An Early Karl Barth Sermon: The Discipleship of Jesus (1907)
The following is my unauthorized translation into English of one of Karl Barth's earliest sermons:
Homiletic Seminar in Bern, Summer Semester 1907: In the summer semester of 1907, his last semester in Bern before he moved to Tübingen, Barth had taken "Homiletic and Catechetical Exercises" with Moritz Lauterburg (1862-1927; since 1905 Professor of Practical Theology in Bern), according to his "Zeugnisheft" from the Bern University of Applied Sciences.
Source: Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe
The Discipleship of Jesus
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Dear listeners!
A many-voiced call for life is going through our time. You all know it! Old ways of looking at things, old conditions and orders have fallen and are still falling. In the most diverse areas it is apparent that the previous tracks are worn out. Mankind is looking for new values on new ways. The keynote in the chorus of these voices is: "We want life!", i.e. uninhibited development of the human personality. It was in this mood that Friedrich Nietzsche hurled into his century the speech of the superman. Under this slogan we see today in all countries thousands following the banner of social democracy toward an empire of equality and brotherhood. They all demand life, liberation from barriers, personal life!
Our time is searching. All too often we Christians are fearful at the present time, seeing in it only the evil, the deterrent, because it is radical, instead of rejoicing in what is divinely intended and justified. And yet we should make that call for life ours if we want to be disciples of Jesus. If, instead, we stand distrustfully and complaining along the way, we are certainly not acting in the spirit of the one who promised us: "I live, and you also shall live!" [Jn 14:19]. We should participate in the search of time, and all the more so because we can help it on the right path as soon as we ourselves truly seek the life that is promised to the followers of Jesus. Then we ourselves will want something new and will stand and fight with more faith and understanding in and with our time.
I
Our text speaks of following Jesus and of what is promised to it. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Great is the number of those who wanted to follow Jesus, or yet expressed the will to do so. Who can count the millions who have confessed Christ's name since the first Pentecost! Life he has promised to the willing! “How is it,” Christians and non-Christians have complained since ancient times, “that despite those countless Jesus confessors, despite the 1900 years Christianity has had, we feel so little of this life?” It comes from the fact that in human laziness we always overhear what Jesus meant when he invites us to follow him. “Let him deny himself and take up his cross.” The Christians of the Middle Ages responded to this invitation in a strange way: they pinned a cross of cloth on their garments and thus went into battle against the “unbelievers” in the Holy Land. Nothing could show more clearly how we human beings are always trying to avoid the stern seriousness that lies in Jesus’ demand. We plant the cross on our church towers, it adorns the walls of our rooms, it adorns countless confirmation certificates. We “take up the cross,” we call ourselves Christians by participating in the services, in the works of love of the Christian Church. All well and good, but what Jesus asks in our text is not fulfilled. What he wants is the same goal that our time is striving for in so many ways and errors: Personality, not the cross on your garment, but yourself, to make yourself free and strong. You should learn to assert yourself against everything that wants to divert you from that goal. Isn’t it true that we like this, how much we all would like to become such personalities. But how strange is the path he tells us to take!
“Let him deny himself!” An impractical and unfashionable desire! We wanted to be ourselves, and now we are to give up the self! A quiet uneasiness seizes us at this word, and just from this it is clear that the main thing Jesus demands has not yet been done. “Deny yourself!” means: make an end of yourself, become an other! Wouldn’t it be true that if this becoming different were fulfilled by going our way as confirmed Christians without coming into conflict with the penal law, by perhaps taking an active part in this or that work of charitable love, then we would all have to be in possession of that promised life! And yet we are not, and when we think we are, we must only too often make the painful experience that we have deceived ourselves. Where are we lacking?
We have not yet mentioned Christ's third demand, “Follow me!” How easy it is to express the desire to “follow” Jesus, to belong to him, to be a Christian! It is possible to imitate him; Francis of Assisi and his disciples did their utmost to conform their way of life to that of the Savior. They renounced all earthly possessions and went about the countryside in apostolic simplicity and frugality to preach the Gospel.
But the command of Christ to follow him, to be of the same mind as he was [cf. Phil. 2:5], i.e., to give up oneself and place oneself in the will of God, is infinitely difficult. And yet this is precisely what he demanded! Each one of us should be able to say with all his heart: Father, not my will but yours be done [Lk 22:42], that your kingdom may come [cf. Mt 6:10]. In all people, from their earliest youth, two powers contend. You know them. One drives you towards God, the other pulls you down to earth with a heavy lead. One voice tells you: “You shall,” the other entices you: “I want, I want.” Have you taken sides in this battle? That is the question Jesus is asking you now and will ask you again and again. By taking God's side, you are doing what Jesus calls denying yourself, taking up your cross. You know from experience how often the power that pulls you down has been stronger in you. Get clear with yourself about yourself, come to the realization that your innermost being has not been on God’s side until now, and then start all over again. Be serious about what the prophet Jeremiah calls out to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah: “Plow a new beginning for yourselves!” [Jer. 4:3]. Whoever wants to belong to Christ must fight this battle once; no one has fought it out, no one is crowned, fight it right! [2.Tim. 2,5] Take up your cross in following Jesus! What does this mean? I should not be afraid to fight this battle until the surrender of my whole earthly self, if God demands it of me. In this, Jesus preceded us by carrying his cross to Golgotha and giving his life because it was the Father’s will. Perhaps you have had misfortune in your home and family, merciless death has snatched away someone dear to you, you are tormented by some heavy burden of care. Well, here is your cross! Take it upon yourself, do not let all this become an obstacle in your search for life, but remember that it comes from God, who wants to say something to you as his child. In this consciousness you will go into that struggle with more courage and joy!
II
“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me!” Strange and disturbing is this command. But strange also is the promise made to the obedient: “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose it for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.” Life shall he who decides to give up all that we otherwise understand by life, and vice versa: he who holds on to the latter shall lose true life. After we have let those words of Jesus about denying oneself, about taking up the cross, work on us, it is clear to us without further ado what the strange, contradictory saying about saving and losing life wants to say. If we hold on to our selfish ego turned to the earth, then life in God is lost to us. We have then avoided the struggle and have not become personalities because we are cowards. However, if we take up the fight with seriousness, if we give up this life, this very self, for the sake of God’s cause, then we will gain true life, we will become something whole in front of God and people. This life is the stake, that life is the prize.
And do not put your life at stake,
Life will never be won for you!
We all wish to participate in that life, and yet, do we not always have the feeling that that ideal towers unattainably high before us? Again and again we have to realize that nothing is done with our power, because we are incapable of doing the good we want [cf. Rom. 7:19]. Again and again, with clinging organs, that other soul pulls us down to earth, and the life we thirst for retreats before us, like those reflections in the heated air before the desert wanderer that are called mirages.
Yes, and we could never come to the certainty that that command and that promise were not really just a beautiful reflection, if there were not behind it the person of the one who spoke them, the person of Jesus. Many before him and after him have taught similar things as he did, none of them was able to plant new life in humanity, because he was not what Jesus was. What he commanded us, he himself fulfilled in his life and death, above all the promise attached to it was fulfilled. He denied himself, he carried his cross, he lost his life because God wanted it. But it has become an indisputable fact of world history that Good Friday was followed by Easter, that his death was transformed into life. In the rock-solid conviction: Jesus did not die, he is alive! his disciples went among Jews and Gentiles and proclaimed his Gospel in his power. Many after them have had the same experience. It is this fact of Easter that helps us get over our inability once we have seen Jesus up close. From that point of view, the demand: deny yourself! and the promise: you will save your life! will no longer make us desolate as before. We may then experience that we, too, can fight our battle with success through the power of God, which at that time intervened mightily in the destinies of men; we, too, may then join in the prayer of thanksgiving of the Apostle Paul: Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory in Jesus Christ [1 Cor. 15:57].
Our age demands life. Jesus demands and promises life. Certainly, the spirit of Jesus and the spirit of our time are deeply different, as certainly as the former comes from God and the latter from men. But we Christians do not want to forget above this difference that God’s will and his power to direct everything for the best [cf. Rom. 8:28] are the same from eternity. And truly, his breath is mightily flowing also through our century, even that battle of spirits which we now see before us, the battle for our own personal life, must serve to lead mankind forward, towards the kingdom of God.
A high, the highest task is given to us Christians in this struggle. Instead of standing by suspiciously and pessimistically, we want to show the life seekers that we know a way that leads to life. How do we do that?
By starting with ourselves, by becoming more willing to lose ourselves in order to gain ourselves, by becoming more willing to follow Jesus.
Then, my friends, trusting in God's help, we may be sure of the victory of our cause in the certainty that our faith is the victory that overcomes the world! [cf. 1 John 5:4.]
Amen!
