Monday, 6th Week of Easter

Luke 9:18-27

This Thursday is the Feast of Jesus’s ascension to the right hand of God. And so in these last few days that the risen Jesus is among us in flesh, the Church offers these readings as a kind of “last will and testament” from Jesus to us.

Today, we hear from Jesus the irony that in order to save ourselves, we must deny ourselves. Jesus’s subsequent reference to the Cross clarifies that for those disciples, Jesus was warning them to deny Jesus in the face of persecution might preserve your physical life, for a brief time. But once that physical life inevitably expired, what would become of the soul that God had given you.

One possibility was once outlined in this way: That if we die not having accepted God’s grace, then our fear of nothingness and futility remains with us always. And in our refusal to accept death, it remains our enemy forever. This is Hell.

We were not made for futility and death. But those things are an inevitable part of our lives here on Earth. But Jesus has accepted those things too, and he has passed through them and come out into the everlasting light. It is natural for us to fear our physical passing. The Good News (from which we get the word, “evangelism”) is that futility and death are also passing away, if we just trust in the One who has passed through them.