What makes us think that following Jesus simply requires a minor adjustment to our ordinary lives?

In a world that equates claiming Jesus alongside our preference for choosing one style of sneaker over another, one brand of peanut butter compared to a second, and the blue packet, not the pink one, thank you, as sweeteners in our coffee, this passage stands out like a muumuu in a nudist colony.

GK Chesterton famously said Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but rather, found difficult and not tried. These harsh words of discipleship become the first ones Jesus says to his friends following the revelation that he is the Christ and that he is headed to Jerusalem. These are the first things Jesus tells you and me when we decide, at our baptism, confirmation, re-affirmation or whenever we decided to get serious about Jesus, that the road ahead is not distinguished by luxury and leisure (which is why bishops used to slap confirmands on the cheek following their commitments).

This, of course is not the Jesus talk that makes friends and influences people. It is revolutionary talk that gets him killed. It is talk that misguided church folk sanitize, disinfect and sweep out of our churches as best we can, for were we to take them seriously we would not only risk being treated as pariahs by friends and relatives, but we would pass up those temporary and fleeting possessions, experiences and self images that we have somehow convinced ourselves are so important to living the Good Life.

There is simply no way to get around the harshness of these words.

And there is no way getting around the truth of these words.

For Jesus didn’t give them to us to afflict us or to torture us but to tell us that this is what the world is really like.

When we tell our children not to lie it’s not so much because we want them to live up to some ethical standard, or to keep them from embarrassing us in front of the neighbors, but we teach them not to lie because they can’t. To live a life based on lies is not life at all. Sooner or later you’re caught, and any short-term gain you’ve made is quickly erased and there is more pain and hardship to bear than if the road of truth had been taken.

M. Scott Peck famously started off one of his books with the words, ‘Life is difficult.’ And he did so in the same way Jesus does here – he simply wants to tell us the truth. It’s not that there is no luxury or ease, it’s just nobody’s life is like that all the time. Why is suicide the 11th ranked killer in the affluent United States and nearly undetectable in impoverished Haiti? Life is difficult by definition. That’s the way the world is made, and if we really want to live the best life there is, it is through the Jesus way. Many of us will attest to the fact that any other route takes us through even bumpier roads and even deeper heartaches.

So as difficult as these words appear, they are like filthy oysters that hide the pearl of great price. For inside we find the life we’re looking for, and life more abundantly.