Today’s readings: Zechariah 12,10-11 - 13,1; Gal. 3, 26-29; Luke 9, 18-24.
The true identity of Jesus Christ is confusing. There is nothing humanly logical in it, and following Jesus demands full trust. The prophecy we read from Zechariah today is underlying all through this identity. In the New Testament it is reflected in the words said of him in the temple that he was to be a sign of contradiction. Zechariah says: “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”
We need powerful and bold points of reference to look up to in life’s turmoils. But can we look up to someone “whom they have pierced”. In the gospel, Jesus again proposes “the pierced one” to be followed, the suffering messiah, someone who, instead of being so powerful and affirming, was rejected by both politics and mainstream religion.
This blueprint for discipleship is quite weird for the modern consciousness. Yet, in spite of all the otherwise possibly modern-day valid proposals by politics and the social and well-being sciences, the Christian proposal preserves its freshness even today. We remain free to test other alternatives and follow other paths that may sound more luring.
The major 20th-century theologian Raimon Panikkar wrote: “In this crucible of the modern world, only the mystic will survive. All others are going to disintegrate; they will be unable to resist either the physical strictures or the psychical strains.”
These strictures and strains are the major hurdles in life we need to face. There is so much we have to resist in life. Jesus speaks in terms of renunciation and taking up one’s cross. It is the cost of discipleship but it is a cost that is gainful. You lose your life not because it is worthless, but because if there is no renunciation its worth would be lost. The more life is worth living, the higher the cost to safeguard it. That is what Jesus is asking for.
Jesus is provocative for those who mean business where life’s worth is at stake. In the wake of the 1960s’ cultural revolution throughout the West there was a reawakening about Jesus and the way he defied the institutions of his time. The Church itself was many a time put in bad light and seen as contradicting what he actually believed and proclaimed, and was accused of being complacent with what he condemned. Jesus was seen as superstar, rebel, revolutionary, guru, and philosopher of life, though not necessarily as divine.
Jesus’ true identity need not be re-proposed today in terms of doctrines formulated by the first Councils of Christianity. Rather than repeating old doctrine, we need adequate language to unpack the mystery of Jesus for the modern consciousness. Jesus is the key not only to understand the mystery of God but also to understand the mystery of man himself.
Today’s gospel significantly links the unpacking of who Jesus is with how we painstakingly struggle daily to construct our identities by confronting ourselves healthily with painful strictures and strains that can be character-wise as much disintegrating as they can be beneficial and constructive. Saving or losing one’s life here means achieving wholeness, learning to live life fully, remaining connected with one’s own self whatever comes across. It is about stability, harmony with oneself and with the surrounding world.
Jesus inaugurated new possibilities for things to change in the world. Traditionally, we upheld an order of nature where there have to be slaves and free, rich and poor, where society was meant to be made of unequals, and where women were seen as inferior to men.
God has nothing to do with this order, affirms St Paul. Jesus’ frame of mind involves those following him in bringing about this change. As Christians we cannot live any longer in the shadow of an ideology that is infinitely distant from Jesus’ mind.
This is the commitment of true faith in Christ. Our salvation is too precious to be simply a DIY endeavour. The loss in the renunciation Jesus demands of his followers is a gain, personally and collectively. Jesus has been proved right in so many instances. He is still worth looking up to, even if on a cross.