34When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, "Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. 36For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? 37Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? 38For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels."
As I look back in this chapter of Mark, I can see the series of things that lead up to this statement from Jesus. First the people hungered in the feeding of the four thousand where I think they were hungering for more than just food. Next the Pharisees tried to test Jesus by asking questions that may seem reasonable to an onlooker just trying to determine where their faith should lie. Next Jesus warns of the influence of the Pharisees and others in authority, again, a lesson of where people should look to build their faith. Next the demonstration of healing the blind man in stages, similar to how we might see the truth when only exposed to a little of it, and how it is important to remove ourselves from bad influences. Finally Peter proclaims Jesus to be the true Messiah, but immediately succumbs to the influence of Satan by rebuking Jesus' claims that he must be persecuted and die.
In these stories we see strong hunger and the many traps that could lead us astray. In verses 34-38 Jesus acknowledges it will be difficult. The only way to successfully avoid these traps is to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow him.
But what does he mean by deny yourself? I think He means that we should deny ourselves of our desires for things of this world. If you only struggle to save the things of this world (both tangible and intangible), you may end up losing your soul. Your soul is your real life. Does this mean we are supposed to get rid of all our possessions, leave family and friend, etc. because God is the most important thing in our lives? Note, it says whoever loses his life "for My sake and the gospel's" will save it. It is only when it is for His sake or the gospel's that we would need to give up our possessions. Though it may be easier to just keep the understanding that we should be prepared to give up anything.
How important are our possessions and everything we acquire in our lives? Not as important as our souls. There are no possessions valued enough to be able to exchange for our souls later if we lose our souls.
We all hunger to be with Jesus. Are we willing to give up all if that is what it takes?
Why does Jesus talk of being ashamed in the last statement? I really had to struggle to try to come to an understanding of this. I couldn't imagine being ashamed of Jesus and His words. I feel wonder, awe, and gratefulness at what Jesus did for me. But there may be those who were expecting more from their Messiah. They wanted a king to overthrow the current oppressors. They may have felt shame that Jesus didn't meet their expectations. Are these the people Jesus was referring to?
That would make it too easy to remove the burden of the lesson from me. I wonder if he was instead referring more to his command that we deny ourselves, take up the cross, and follow him. What is the opposite of shame? It is pride. I can see pride getting in the way of denying our material desires, pride preventing us from taking up the cross, and pride keeping us too busy to follow him. If we are so prideful that we would be ashamed of doing what is required of us, then yes, I could understand Jesus being ashamed of us. And yes, pride is something I struggle with every day. I think Jesus added this point of feeling ashamed as a lesson to all of us.