Deny Yourself: Impossibly Hard?

Jesus asks: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me”. [Luke 9:23] We want to be Jesus’ disciples and so this is something we know he asks of us, but it sounds so hard: the stuff of heroes and saints. Too often, we admire the sentiment, but don’t actually do it.

But we are being overanxious about what Jesus is really asking. We often seem to think Jesus is asking: “Say No to yourself everywhere and in everything all at once, no matter what, or else!” We forget about the story of Zacchaeus in the Gospel [Luke 19:1-10]. Zacchaeus was a short, rich man who had made his money in unethical ways. He wanted to see Jesus but couldn’t see over the crowd. So he climbed a tree. When Jesus saw him in the tree, all Jesus asked of him was a visit to his house. It was Zacchaeus himself, out of the generosity of his own heart, who offered to give half of what he owned to the poor, and to repay all he had defrauded, and Jesus, hearing this, joyfully exclaimed that “Today, salvation has come to this house!” [Luke 19:9]

Jesus asks of us what he asked of Zacchaeus: to “stay at our house”. What we do when he is there is in many ways up to us: it is our own free gift. A gift is a form of self-denial, yes, but one we offer freely: it is not a price or payment. So let’s look at what we can offer him. To deny yourself is to say No to something you like. To pick up your cross is to say Yes to something you don’t like. We can choose some things we like, and say No to them, as a free gift to Jesus. Also, we can choose some things we don’t like, and say Yes to them, as a free gift to Jesus. Jesus does not insist that we embrace everything we don’t like and give up everything we do; he is simply there. While he is clear who he is and what he is about, he does not impose a long list of demands. Instead, he waits patiently to receive those gifts we choose to give him.

So what does this mean, concretely? Unlike Zacchaeus, we are not talking about one visit. For us, following Jesus is a journey. During that journey, Jesus will inspire us to give him gifts: things we like that we give up to get closer to him, or things we don’t like that we embrace to get closer to him. This will happen at various times, not all at once: it is a journey. Each time, Jesus does not force or insist, we offer. If our hearts are frightened at first and that makes us stingy with our gifts, that is not the end of the story, it is only a spot on the way: as our walk with Jesus continues and we get to know him better, we will increasingly see that he is worth the sacrifice. As time passes, as we keep trying to be close to him and as he rubs off on us and we become more like him, we will see better and better that we are doing this thing that we thought was impossibly hard: we are denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following him.