because you are a follower of Christ? What, someone may laugh? Someone may stare? Someone may think less of you, someone important is some earthly way – a boss, a friend, a teacher, a love interest? Why is it you won’t carry your Cross?

Let me ask you this: When everyone else is doing something you know in your heart is terribly wrong, because it would be displeasing to God, what do you do? Do you take a stand, and say, “This is wrong?” Do you just disappear? Or do you just go along, hoping that God will forgive your sin? Why is it we don’t carry our Cross?

It’s fear of rejection; fear of being different; fear of being ridiculed; all these things keep us from carrying the Cross, and following our Lord Jesus in the way we are called to go. Somehow, we think, that, if we pray, and fast, and give alms, and struggle against our sins and passions and weaknesses, we will not be able to get the things we desire – and almost inevitably the “things” are things of this world. But what does it profit us to gain the whole world, if, by doing so, we lose our souls thereby?

Brothers and sisters! There is a way appointed for us: to take up our Cross, and follow our Lord. Every time we pray, we carry the Cross. Every time we fast, we deny ourselves. Every time we give alms, we set ourselves free; and every time we fight against giving in to our sins, we pick up the Cross, and follow our Lord. We have a way of life that makes us different; and a way of life that gives us power, even the power to accept a martyr’s death. Let us pray, and fast, and give, and struggle; let us live and speak and think and dream of the kingdom of God, and our Lord Jesus Christ, daring to be in, but not of, the world. Let us dare to be different, for our Lord’s sake. Let us each take up our Cross, and follow Him; to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls.