Click here for audio
NIVLuke
9:23-27 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my
disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow
me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it,
but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good
is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very
self? 26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of
Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of
the Father and of the holy angels. 27 “Truly I tell you, some
who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
A man named Charlie Moore moved into a new community with
his family. He wanted to make friends, so he joined the local softball league.
In the opening game Charlie took his family to the park and he went to join his
team. Charlie got up to bat, set his feet, squared his shoulders… and as the
ball came across the plate, he missed it by a mile. The crowd groaned. But one
voice could be heard over the den of people: “You can do it, Mr. Moore!” The
second pitch came and again he swung wildly and missed, and again the voice
could be heard. “You can do it Mr. Moore!” The third pitch – swung again and
the voice cried: “That’s OK Mr. Moore!” When the game was over, the family got
into their car, and as the made their way down the road, the dad turned to his
son and said: “Was that you that yelled out ‘You can do it Mr. Moore’?” When
his son admitted that it was indeed his voice the dad said he appreciated his
son’s encouragement, but he wondered “But, why did you call Mr. Moore?” “Well,”
the boy said, “I didn't want anyone to know I was related to you.”
I wonder if that is how we want others to know our
relationship with Jesus. We spend our time in church with those who come but
outside of church we’re hollering Jesus name as if it were someone we did not
truly know. This scripture is a watered down version of John 6: 54. In it Jesus
tells those who are following Him that if they really, really, really, want
eternal life, then they must eat His flesh and drink His blood and only those
that do get a ticket to salvation. Strong words but it makes me ponder, who
among us is really saved. I preach the promise of eternal life week after week
and at funerals, but do we really have that promise to provide comfort and
peace at the end of our physical lives? I mean to hear these words of Jesus is
difficult and profound. I mean in order to have life we must lose our lives.
Death becomes life! How can that be!
In some ways I think the message of the cross has been
reduced and subjugated to make us believe that Jesus died so that we can live.
In some ways that statement is true but in other ways it is so false that we
find comfort in a lie. Jesus went to the cross for the sins of the world and if
you buy into the whole atonement thing, we are free by that simple act of
sacrifice. But I wonder if Jesus intended an even more profound message through
the cross. In this scripture He clearly tells us that in order to be a part of
the Kingdom of God, one must give up their lives in order to receive the life
He is offering. Did He go to the cross then to show us how that looks? His
whole life here on earth is about allowing us to see in human flesh what God
the creator intended with Adam. God clearly understands that we human beings
are not the brightest LED’s on the planet. So God came into the world so that
we could see what perfection looks like. Jesus personifies the gift of God in
creation. Jesus faces temptation and stays faithful to God and does not sin.
Jesus sacrifices self over and over to bring healing and restoration to the
people of His world. Jesus gives Himself ultimately on the cross so that we can
see what form of death we all must share so that the tomb can be empty for all
of us.
But eating His body and drinking His blood? Ugggh! Maybe if
we understood what He meant rather than focusing on what He said it might help.
But I have to tell you that my understanding and opinion is not the end all of
understandings. But let me take a stab at it for a moment. What Jesus wants us
to envision with His statement is that we need to receive Him the same way we
receive food and drink. We consume it into our bodies where it begins to bring
change. The food begins to break down and the nutrients replenish the cells in
our body so that we might live. We take the food inside of us, allow it to fill
us and then to change us. Every day we eat and every day hundreds of thousands
of cells are transformed by the life giving properties of that food. What if we
began to view discipleship as the same thing? You have heard me say that
Discipleship should be as important as eating.
Paul speaks of belonging to Christ, of being possessed by
Christ, captured by Christ and apprehended by Christ. Paul certainly believes
that to be a follower of Christ transforms us in some important way and we
become a new creation in that transformation. What if we realized that
following Christ is not a salvation scheme to get us into heaven, but a life
transforming process that makes us literally a part of the Kingdom here on
earth. To be a Christian means we share the identity of Jesus not just in a sense
of what comes next, but in a “this is the way we live our lives” sense. In
other words, each morning you awake determined to carry and love what God loves
in the world, the good and bad of it. It means that we change our self-image to
not see something new but to become something new. We allow ourselves to become
Jesus. To do that requires a major dying to self of our ego.
Maybe we need to look upon the cross as the only way Jesus
could make us see that we need to stop living selfish lives for our own
importance and ego. Maybe we need to look upon the cross as the only way Jesus
could project us into a new reality where we can then see that through the
empty tomb there is a different kind of reality that we can live into. We
cannot see it because we constantly look at it in the terms of our world where
individual is above community and success is achieved regardless of who got
crushed for it. Jesus asks us to lead a life of simplicity, humility and
descent. He became a servant to the Disciples so that they might see how to
become servants to the world
This is all hard I know. The truth is religion has become
that thing that makes people more comfortable and allows them to feel good
about themselves. Why else can we explain that the religious leaders today that
are highly successful are preaching a prosperity message that people latch
onto. But it is not the message of Jesus! God wants us to feel the weight of
oppression, poverty, and illness so that we can reach people there. If we
cannot feel their pain, feel their oppression and feel the consequences of
poverty we will never understand what it takes to break the cycle and lead
people to a place where community means something and success is for the whole
world, not just the chosen few.
I want to give you an illustration that hopefully will show
you what I mean. Railroads run back and forth throughout our country. Rail cars
connect with trains and travel from Maine to Florida and Virginia to
California. But it was not always so. Each railroad that came along had its own
set of tracks and each set of tracks had different spacing between the rails
called gauge which today is standardized at 4 foot 8.5 inches. So it was
impossible to get a rail car designed for a railroad on the east coast to ride
the rail on the west coast. Until they standardized rail travel, it was get on
a train, get off a train to get on another train, etc. And if the gauge is off
even a ¼ of an inch, the train derails and great catastrophe can happen.
So what if we viewed our life with Jesus in the same way.
Jesus set the standard. Not you or I or any Pastor along the way, Jesus did it.
And Jesus demands that we travel within the gauge of His definition, not our
own. So whether you are on the East coast or the west, the standard by which we
follow Jesus is the same. Not even a ¼ of inch variance is allowed or we
derail. So what is the standard? That we learn to love one another. I mean
really love one another. Not just “like” each other but find ways when we
dislike each other to still love one another. I have a picture on my bulletin
board downstairs that shows a man holding an umbrella over his wife while he
gets wet with the expression, even when we dislike someone we still love them.
In order to become true disciples, it is not something we can talk about,
rather it something we must do. We must become Jesus in the world around us.
That means that we find ways to love one another unconditionally. It means that
we love God with all our heart and do only what God wants us to do.
Too often we believe discipleship is doing good in the world
around us without having to witness our faith or identify ourselves as
followers of Jesus. But the truth is when we allow the Holy Spirit to transform
us we become Jesus to the world around us. Discipleship is about who we are and
how other people view us in our everyday walk. It is not about who you are
sitting here in the pew if you walk out of here as someone different. It is
about believing that God has called you to love one another and then going out
in the world and loving. Your soul is who you are in God and who God is in you.
We awaken our souls when we become transformed. Jesus said, this is my body
given for you and my blood shed for you. Unless you are willing to eat this
body and drink this blood, the Kingdom is out of reach. My prayer this morning
is My Blood, My Body, let me be Jesus in the world around me. Will you join me
in the journey?
No comments:
Post a Comment