“If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me.”
It was his signature song! At 15.9 million albums sold, it was his third best studio production. It stood atop the UK charts a staggering 75 weeks, and it has been downloaded more than 850 MILLION times. I’m talking about the Frank Sinatra classic, My Way!
It’s hard not to fall in love with that tune:
The voice!
The conspiratorial tone.
The renaissance of the independent spirit (the American spirit).
That final declarative note! I did it MY WAY!
But knowingly — or not — Old Blue Eyes was weaving a web of musical seduction in total antipathy to the gospel. Look closely at the chorus:
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught
To say the things he truly feels
And not the words of one who kneels
The record shows I took the blows
And did it my way
This morning as I was reading Matthew 16, I see the King of Kings taking issue with the Chairman of the Board. Jesus said to his disciples:
If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world, but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? Matthew 16:24-25 NLT
The invitation to follow Jesus is an invitation — an expectation — to “bend the knee,” but not as some cosmic indentured servant. Rather, it is an invitation from the One who says:
Come to me all you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
Ask and you will receive (Matthew 7:7) and your joy will be complete. John 15:11
Bring me your resource challenge, your health challenge, your every challenge. Matthew 14:18, 15:30, 17:17.
Frank woos me with me: “For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught.” There is something seductive in self-reliance. But “me” always seems to come up short: short on time, short on resources, short on patience, short on money, short on wisdom, short on love. But it is in bending the knee to Jesus that my cup, my tank, my life becomes full:
The disciples got full nets (Luke 5:7; John 21:8, 11)
Followers get “fullness of grace” (John 1:16)
We get “life to the full” (John 10:10)
We are promised “a full measure of his joy within” (John 17:13)
He fills us with goodness (Romans 15:14)
He gives a filling and refilling of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18)
He fills us with a knowledge of his will (Colossians 1:9)
How can I pursue my way, when it so often lands at a dead end, while His way is the path to life to the full? In one sense, this is an easy call. I’m taking up my cross!
At the moment I’m feeling Robert Frost(ish):
Two roads diverged in a wood,
and I—I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
It is easy to congratulate myself for answering the call, for taking up my cross and following Jesus. Yes, I took the road less traveled! Not really. Not at all! “I was dead in my disobedience to God and my sins (Ephesians 2:1), but God did what Frost and Frank could not, he made me alive with Christ and saved me by his gracious work (Ephesians 2:4-10).
So today — and every day as Luke records (Luke 9:23) — is my opportunity to plug my ears to the siren song of “my way,” and to take up my cross, and follow Jesus.
Frank or Jesus. One brings a defiant “my way,” the other jubilant surrender!
Notes:
Sinatra’s “My Way” statistics from Chartmasters.org and Sinatra.com.