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No one can outsource self-denial.
Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
August 30, 2026
You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me.
Whenever I speak, I must cry out,
violence and outrage is my message;
the word of the LORD has brought me
derision and reproach all the day.
I say to myself, I will not mention him,
I will speak in his name no more.
But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart,
imprisoned in my bones;
I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.
R. My soul is thirsting for you, O Lord my God.
O God, you are my God whom I seek;
for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts
like the earth, parched, lifeless and without water.
Thus have I gazed toward you in the sanctuary
to see your power and your glory,
for your kindness is a greater good than life;
my lips shall glorify you.
Thus will I bless you while I live;
lifting up my hands, I will call upon your name.
As with the riches of a banquet shall my soul be satisfied,
and with exultant lips my mouth shall praise you.
You are my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I shout for joy.
My soul clings fast to you;
your right hand upholds me.
I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God,
to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice,
holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
Do not conform yourselves to this age
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind,
that you may discern what is the will of God,
what is good and pleasing and perfect.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ
enlighten the eyes of our hearts,
that we may know what is the hope
that belongs to our call.
Jesus began to show his disciples
that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly
from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed and on the third day be raised.
Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him,
"God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you."
He turned and said to Peter,
"Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."
Then Jesus said to his disciples,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world
and forfeit his life?
Or what can one give in exchange for his life?
For the Son of Man will come with his angels in his Father's glory,
and then he will repay all according to his conduct."
Believers are called to redirect natural self-interest toward Christ-centered service. The grammar makes plain that the decision is personal; no one can outsource self-denial. (Citation)
Jeremiah is in a bad mood. He feels he's been a fool, allowing himself to be seduced by the Lord, only to find that his one job is to deliver criticism and bad news to the people and they laugh at him to his face. So he decides to shut up, and then finds the undelivered message gives him a pain in the guts.
"...must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."
Was Jesus thinking the same way? Did he feel he was voicing the demands of divine justice - and woe-betide anyone who would water down those standards?
Its on the cards that Jesus did feel exactly what Jeremiah felt on occasion but as time goes by - sometimes fast and sometimes slow - I find I can't relate to the stern task-master image of the Master. To win the flag a coach knows he has to inspire his team, get them confident and enthusiastic. Good teachers can even manage that in the classroom. But by some strange inversion we have been hearing those words as the price to be paid salvation. Sometimes a bible edition will even put a heading above the paragraph: "The Price of Discipleship".
I don't know why the cross became a universal symbol so soon after Jesus' execution. It was only the word or perhaps the X, but never the crucifix we know today. That was altogether too graphic and too shameful. Is it feasible that Jesus, straight after speaking of his own arrest, trial and execution, told his friends they'd be in for the same fate?
Or is this a bit of editorial licence on the part of gospel tellers in later years. Even then, what is the point? To frighten or to inspire?
This week on Australian Story (ABC-TV Mondays 8.00 pm) we had the story of a lady who contracted Motor Neuron Disease. She had been outstanding as a dancer and of course her life was changed completely. But she never gave in to the disease. Towards the end her daughter made a documentary of her journey, and to round it off asked her for one last word to sum it all up. She thought for a moment, then said: "Live hard!" (Citation)
It's the same call that still echoes in my ears from our football coach at school, the highly esteemed Br Roger. "Go in hard, son!" he'd say. "Go in hard!"
I think that's what Jesus was saying. He had no time for half-hearted engagement. "Go in hard! Take up your burdens, whatever they are; don't hang around complaining; just shoulder your load and see if you can keep up with me."
That I can relate to. In fact, when you think about it, it's strange how much negativity we meet in Christianity. It is almost characteristic! We have a lovely word for "going in hard": we call it "mortification". Not quite as inspiring. Would this team ever win a flag?
Jeremiah's experience is in fact simply what happens to whistleblowers. They find they have to bear witness to the truth with nothing less than their own lives, or these days with their livelihood.
And that's what Jesus calls us to. The way the gospels tell the story of Jesus' life is a kind of model designed to teach us how our lives will progress, so we need to step back from time to time to see the shape of things to come.
I wonder what my cross is? I've got good health, have lived a long life and it continues in a good degree of comfort thanks to the pension that is more than adequate for one who does not pay rent. (The ultimate benefit of owning your own home.) And I've got good friends, a clear head and plenty of ways to keep busy.
So, at this stage of life, it might seem that my job is to review my journey and take responsibility for the good and the bad - and that is my cross. In the process I must not allow shame or guilt or even discouragement to get a hold on me.
When we're young we think of the cross in physical terms, illness, disability, social disadvantage, work, stress, and so on. Later in life it seems that responsibility has become the main load to be shouldered faithfully every day. And all the while the real issue was waiting there to be discovered. My cross is my self.
In the end it's the self that is the battleground and the self that is to be mastered. And it's a battle not in physical terms but in the mind and heart.
"Know yourself". Why is this so - not difficult - elusive? It's like clutching hold of a shadow, a wisp of smoke, a hologram. I don't know why, but I do know that in these quieter years I've become aware of things I've long denied or refused to acknowledge or avoided looking at. And there in front of me is an awareness of my self that I've never had before.
It's not a pretty sight, yet I embrace it with joy. It's the true me, or the truth about me, at last. "The truth will set you free!" Jesus said on their last evening together, and it does. The shame is intense, more than I ever imagined I could be ashamed of myself. Yet beyond this shame is healing, and beyond that a totally new appreciation of the Father's mercy.
Is this the ultimate Christian paradox: that while everything urges us to live good lives, to go hard for perfection, in fact we are not in an assembly line of shiny new cars but in a panel-beaters shop where wrecks are patched up and given a new life. (Actually panel beaters don't exist any more, as I found out recently. They're a throw-back to the days when cars were made of tin. In the age of plastic you take off the whole panel and fit a new one air-freighted from Asia! And then you try and pay!)
Divine mercy is into the business of repairing, not of throwing out and replacing. And it doesn't use plastic filler but careful, painstaking restoration to the image of the prototype. To live to an age of insight is the greatest blessing.
And just to round out the paradoxes we can finish with Paul's pep talk to the Romans from the second reading above:
I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.
Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.