Mark 8:34-38, Taking Up One’s Cross

³⁴ And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would [suggesting a choice] come after me, let him deny himself [the right to his own life] and take up his cross and follow me. [If discipleship means identifying with one’s Master, then a disciple must suffer what his Master suffers and share the same fate.] ³⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? [The disciple is faced with a fundamental choice: does his true allegiance lie with God or the world?] ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” [There is no reason here to interpret the “the Son of Man coming in his kingdom” as a coming to earth. As in Daniel 7:13-14 (“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.), it is a coming “to God” to receive “his kingdom.” It will be seen not so much in a single event as in the understanding that Jesus, risen and vindicated at God’s right hand, is now in the position of supreme authority. This will culminate in the Second Coming, the Last Judgment, but this specific event is not what Jesus refers to here. The biggest difficulty for the disciples must have been the problem of how to join the different concepts of Messiah into one. The humble Christ of history is a stumbling block. God is revealed in Jesus, but only to the eye of faith. To others, God is hidden in Jesus, and they cannot see him. This is the great messianic secret. It is no accident that in Mark the story of the transfiguration directly follows, for, in it, something of the true glory of Jesus is revealed to those who have already recognized Jesus as Messiah in his lowliness.]