The transformative Kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus

Matthew 16: 21-28; Mark 8: 27-9:1; Luke 9: 22-27:

Part 2

Matthew 16: 24-28

 24 Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ²⁵For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. ²⁶For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? 27 ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. ²⁸Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’

Do we want to participate in the transformative Kingdom of God inaugurated by Jesus?  The opportunity is provided for us on the basis that we step out of one denial, that is, that we have life controlling issues and that we step into another denial namely, we must fast our life controlling issues. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus described the life long process of recovery; the life of following Him as being characterised by: modestly using our resources to meet the needs of those who cannot meet their own needs, prayer, forgiveness and fasting. These are the transformative practices in the lives of the followers of Jesus. Jesus now names this fulfilment of His prophetic description of His followers the ‘denial of self’. We must step out of the denial that we have: hurts, habits and hang-ups, this is the beginning of the process of recovery and step into the denial of meeting our needs our own way; this is ‘self-denial’. If we are merely looking for some management systems to hold on to the same old life style pattern and make life a bit more comfortable we will end up losing our life completely. If we would hear the words of Jesus and put them into practice our old life controlling patterns will die away and we will experience transformation of life.  We have to face up to the fact that on the surface we can appear to others to have gained the whole world: fame, wealth, power, health, houses and jobs. In reality, we can, in the midst of apparent plenty have lost our God given life because we simply meet our needs our own way.  The end of the story of the revelation of God in Jesus of the Nazareth sermon is eternal life in His Kingdom in the eternal presence of Jesus.  The end of our story is written by us here and now through the means of life lived out in the present. Jesus makes it clear that the means of salvation is His life, death and resurrection; this life, death and resurrection will be the pattern of life experienced by His disciples. Therefore, we too must take up our cross, die to our life controlling issues and seek resurrection life in Jesus alone. The life of following Jesus is of ever closer participative and transformational living out of the teachings of  Jesus until we find ourselves in His very presence.